40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Daniel 8:1-27 (Episode 519)

Episode Date: August 20, 2026

Daniel and Chad Bird walk through Daniel chapter 8, a vision that shifts from the Persian and Greek empires to the persecution of God's people. The episode explains how the symbols in the vision line up with historical kingdoms, while also showing why Daniel was left disturbed and physically drained by what he saw. Have a listen. More from 1517: ·       Support the work at 1517 ·       1517 on Youtube ·       1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts ·       1517 Events Schedule ·       1517 Academy - Free Theological Education New Books from 1517 Publishing: ·       The Turk at the Door by Adam Francisco ·       Luther and the Lion: A Narnian Catechism by Samuel Schuldheisz ·       By Water and the Word by Brian Thomas ·       Being Family by Dr. Scott Keith More from the hosts: ·       Daniel Emery Price ·       Chad Bird Follow 1517:  Instagram X/Twitter Facebook

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Yeah, check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. And while you're over there, check out everything else that 1517 is doing. Academies, articles, events, you know the drill. You know all the things. Sign up for an event and come hang out with us in San Diego.

There's still a handful of tickets left for that, especially if you're like a local person. If you live in California, come on. You need to come hang out with Chad, myself, and a whole bunch of other people. We'd love to see you there. Chad, we are in Daniel chapter 8. We just finished up some visions and some interpretations. We got to hear about the Son of Man.

Hey, that was fun. Got to hear about some beasts being destroyed. Daniel has locked all these things in his heart, apparently right after he wrote them all down, because we got to hear about them. We are moving into Chapter 8, and Daniel is not done with his vision vocation. He's got a visionary vocation going on here

And he's an old man And you might think that Alright, that was probably it for me I've been seeing a lot of things But there's more work for him to do Yeah, in fact He's got more visions to come As we work our way through the rest of the book

So we had a lot of You know, the well-known historical narratives When we started out We got the first recording Of Daniel and his three friends And them refusing to eat the unclean food You've got the lion's den, you've got the fiery furnace, all that. But beginning with chapter seven and really through the rest of the book, it's mainly visions and some more obvious in their interpretation than others.

Of course, we spent, I think, two and a half episodes on Daniel seven because there's a lot there and also because the chapter is so important. I think we'll be able to finish Daniel eight in one episode. That's my goal anyway. We'll see. You never know what rabbit hole we might fall down into. Never know what I'm going to do to your plans, Chad. Yeah. And then, well, Daniel 9 is going to start out with a very long prayer, which is just very rich, theologically rich, good stuff.

And then we'll get into some more really difficult material in Daniel 9, probably one of the more formidable sections of Daniel next episode or the episode after that. Anyway, so anyway, we got more visions to come. This one in chapter 8 is probably one of the less controversial of the visions that Daniel has, just with regard to its interpretation. And it's set up just like the other visions are, too, where you have most, not just in Daniel, but other places in Scripture, too, where you have the vision and then you have the interpretation. And in this case, we're going to be introduced to the angelic interpreter in Daniel chapter 8. And we're going to hear from him not just here, but elsewhere in Daniel. And then also, of course, in the New Testament as well, speaking of Gabriel. So there's some good stuff to get to here.

Going to have a ram, going to have a goat, going to have some horns, and going to have some historical references to what happened to the Jews during the period that led up to the Maccabees. We'll talk about that when we get there. Start out here with the opening couple lines. Get the setting as to when this happened and where Daniel was when it happened, where he was in the vision, and then we'll get into the particulars after that. So Daniel 8, verse 1.

In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. He's talking about the one that is in chapter 7. And I saw in the vision, and when I saw, I was in Susa, the citadel, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai Canal. All right. So one thing that is obviously is not obvious in translation is that there's been a switch. So earlier in the book, we switched from Hebrew to Aramaic. And now we've switched back to Hebrew. The reason is not told to us a lot of speculation here. But the most common reason that's put forward is because now we're shifting back to something which is much more concerned directly with the people of Israel. And so for that reason, instead of using the more universal language of Aramaic, we switch back to the Hebrew that was spoken by the Israelites. That makes sense to me.

