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CHAPTER VI. - THE DANIEL PROGRAM.
AS the Congo River in its onward flow
across the ‘Dark Continent’ broadens and deepens when its great tributaries
mingle their waters with its own, so the stream of prophetic revelation
increases continually in volume as it rolls down through the ages. From
the first, its theme was redemptionthe saving blessing in store for
the human race; but to Adam and to Abraham the great benefitthe salvationonly
was predicted, while little was said of the great Benefactor, the Savior
Himself. To Moses and David visions of the blessed Coming One were granted,
till, by degrees, His mediatorial work, His double nature, His wonderful
personal experiences, and many features of His glorious kingdom were
revealed, In the times of the Jewish kingdom especially, and during
the captivity which followed its dissolution, the river of prophecy
thus widened exceedingly. Its revelations concerned three main subjects
I. The fortunes of the JEWISH kingdom
and people.
II. The person and work of MESSIAH THE
PRINCE.
III. The GENTILE nationspagan kingdoms
and empires.
I. THE JEWISH PROPHECIES included predictions
of the dismemberment of the kingdom after Solomon’s reign; the overthrow
of the ten tribes and its date; the deliverance of Judah from the Assyrian
invasion; its subsequent conquest by Babylon; the captivity and its
duration; the restoration and the means of it; the duration of its restored
existence; the Roman overthrow and subsequent desolation; together with
minor points so numerous that it may be safely asserted that Israel’s
entire history was written in advance, and that nothing ever befell
them that was not first foretold. Thus the providential government of
God over His people was manifested, and the moral reasons for His dispensations
expounded beforehand. The Jewish prophets combined pastoral care and
spiritual exhortation with prediction in their ministry. They were the
ambassadors for God of their day, pleading with His people of ‘righteousness,
temperance, and judgment to come.’ Like the apostles, they were witnesses
for the truth, and often martyrs for its sake. Some of their predictions
were accomplished speedily, attesting to the then living generation
their Divine commission; others were recorded for ages to come, and
demonstrate in our own day the Divine prescience which inspired them..
II. The MESSIANIC predictions increased
in number and in variety during this period, and included revelations
as to the nature of Christ’s person and mission, His birth of a virgin
and the place where it should occur, His works of mercy, His meek and
compassionate character, His sinlessness, His atoning self-sacrifice,
His humiliation and rejection, His sufferings, death, and resurrection;
the atonement wrought by these, with its results in the gift of the
Holy Ghost; the propagation of the gospel among the Gentiles, and many
other particulars.
III. The predictions as to the GENTILE
nations and their rulers include those relating to Assyria, Babylon,
Moab, Egypt, Tyre, Philistia, Kedar, Elam all of which had more or less
direct and important connection with the Jewish people, together with
others relating to individuals, such as Sennacherib, Cyrus, and Nebuchadnezzar,
who influenced their fortunes seriously. Such prophecies taught the
Jews that Jehovah was not their God only, but the Supreme Ruler over
all the earth. The polytheism of the day had divided the countries
of the world among its false deities,
and circumscribed the power of each to certain districts. The Assyrians
when settled in Samaria complained that they ‘knew not the manner of
the God of the land.’ The Israelites could never thus limit Jehovah
in their thoughts, since the predictions of His prophets unveiled the
future of the Gentiles around them as well as their own, and their fulfillment
proved that Divine providence controlled the one as completely as the
other. Moreover, such prophecies abated the doubts and conflicts which
must have arisen in the hearts and minds of pious Jews under the dark
providences of defeat and captivity. When the enemy was permitted to
triumph, and to boast in his false gods as if of superior might to Jehovah,
it was a consolation to know by prophetic revelation that the triumph
would be of brief duration, that the spoiler would soon himself be spoiled
and the captive delivered, to understand the moral reasons for the disciplinary
portions of the providential government of God, and to be led to repentance
for the sins that had incurred Divine judgments.
It lies, however, outside the province
of this work to examine in detail these several classes of predictions,
or to trace their fulfillment. On some of them it would not be easy
to base arguments of evidential value; inasmuch as it might not at this
distance of time be possible to prove that the date of the publication
of the prediction was sufficiently remote from the event that fulfilled
it, or that the event was so beyond the power of human sagacity to anticipate,
as to demonstrate supernatural prescience. Moreover, none of these predictions
properly fall under either of the great programs which we are here examining.
