Notes | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 22, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 40.

Notes.

The wings were plucked.—At first the lion had eagle's wings, denoting the rapidity with which Babylon extended its conquests under Nebuchadnezzar. When this vision was given, a change had taken place; its wings had been plucked. It no longer flew like an eagle upon its prey. The boldness and spirit of the lion were gone. A man's heart, weak, timorous, and faint, had taken its place. Such was emphatically the case in the person of the imbecile and pusillanimous Belshazzar, who in weakness and fear shut himself up in the city of Babylon, and with whom the Babylonian kingdom came to an end, B. C. 538.—Thoughts on Daniel and the Revelation.

Raised up itself on one side.—The bear raised itself up on one side. This kingdom was composed of two nationalities, the Medes and the Persians. The same fact is represented by the two horns of the ram of chapter 8. Of these horns it is said that the higher came up last; and of the bear, that it raised itself up on one side; and this was fulfilled by the Persian division of the kingdom, which came up last, but attained the higher eminence, becoming the controlling influence in the nation.—Ibid.

Three ribs in the mouth.—The three ribs perhaps signify the three provinces of Babylon, Lydia, and Egypt, which were especially ground down and oppressed by this power.—Ibid.

Four wings of a fowl.—If wings upon the lion signified rapidity of conquest, they would signify the same here. The leopard itself is a swift-footed beast, but this was not sufficient to represent the career of the nation which it symbolized in this respect; it must have wings in addition. Two wings, the number the lion had, were not sufficient, it must have four; and this must denote unparalleled celerity of movement, which we find to be historically true of the Grecian kingdom. The conquests of Grecia under Alexander have no parallel in historic annals for suddenness and rapidity.—Ibid.

The beast had also four heads.—The Grecian Empire maintained its unity but little longer than the lifetime of Alexander. Within fifteen years after his brilliant career ended in a drunken debauch, the empire was divided among his four leading generals. Cassander had Macedon and Greece in the west; Lysimachus had Thrace and the parts of Asia on the Hellespont and Bosporus in the north; Ptolemy received Egypt, Lydia, Arabia, Palestine, and Cœle-Syria in the south; and Seleucus had Syria and all the rest of Alexander's dominions in the east. These divisions were denoted by the four heads of the leopard.—Ibid.