But again, we're not told exactly why we have two different languages that are used in Daniel. But we are, from Daniel 8 to the very end, back in Hebrew. This is set two years after the vision that Daniel had in chapter 7. There was the first year of Belshazzar, who is the last of the kings of Babylon. And now we're in the third year, so a couple years later. So this would have been around 550 BC, so middle of the 6th century. And Belshazzar is the one associated with the handwriting on the wall. We talked about him, of course, a few episodes ago.

That tells you when everything's happening. Daniel identifies himself as the one who has this vision. And he was in Susa, the citadel, which was the capital of the Median Empire. It was kind of between Babylon and Persia. And a lot of people kind of think he was there. This doesn't mean he was there. it wasn't like Daniel moved to Susa. This is the vision. So just like Ezekiel has the vision where he's in Jerusalem, but he actually wasn't in Jerusalem. He was exiled to Babylon. So Daniel

has this vision and in the vision he's in Susa, but he isn't actually physically, physically there. So he sees the vision and he's at this canal that's called the name of Ulai, which interestingly, given the content of the rest of the chapter, after the time of Daniel and during the time of the rise of the Greeks became a very Hellenized city, a Greek kind of city where Greek culture and Greek language and Greek religion was spread. So I think perhaps that's the reason that this detail is mentioned is because what we're going to hear about over the course of the chapter, as the visions interpreted, is the rise of the Seleucid empire, which was a Greek empire, and the impact that they had. So possibly that's the reason you

have this detail that's mentioned here early on in the chapter as to where he's at in the vision. Okay, so what happens? Verse two, verse three. I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great. So this is, I mean, somewhat similar to what we saw in chapter seven, only the sense of you've got an empire that's represented by an animal pretty typical of this kind of apocalyptic literature and actually not not atypical with

regard to some other parts of scripture because uh way back in we talked about this a long time ago uh well maybe a year ago in isaiah 14 i believe that's the uh the the chapter the leaders of the nations are referred to as goats so that's uh that kind of fits with with the same the same idea. So you have animals associated either with kingdoms or with their rulers, princes, kings. So here you've got a ram. The standing in the bank of this canal, it's got two horns. Well, nothing unusual there, but you have one horn that's higher than the other one. It charges westward, northward, southward, meaning the perspective that's given is he's from the east and he's going west, he's going north, he's going south, and no one can stand before him.

So he's going to conquer, he's going to just do his thing, whatever he pleases, he does, and then he becomes great. Now, I've kind of went back and forth as to how to discuss this, because you've got the vision and you've got the interpretation. So I guess if it's fine with you, we'll just kind of jump back and forth with regard to how this is going to be interpreted. Because when you get to the latter half of the chapter and you begin to have the interpretation that's given, then down in verse 20, it says, As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. Yeah. So, first animal that you see, the ram, two horns, you got the kings of Media, you got the Median Persian Empire, and it charges from the east, and so it goes west, it goes north, it goes south, and of course, no kingdom can stand before it.

This is the fall of the Babylonian Empire, and then the rise of the Persian Empire, which, at least for a while, does as it pleases and becomes great. it is an interesting visual where you're like you got a ram he's got some big horns one horn is bigger than the other horn but they're both big and so

which is not typically what you see with a ram that's not normal normally the horns are similar size that's how they're big or small it sounds chaotic he's just running all over the place head down just ramming everything in sight, right?

And nobody can do anything about it. Yeah, which, you know, of course, matches exactly what we know historically of the Persian Empire, the rise of the Persian Empire. And the fact that one horn is higher than the other means that the Persians began to become more dominant over the Medes.

So that's why you have one horn that's higher than the other one. Now, we're, of course, we're reading this and interpreting this in light of the history that we already know. Now, Daniel, of course, is just receiving this in a vision. In fact, if you get to the very end of the chapter, there's this interesting line.