They stand apart from the comprehensive foreviews given at the commencement
of the great sections of human history, to the fathers, or founders,
of the new order of things, and they need not therefore detain us.
After the establishment of Jewish monarchy
in the reign of David and Solomon, at which crisis the previous foreview
was granted, no great turn or change in the history of the chosen people
through whom the world’s redemption was to be accomplished took place
until the Babylonian captivity. The promise of the permanence of David’s
dynasty as long as the kingdom existed was conspicuously fulfilled,
as may be clearly seen by a comparison between his
dynasty which reigned at Jerusalem and that which occupied the throne
of Israel or the ten tribes.
Frequent and violent interruptions,
owing to revolt and assassination, marked the succession in Samaria.
Jeroboam’s line failed; Baasha’s house did, the same; the usurpers Zimri
and Omri were cut off; so was the house of Ahab; Jehu’s succession was
expressly limited to four generations; and from that time to the fall
of the ten tribes before Assyria, there was only a series of successive
conspiracies which placed strangers on the throne. In Judah, on the
contrary, there was an unbroken descent in one line, so that the family
of David occupied his throne for 450 years without interruption, until
both king and people were carried to Babylon, The related kingdom of
Israel, though it only lasted 250 years, saw three complete extirpations
of the reigning family, the deposition of the house of Jehu, and perpetual
confusion in the order of the kingdom. The stability of David’s throne
was not owing to an absence of danger; insurrection and conspiracy arose,
but they could not overthrow it. Athaliah’s domestic treachery did not
defeat the promise of God; the confederacy of Syria and Ephraim to set
up the son of Tabeal on the throne of Judah in the days of Ahaz, was
foiled; and even the great invasion of Sennacherib, though it threatened
Hezekiah, was not allowed to overthrow the dynasty of David before the
appointed time. It was upheld when ruin was all around it. A very special
providence preserved the throne of Judah and the dynasty that occupied
it, until by its own act it forfeited all its privileges. But the temporal
promises of the Davidic covenant had been made distinctly conditional,
and held good only as long as David’s seed remained faithful to Jehovah.
‘If he (i.e. the king) commit
iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes
of the children of men, ‘ was one of the provisions of the original
covenant; and to Solomon God had said, ‘If thou wilt walk before Me,
as David thy father walked, in integrity of heart, and in uprightness...
then will I establish the throne of thy kingdom upon Israel for ever...
but if ye go and serve other gods, and worship them, then will I cut
off Israel out of the land that I have given them.’ #1Ki
9:4. Hence, as long as the kings of Judah were even in the main
faithful and obedient, they were upheld in spite of many and flagrant
transgressions; but when Manasseh filled the land with idolatry and
the blood of human sacrifices, when all the three sons of the good king
Josiah ‘did evil in the sight of the Lord, ‘ then it was formally announced
to the king by the prophet that the covenanted blessings were forfeited,
and the penalty predicted 450 years before about to descend. There is
something specially sad and pathetic in the whole strain of Jereniiah
xxii., where God reluctantly yet solemnly revokes the promises of the
covenant. ‘Go down to the house of the king of Judah, and speak this
word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, 0 king of Judah, that sittest
upon
the throne of David;’ and then comes
the terrible message. Jehoahaz (or Shallum) was to die an outcast in
Egypt; his brother Jehoiakim to perish unlamented, and ‘be buried with
the burial of an ass’; Jehoiachin, the last independent king of David’s
line, to be given into the hands of those that sought his life, cast
out to die in another land. ‘O earth, earth, earth, ‘ ends this touching
passage, ‘hear the word of the Lord. Write ye this man childless, a
man that shall not prosper in his days: for no man of his seed shall
prosper, sitting upon the throne of David, and ruling any more in Judah.’
The word ‘childless’ means here,
without a successor on the throne, an heir-less king; officially childless. Personally Jehoiachin had a family, and his
son Salathiel enters into the line of the ancestry of Christ; #Mt 1:12 ;#1Ch 3:17. The word might he rendered ‘destitute’ or ‘deprived, ‘
not of offspring, hut of a successor.
Thus God revoked the title of David’s
seed to the throne, but not for ever, for the passage goes on to speak
of ‘the Righteous Branch’ that shall yet be raised to David, ‘the king’
that shall ‘reign and prosper and execute judgment and justice in the
earth.’ ‘The sure mercies of David’ have not failed, his throne is only
in abeyance, until He shall come whose right it is to reign.