This is the very close of Daniel 8. He says, I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it. So if you're holding to Daniel's authorship, which, of course, we are. We talked about that when we started the book. You can kind of understand why he didn't understand it. it hasn't happened yet. And even though he's given the interpretation, it doesn't mean that all of a sudden every aspect of the vision is going to become clear where the angel explains

in general what all of this represents. And then it's not like Daniel's going to hear that and be like, oh yeah, I totally get it. Even though it hasn't happened. And even though I haven't read the history books about all of these things happening, I completely understand it. No, He's like a lot of people in the Old Testament who had either prophecies or visions. They might get some of it, but it's not like everything is crystal clear in their minds. I mean, we see that all the time with regard to the prophecies of the Messiah, where what they're seeing is this telescopic blending together of the final advent and the first advent and the Messiah. It's not like they're wrong. It's just that they don't have complete clarity as to what's going to happen in the future. Well, no surprise there. We don't have complete clarity as to everything that's going to happen when Christ comes again.

I mean, we know in general, of course, but there's a lot of things I suspect we're going to be surprised about when it actually happens. Back to the beginning of the chapter. So we're at verse 5 at this point. So we've got this ram, and he was standing in the banks of the canal, and here's what happens next. By the way, I do like that in verse 5 you start with, I was considering. So in other words, he sees this, and he's like, hmm. And while I'm thinking about this thing that I just saw, right, trying to figure it out, being like, but what is going on there? And then behold, I see something else before I can come to a conclusion about what I just saw. Yeah, there is a sense where Daniel's like, you can kind of see this.

You're having this dream vision and you see this and you're trying to put it together. I mean, it's all weird. A lot of stuff going on. You get the impression there's a lot. I mean, he's written this, but of course, more was going on than the actual words describe, right? There's only so much that we can describe with words. More things are happening. More events are happening. there's a lot of details that he's not going to put down there because it's only just a few verses so there's a lot of activity before you can really figure anything out all of a sudden

you got another animal now you got a you got a male goat that's coming so as i was considering checking all this out look behold a male goat came from the west all right this direction is going to be important get this male goat he's heading he's coming from the west. He's heading east. What's he going to do? Well, he's going to go across the face of the whole earth. That's a bit of hyperbole there. It's not going to be the whole earth, but at least a wide swath of the earth from Daniel's perspective. And this goat, this male goat coming from the west, going over the whole earth, he is moving so fast, he's not even touching the ground. It's like a flying goat. He's moving fast is the way we would describe this. Not even

touching the ground. He's running so fast. And this goat, he's got a horn too. It's a conspicuous horn between his eyes. All right. So get in the picture here. You got a West, a goat from the West who's moving really fast he's got this big horn this conspicuous horn between his eyes and we're going to hear in the next verse that he's moving toward the ram so he came to the ram that ram that had the two horns which i had seen standing on the bank of the canal he ran at him in his powerful wrath so this is also a very mad goat we're finding out wrathful goat i saw him come close to the ram and he was enraged okay here we go again i mean this is a this is a mad goat what's he so wrathful and angry about well we'll hear in just a minute

i saw him he was enraged against him against the the ram and he struck the ram and he broke his two horns and this ram who before we heard just did as he pleased and became great had no power to stand before him but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him and there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power yeah we'll stop there for a second you get all that dan all that crystal clear figured yeah these uh this vision i think you could if you were like this is gonna sound really weird and it is strange this is in my head so i was trying to say like did i see this somewhere um if you were starting like a micro brewery i think you could get all your beer names and like images for your cans from this chapter you probably could

somebody out there is listening right now who is thinking about uh doing a brewery or they already own one and they're probably going to come up with some pretty good names based on that suggestion Yeah. You could have that angry goat, goat of wrath. You could have a goat with one conspicuous horn between his eyes. It's great. It's great. It's great if I can. Ram with two different sized horns on his head. you know um yeah but uh no this is this is interesting now typically you wouldn't think like a goat would be messing with a ram right i mean that's like one of the one of the takeaways is you're like i mean i would assume in in most situations a ram would mess a goat up and so like there is a little bit of like a reversal there where um something that you wouldn't typically think would overtake something else does um now this isn't an average goat uh