A crisis of peculiar importance, a great
turning-point in history, was reached at this juncture, which was an
era of solemn and fundamental change to the chosen people. It was a
fit crisis for a fresh outburst of prophetic light. The kingdom of Israel
was over. The throne of Judah had fallen to rise no more until days
yet to come. The times of the Gentiles were about to commence. The heritage
of Jehovah lay waste, the temple of God was a heap of blackened ruins,
the corporate nationality of the Jews was shattered, it was an hour
of utmost gloom and deepest discouragement. The outward ordinances of
religion were in abeyance, the typical ritual suspended, the Davidic
covenant apparently broken how intensely the light of further revelation
was required! The national apostasy which had sunk the people of God
as low as the surrounding heathen in polytheism and idolatry, had brought
down on them an early instalment of the curses of the Sinaitic covenant,
as a discipline which should restore them to the faith of Abraham. A
foretaste of their present longer and more terrible chastisement had
been allowed to overtake themthe Babylonian captivity had been sent
to wean them from their besetting sin of idolatry, and draw them back
to their allegiance to God. Temporal supremacy was taken from the Jews
and given to the Gentiles at this time, just as later on rebgious supremacy, ‘the kingdom of God,
‘ was similarly taken from them and given to a people bringing forth
the fruits thereof. But mercy was mingled with judgment at this sorrowful
crisis, and it was during this captivity that the sixth section of the
Divine program of the world’s history, with its all-glorious issue and
triumphant termination, was imparted to Daniel.
Before considering this gracious revelation,
and in order to its better appreciation, we must take a brief glance
at the then existing state of the civilized Gentile world, with whose
future, prophecy thenceforth concerns itself as well as with the future
of the chosen people.
The interest of history at that period
centerd still around the original seats of population with which we
have before had to dothe great valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates,
Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia, though the Medes and Persians and Elamites
to the east were also coming more prominently into notice. The balance
of power among these nations was, however, materially altered since
the epoch we last considered. The golden days of Egypt were over, though
it was still a kingdom, and at times able to assume the aggressive.
Days of decrepitude and disintegration had long since descended on the
land of Ham. Twenty petty princes were sometimes ruling at the same
time over feeble sections of the once mighty empire of the Pharaohs.
The powerful dominion of David and Solomon had proved as brief in its
duration as it was rapid in its rise, and had been early broken into
two kingdoms; the northern portion of the divided realm of the Jews
had fallen under the power of Assyria a hundred and thirty years previously
to the Babylonian captivity. The strong, rapacious, and cruel monarchs,
Tiglath Pileser, Shalmanezer, Sennacherib, and Esarhaddon, had, as we
know from their own still extant inscriptions, successively ravaged
both the Jewish territories east of Jordan, and the fair valleys and
plains of Ephraim. They had gradually subdued the ten tribes, and, according
to the cruel custom of the East (which happily has never obtained in
Western warfare), they had deported the superior classes of the people
to Assyria and Media. Only a poor and mongrel population, though probably
a large one, dwelt in Samaria, which had become a tributary province
of Assyria.
Sennacherib had also overrun Judea with
his vast hosts, and threatened Egypt. He had, however, been checked
by Divine intervention, in response to Hezekiah’s faith and prayer.
His successor Esarhaddon had taken Judah’s wicked king Manasseh captive
for a time, but he was restored on his repentance, for the throne of
David had then to last a little longer. Assyria’s own predicted doom
was also fast approaching, for Nineveh’s temporary respite was over,
and the mighty city on the Tigris, whose magnificence, idolatry, corruption,
tyranny, vainglory, and horrible cruelties have been revealed to us
by its modern resurrection from the dust of ages, was about to fall.
The government of Assyria had fallen into the weak hands of Sardanapalus,
the provinces had risen in rebellion, the capital had been beleaguered
by its foes. Its own great rivers, swelled by heavy rains, had broken
down its walls for a length of twenty stadii; and the consequent exposure
of his city had driven the miserable Sardanapalus in despair to burn
himself, his family, and his treasures in his splendid palace. The prophecies
of Nahum and Zephaniah had been literally and wonderfully fulfilled
in the fall of the guilty capital and empire, and out of the ashes of
Assyria on the Tigris in the north-east had arisen the great empire
of Babylon on the Euphrates in the southwest.