this is a goat that runs so fast that his feet don't touch the ground he's got like a big huge horn in the middle of his head uh so uh it's not it's not a normal goat but it's not it's you still would not expect the goat to uh to beat the ram but it doesn't sound like it was much of a fight Yeah, yeah. And all of which perfectly accords with its interpretation. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm... You're setting it up. I'm not like just sitting here interpreting based on nothing. Yeah, so based upon what you said, just kind of do this dance back and forth from the beginning and end of the chapter.

if you jump to the interpretation. Verse 21, we're told, and this isn't Daniel coming up with this. This is Gabriel who is interpreting for Daniel. And he says, the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn, the horn that's referred to as conspicuous between his eyes, that great conspicuous horn between his eyes is the first king, who of course we know is Alexander Alexander the Great. So when you know what the goat represents, and you know everything that you were describing, Dan, and you know the history, yeah, then it all fits. First of all, he's coming from the West, which of course is where Greece is from the perspective of the Persians. And he's moving fast, which is exactly what Alexander and his troops did. And he's a

goat he's not a ram which again like you were saying the the the greeks were vastly outnumbered had a much smaller army but they moved fast and uh it says that the ram was running in his powerful wrath and he was enraged so there was a a long a long-standing grievance of course on the part of the greeks against the persians because of the early earlier invasions you know they uh enslaved a lot of Greeks. They destroyed Greek cities. They were committing these attacks and these atrocities and these enslavements. And so for the longest period of time, the Greeks wanted to get revenge. And initially it was Philip of Macedon who was going to do this, and he dies. And so his son Alexander the Great takes over. And so it's Alexander, this horn, this conspicuous horn

between the eyes of this goat who carries out this incredible military accomplishment with fewer men. He moves fast, as it says here, without touching the ground and attacks the Persians. And time after time after time is victorious over them until finally, of course, it is the Greeks who conquer the Persian empire, which before it happened, probably no one would thought was was possible but actually is is what happens under the leadership of alexander the great who is described here as this this conspicuous horn that is ramming the the ram of persia and taking taking it out and alexander the great is still like um i mean he's not going to be the last guy obviously but um what alexander the great did and the speed in which he did it i mean you do have

Yeah, you know who that is for a reason, because up until that point, there was like nothing like that. Yeah, there's a reason we call him the Great, right? Yeah. Some people call the Great because of, I mean, great things they've accomplished. Some people called Great because of also great things they accomplished. But I mean, many of these were horrific. But Alexander certainly deserves the title of the great because, I mean, he did most of this in his 20s. He was 33 when he died. By that point, he is the one who had led the Greek armies across Asia Minor into Persia and finally became the ruler. And, of course, not just there, down into Egypt, of course, in Judea as well.

And it was because of the speed, because of the extent of his conquest, that you begin to have the spread of Hellenism, spread of Greek language, spread of Greek culture. All this, of course, has many ramifications for what happens in the New Testament. It was all prophesied here by Daniel long before it actually came to pass, long before anyone would have ever thought this possible. Daniel had described this in pretty significant detail. Yeah, I mean, I would think that someone doing that at that age and the extent of the spread of his conquest and how fast it happens, that would have sounded completely made up. Somebody can't do that. Yeah. Yeah, so it was all prophesied here by Daniel and accomplished by Alexander the Great.

But as we've already indicated, Alexander did not live long. I mean, 33 is pretty young. And what happens when he dies, what happens when this conspicuous horn is gone or broken, as it's going to be described to you by Daniel, that then leads to a division of his empire. And that's what we'll pick up with verse 8. So verse 7 ends by saying there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. That is from the power of this Greek goat. Then, verse 8, then the goat became exceedingly great.