It was during the siege of Nineveh that
Nabopolassar, then the Assyrian viceroy in Babylonia, had asserted his
independence, and established unopposed a new monarchy, which, under
the circumstances of the times, grew with amazing rapidity. The fall
of Nineveh and of the Assyrian empire had left its many provinces without
a ruler and without defence. Babylon and Egypt both strove for the supremacy,
and the latter at first secured some successes in Asia. The good Jewish
king Josiah tried to oppose the armies of Pharaoh Necho in their career
of Asiatic conquest, but he was defeated and slain at Megiddo in B.C.
609a defeat which his people bitterly mourned, and from which Judah
never recovered. Necho’s triumph, however, was brief; for three years
later he and his army were routed in the great battle of Carchemish
on the Euphrates, where the young and talented prince Nebuchadnezzarthen
acting for his father, Nabopolassarutterly defeated the Egyptian forces,
and thus settled the question as to the future mastery of Asia (B.C.
605). This battle is prophetically
and graphically described Jer. xlvi. 312. Necho retreated with the
shattered remnant of his forces into Africa, resigned all pretension
to the Asiatic conquests he had made, including Judea; and, as we read
in the Book of Kings, he ‘came no more out of his land.’ Judea became
shortly afterwards a mere Babylonian province; Jerusalem and its temple
were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and its people taken captive (B.C.
606598).
After four hundred and fifty years of
independence the kingdom of David had thus fallen. Israel, as predicted,
had ‘come down very low, ‘ and her enemies had risen very high. The
curse causeless had not come; Israel, having broken her covenant, had
justly incurred its penalties, but very terrible they were. Profoundly
dark to every Jewish heart must have been the abyss of the Babylonish
captivity. It had swallowed up their national existence for the present,
but that was the smallest part of it. Had it also robbed them of their
future? Had the promises of God failed? Was the covenant forsworn for
ever? What, then, of the oath to Abraham? What of the promised seed
and the blessing of the world through him? Had the throne of Judah fallen
to rise no more? But what, then, of the sure mercies of David, and what
of Messiah the Prince and His eternal rule over all nations? Jeremiah
had indeed limited the captivity in Babylon to seventy years, but what
was to follow? Were pagan Babylonian tyrants to lord it for ever over
the earth? Was the worship of the only living and true God to be extinguished?
Were polytheism and idolatry still to swamp mankind with their degrading
floods of superstition? Power and permanence, wealth and wisdom, art
and scienceall seemed to be on their side. But was this state of things
to continue? What were the counsels of God, and the plans of providence?
Thoughtful and godly souls must have longed and prayed for light and
for the consolations of hope.
Most dazzling was the vision of Gentile
grandeur on which the gaze of the Jewish exiles on the banks of the
Euphrates rested in the meantime. Nebuchadnezzar their captor was not
only a most energetic and successful military hero and mighty conqueror,
but he was besides a builder as magnificent as Rameses II. or Menephtah
of Egypt themselves! Scripture gives us on this point only his ones
fatal soliloquy: ‘Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the
house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of
my majesty?’ but the speech was eminently characteristic of the man,
and the boast was in harmony with the facts of the case, while the inscriptions
he has left behind him abundantly explain and amplify the statement.
Babylon had, of course, been built ages
before his day, for it was the city
of the architects of the tower
of Babel and though the confusion of tongues stopped their erection
of the latter, the former continued to exist. It had indeed been a seat
of government from the earliest days, and had experienced a variety
of fortunes. Recently in the time of the Assyrian empire it had been
the provincial capital of Babylonia. But just as Augustus built Romein
the sense that he found it brick and left it marbleso Nebuchadnezzar
built Babylon; he enlarged, adorned, enriched, and strengthened it to
such an extent, that he might well speak of the magnificent city as
his own creation. In a long and detailed account called the ‘standard
inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, ‘ he rehearses his various and splendid
architectural undertakings. His father, after assuming the regal position
and title, had laid the foundations of an imperial city as he fully
admits, but he erected the splendid superstructures,
as Solomon built the temple for which David had prepared. He calls the
city ‘the delight of his eyes, ‘ and exults in having made it ‘glorious,
‘ and especially in the impregnable defences with which he had surrounded
it. According to Herodotus, the walls formed a circuit of fifty-five
miles, enclosing a square measuring fourteen miles each way. Other writers
give different dimensions, but the lowest computation represents it
as ten miles square, and with an area consequently of a hundred square
milesfour times as large as Paris, and twice as big as London. London
reckoned ‘within the bills of mortality.’ The whole of this immense
space was not of course covered with buildings; gardens, orchards, and
palm groves were interspersed among them, and the royal quarter alone
extended over some miles. Outside it were streets cutting each other
at right angles, like those of American citie; most of the houses were
many storeys high; and the city of the poor, where dwelt the countless
laborers of the great king, was at some little distance. The height
of the walls is variously stated by ancient historians as from three
hundred feet down to seventy-five feet; but even this lowest estimate
is enormous when the width of the wall, which was fifty cubits, is remembered.
More than five hundred millions of square feet of solid masonry were
contained in these bulwarks at the lowest computation. The buildings
they enclosedthe temples, palaces, ‘hanging gardens, ‘ and towerswere
gigantic and magnificent; artificial Water in abundance was stored within
the city, one reservoir alone being a mile long. Nebuchadnezzar’s engineering
operations were astonishing, and show how great the amount of knowledge
and skill in those days, and how vast his resources in the ‘naked human
strength’ of forced laborers, who were, of course, mostly captives taken
in war. A tunnel was, it is said, carried under the bed of the Euphrates,
fifteen feet wide and twelve feet to
the spring of the arch, and more than
half a mile in length; and a magnificent drawbridge spanned the great
stream, fully a mile wide at that point. Nor did Nebuchadnezzar confine
his operations to the city itself. He connected the Tigris and Euphrates
by a broad and deep channel called the NAHR MALCHA, or ‘Royal River,
‘ and dug an artificial lake near Sippara, which was a hundred and forty
miles in circumference, and nearly two hundred feet deep. He built quays
and breakwaters along the shores of the Persian Gulf, and founded a
city in the neighbourhood; he restored the temple of Belus, or ‘tower
of tongues, ‘ at Borsippa, eleven or twelve miles from Babylon; and
its remains, the great Birs-i-Nimrud, are now the mightiest of all the
ruins of Mesopotamia, and identified by many with the Tower of Babel,
for it was already a vast and very ancient ruin when Nebuchadnezzar
undertook its restoration. His works are spread over the entire country,
and Sir Henry Rawlinson calculates that nine-tenths of the bricks brought
from Mesopotamia are inscribed with his name. ‘At least a hundred sites
in the tract immediately about Babylon give evidence by bricks bearing
his legend of the marvelous activity and energy of this king.’ ‘Altogether
there is reason to believe that he was one of the most indefatigable
of all the builders that have left their mark upon the world in which
we live. He covered Babylonia with great works, he was the Augustus
of Babylon. He found it a perishing city of unbaked clay, he left it
one of durable burnt brick.’ Canon
Rawlinson: ‘Egypt and Babylon, ‘ chap. vi.
‘We trace the acropolis of the royal
city, where stood the palaces from whose terraces Nebuchadnezzar surveyed
the placid flood of the Euphrates twenty miles away north and as many
south, with the city at his feet, the vast plain and palm groves along
the river banks, the hanging gardens near, and temples and villages
intermingled in the prospect. Closely adjacent were the mansions of
Daniel and his friends, busy in the cares of state administration; and
here, too, the Chaldee magicians and the Babylonian princes with their
craft and superstitions. Here the banquet hall of Belshazzar, and not
far off the dens and the furnaces where suffered the victims of tyranny
and the witnesses to truth. Now, as the stranger treads the ground once
trodden by king and prophet, he needs but little meditation to call
up to view their familiar haunts; to see where once the wharves bordered
the river, and where were the gates that opened to the soldiers of Cyrus,
or erewhile to the captives from Jerusalem. Now a deadly silence broods
over the scene.... All is one undistinguishable heap, and you can only
be assured that on this spot Babel was first built, and the speech of
man was first confounded; that the great captive of Judah found honour
and consolation here, and that heathen scribes penned, even where you
stand, proclamations of honour and worship to the God of Israel, and
of deliverance to His captives.