But when he was strong, the great horn was broken. And instead of it, there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven. So Alexander dies. The great horn, who's broken, dies in 323 BC. And then what happens after that is, well, a whole lot of history that I'll summarize really quickly. The way it's summarized here is you have, instead of one horn, you have four conspicuous horns that grow up toward the four winds of heaven. So these are the four generals who eventually come to dominate the empire that Alexander had created. So it didn't happen immediately. You have what's referred to as the Wars of the Successors after Alexander dies. It wasn't like Alexander said, okay, you take that, you take that, you take that, you take that. there were these wars to determine the extent of the division of the empire and this happened over a course of decades but in the end what you end up with is these four horns representing these guys you got Cassander who's in Macedonia and Greece so from where Alexander came from you got Lysimachus who's in Thrace and much of Asia Minor modern-day Turkey the two guys that are really are

our concern and the concern of other parts of Daniel and really the concern of the intervening centuries between the end of the last Old Testament book and then the first century are Seleucus or Seleucus. And that is a general that's controlling Syria and the area east of that, and then Ptolemy, who's in Egypt. So Seleucus in Syria, eventually controlling Judea itself or Israel, and then the Ptolemies in Egypt. So those are the two that we're going to hear more about as we go through Daniel. Those are the two who are kind of fighting back and forth with each other as to who's going to control Judea. It takes a long time. Eventually, it's going to be the Seleucid empire that's centered there in Syria that controls Israel or Judea. And then the Ptolemies

are going to be in Egypt. And the Ptolemies last all the way to the time of Cleopatra. So she's going to be the last of the Ptolemies. She's in this long line. She wasn't the first Cleopatra, but she's the last of the rulers of the Ptolemies. So their empire dynasty lasts much longer than any of these other four. So that's going to be the four horns, these conspicuous horns that come up toward the four winds of heaven, of course, that is dividing north, south, east, and east and west.

Now, bearing all in mind, verse nine is going to focus in on the Seleucid Empire because verse nine tells us out of one of them, the Seleucid Empire, came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south toward the east and toward the beautiful or the glorious land so daniel 8 9 which is where we're at now mentions this it's going to come up again three different times in daniel chapter 11 the glorious land of the beautiful land being a reference to israel judea probably in particular to jerusalem but here it's talking about the whole

land. So, he got a little horn who's coming up after them. He's going to become exceedingly great. He's going to have some impact. Verse 10 tells us, it grew great, this horn grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars, it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. It became great, even as great as the prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown and a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression and it will be thrown and it will throw truth to the ground and it will act and prosper so all this is going on now verse 13 says i daniel then i daniel heard a holy one speaking and another

holy one said to the one who spoke basically how long for how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering the transgression that makes desolate the giving over of the sanctuary and the host to be trampled underfoot so how long are all these things going to happen and he responds for 2300 evenings and mornings then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state now i went ahead and read all that because i this first of all it's all one unit and i wanted us to kind of hear everything that this little horn that's going to come up is going to do before we get to the actual interpretation so you have the four horns you got the little horn he is obviously active in the land of promise for the beautiful land of the glorious land of israel

Judea. He's going to obviously become arrogant, puffed up. He's going to become great and think that he's as great as the prince of the host, which is another way of referring to God. And then he's going to begin to impact negatively the burnt offering and the sanctuary. He's going to throw truth to the ground. And he's going to do all of these things for quite a while. And the number that's given here is 2,300 evenings and mornings. Now, I want to get to that in a minute, but that takes us through the very end of the vision part of what Daniel saw. The next section, which begins with verse 15, is going to be the interpretation of the vision. So we'll get to the details once we kind of start working our way through those verses.

Yeah, this is one of those where you're glad that you're given an interpretation. uh that is helpful you know uh the you know if this is like a parable or something you'd be like this would be a good one for you to say and here's uh you know and here's the meaning of the of the vision of the the little horn or whatever because i think this would be tough so i think some of the other stuff like you can sort of in a historical context be like i think this is what's going on I think this one's a little bit harder because it involves God. There's more spiritual things going on. Yeah.

Yeah. It's much more detailed. It's much more specific. Yeah, the ram and the goat. I mean, it had some specifics to it, but it's more general. Here's what's going to happen in this conquest, and here's what's going to happen in this conquest. But once we get to those verses, there's a lot of details here, and you're right. I mean, it's more a spiritual attack.

It's going to directly impact sacrifice, the sanctuary, all those sorts of things. So now we are in verse 15, and we're going to hear the interpretation. I know we've kind of danced back and forth between these, but now we're going to hear what happens when Daniel sees the vision and is trying to understand it. So verse 15, when I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I tried to understand it. And behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. And I heard a man's voice between the banks of the Ulai, that's the canal, and it called. So this man's voice says, Gabriel, make this man understand the vision. So he came near, that is Gabriel came near where I stood.

And when he came, I was frightened, fell on my face. But he said to me, understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end. So we'll talk more about that in just a minute. This is the first appearance, first time that the appearance of an angel is also connected with the naming of an angel. So there's only two angels that we have named in the Bible itself. Anyway, we have Michael, who's going to come up in the book of Daniel. Then we have Gabriel. So Gabriel is going to appear one other time in the book of Daniel.

And of course, he's the one who announces the coming birth of John the Baptist and of Jesus. Now, it's kind of interesting here because when Daniel sees him, it says he has the appearance of a man, which in Hebrew is Geber, which is part of what Daniel's name means. So Daniel's name is really comprised of two different parts. You have the L at the end, which is the name of God. And then the G-A-B-R-I, the Gavri, is just a form of Geber. So Geber and L is what comprises Gabriel's name. So it's kind of a pun off how he appeared. He had the appearance of a man, and his name means God is my Gevatter,

which you could translate man or also warrior. So when he sees the appearance of a man, then that one who appears as a man actually has a name that's connected with that same word. And he is here to explain to Daniel exactly what all of this means. And typically, typically for the Bible anyway, when Daniel sees this, he's scared to death. He's frightened, falls on his face, and has to be comforted by this angel who's about to do some vision interpretation for him. This is a funny way to say that, too, in 18. So Gabriel starts talking to him, and Daniel's like, I fell into a deep sleep with my face, like, you know, in the ground.

And you're like, it sounds like you passed out. Yes, yeah. It does. It sounds like you fainted, dude. That's what that sounds like. Yeah, a very similar thing happened. You know, Abraham, back in Genesis 15, that's sort of what happened to him. And John, he fell.

He fell down to the ground as though dead, he says. This is like the more generous way to say it. And, yeah, then he started talking. You know, he spoke to me, and I was so tired. Yeah, just crashed. Just fell asleep. Yeah, this is not your, I mean, I have fallen asleep on the phone listening to someone talk. This is not that kind of falling asleep.

This is like fainting. Yeah. Fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. So he, Daniel says he touched me, made me stand up. And he said, behold, I'm going to make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation. So at the end of verse 17, when it says the vision is for the time of the end, That's what it's talking about. Not the end of time in that sense, but the end of the time of indignation refers to the appointed time of the end. So the end of that which he has seen, which is a period of the oppression, the persecution of God's people.

Now, he begins the interpretation, part of which I've already read. As for the ram you saw with two horns, that's kings of Media and Persia. All right. I already talked about that. Verse 21, he continues, the goat's the king of Greece. Talked about that. The great horn between his eyes is the first king, Alexander the Great. Then that horn's broken in place of which you have four others, the four kingdoms that

arise from his nation, but not with his power. Of course, that's exactly what describes the four different parts of Alexander's empire. They were all powerful in their own way, but they were certainly not as powerful as Alexander was, and none of them had the full extent of his kingdom. All right, so all of that we've talked about. Verse 23 is when he's going to pick up with the interpretation of this little horn. At the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, so this is a guy with, I would say, with an arrogant look about him, and one who, well, the ESV understands riddles.

I think a better way would be to, he's skilled in intrigue. That's the way one translation has it, or a master of intrigue is the way the NIV translate this. So it wasn't like this guy just, he was really good at riddles. He was a man of intrigue. That's what his personality was like, what his rule was like. He's going to arise. His power shall be great, but not by his own power.

And he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. By his cunning, he shall make deceit prosper under his hand. And in his own mind, he shall become great. Without warning, he shall destroy many and he shall even rise up against the prince of princes. And he shall be broken, but by no human hand. And the vision of the evenings and mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision for refers to many days from now. Some details are given here.

Not a lot of details are given to Daniel. I mean, we obviously know this is going to be one guy who arises. He's going to think he's great. He's going to be prideful. He's going to be arrogant. He's going to be full of full of intrigue. he's going to destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. So earlier in the vision where this guy grew great and he attacked even the stars

and threw them down to the ground and trampled upon them, that visionary experience is interpreted literally as him not attacking the starry host or the angels, but rather the saints, who are sometimes in the Bible described as stars. So he's going to attack the saints. He's going to rebel against God himself, rise up against the prince of princes, and shall eventually be broken. This horn will be broken by no human hand. And we know who this is. We know how he died, and we know exactly what he did to the people of God. All of this Little Horn description is a description of Antiochus Epiphanes, who was part of the Seleucid Empire. He was the one who rose to power, rose to dominance. And what he began to do is to basically force the Jews to abandon their faith, to stop circumcising their sons, to destroy copies of the Torah, to offer incense and other sacrifices

to the gods of the Greeks. We know that he set up an altar in Jerusalem at the temple, and he offered unclean sacrifices, including swine there. He persecuted, he killed, he massacred large numbers of Jews. And all of this is what led up finally to, if you're familiar with the history of First Maccabees or Second Maccabees, led up finally to the uprising against him on the part of the Jews who were led by the Maccabean family, and eventually were able to overcome these attacks upon worship, faith, the Torah, all of that. So this is the prophecy of the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes. All of this is in around the 330s BC, and which led then finally to the conquest of their oppressors

and the establishment of, for about 100 years, of the semi-independent empire of the Jews until finally the Romans came over, came through, and once again took away the independence of the Jews. It is so wild because, you know, you have this sort of silent period in between testaments. And it is weird to think about, and I think it's easy to forget, Israel is dominated like for a long stretch of time but they did have like this one moment where I kind of thought

that maybe they alright like we could be our own thing again and the Romans kind of snuffed that out like almost immediately and so you know when you do have Jesus finally show up they're not like so so in the grand scheme of things like so so

far removed from that if you're trying to figure out like And why the religious leaders are playing ball with their oppressor so much is partially because this oppressor is not nearly as bad as the oppressor that they had to overthrow, right? In the collective memory, it's very much like, hey, it's been worse than this. Yes, yes, precisely. Yeah, they had been through, well, multiple reigns, multiple dominations by the Babylonians, by the Persians, by the Greeks, by the Seleucid Empire that we were just talking about. So in the perspective of at least some of the Jews, the Romans weren't so bad, not as bad as what they had suffered under Antiochus Epiphanes, for sure. And there's more that we can say about him.

I know we're out of time, and maybe we'll fill in some of the details before we leave this chapter next time. But anyway, that kind of gives everyone a general overview of what the vision means and some details from its interpretation. Yeah, and this kind of vision makes you sick to your stomach, apparently. This is what Daniel would say. That was Daniel's reaction. Yeah, he's sick for some days after that. Yeah. All right.

Well, uh, we, uh, we made it through, uh, this chapter pretty much here. And so, uh, I try not to, I try not to derail your goals, Chad. I want to support you in all of your, in all your goals. So, uh, we will, uh, we'll pick it back up again next episode. I'll see you then. All right. See you then.