‘This was the proud and luxurious court
of Babylon, the seat of dominion over the mightiest nation that was
under heaven, at the time when its sovereign pronounced the brief soliloquy
which brought down upon him the judicial insanity described by Daniel;
and yonder, five or six miles south, Hillah, once a populous city, yet
holds its place, and marks the memorable site where the plebeians of
that age dwelt apart, with a broad intervening space to separate them
from the courtiers and their lord.’ Rule; ‘Oriental Records, ‘ p. 220,
The captive Jews were for the most part,
like all his other prisoners of war, forced to work for the Royal Builder
in erecting these splendid structures, and carrying out these vast enterprises.
Crowds of expatriated Egyptians, Phoenicians, Syrians, Jews, Ammonites,
and Moabites were forcibly settled all over Babylonia, and especially
near the capital, from whom forced labor was required, and whose condition
was consequently one of slavery, not unlike that of Israel iii Egypt
1, 000 years previously. The slavery of the Jews had been predicted:
‘Ye shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years:
Even after the restoration, the Jews
in Jerusalem still speak of themselves as slaves. ‘Behold, we are bondsmen
this day, ‘slaves in the land Thou gayest to our fathers; ‘it yieldeth
much increase to the kings whom Thou hast set over us:... they have
dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their
pleasure, and we are in
great distress.’ {#Ne 9:36, 37}
Nebuchadnezzar was a cruel and tyrannical
monarch, as his treatment of enemies, and his conduct to Jehoiakim,
Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah proves. But we must imagine him, nevertheless,
as a highly civilized and intelligent ruler. He is represented both
in Daniel and on the monuments as ‘at the head of a magnificent court,
surrounded by ‘princes, governors, and captains, judges, treasurers,
councillors, and sheriffs, ‘ waited on by eunuchs selected with the
greatest care, well favoured and carefully educated; attended, whenever
he requires it, by a multitude of astrologers and other ‘wise men, who
seek to interpret to him the will of Heaven. He is an absolute monarch,
disposing with a word of the lives and properties of his subjects, even
the highest. All offices are in his gift. He can raise a foreigner to
the second place in the kingdom, and even set him over the priestly
order. His wealth is enormous, for he makes of pure gold an image, or
obelisk, ninety feet high and nine feet broad. He is religious after
a sort, but wavers in. his faith, sometimes acknowledging the God of
the Jews as the only real deity, sometimes relapsing into an idolatrous
worship, and forcing all his subjects to follow his example. Even then,
however, his polytheism is of a kind which admits of a special devotion
to a particular deity, who is called emphatically ‘his god.’ In temper
he is hasty and violent, but not obstinate; his fierce resolves are
taken suddenly, and as suddenly repented of; he is, moreover, capable
of bursts of gratitude and devotion, no less than of accesses of fury;
like most Orientals, he is vainglorious; but he can humble himself before
the chastening hand of the Almighty; in his better moods he shows a
spirit astonishing in one of his country and timea spirit of real piety,
self-condemnation, and self-abasement, which renders him one of the
most remarkable characters in Scripture.’
Rawlinson’s ‘Ancient Monarchies, ‘ vol. iii. pp. 58, 59.
It was towards the close of his long
reign of forty-three years that the remarkable episode of Nebuchadnezzar’s
insanity occurred. It seems to have been an attack of what is termed
lycanthropy, a disease not unknown to physicians. It was not to be expected
that so proud a monarch would leave on record any account of his own
lunacy; but strange to say, there is one passage in his inscription
which seems to allude to the interruption which it occasioned in all
his usual avocations. The monument is broken and defective, but the
extant portion runs thus
‘‘In all my dominions I did not build
a high place of power. The precious treasures of my kingdom I did not
lay up. In Babylon, buildings for myself and the honour of my kingdom
I did not lay out. In the worship of Merodach my lord, the joy of my
heart, in Babylon, the city of his sovereignty and the seat of my empire,
I did not sing his praises, and I did not furnish his altars (with victims),
nor did I clear the canals.’ And there are other negative clauses, not
yet translated. But these few lines suffice to tell of an utter abandonment
of all royal care. No joy in his palace. No erection of a place of strength.
No treasure laid up. An utter cessation of public works in unfinished
Babylon. No observance of religion. Even the canals uncleansed are choked
with mud and waterweed. Only suspension of reason, or a paralysis of
all energy, could account for this.’Rule: ‘Oriental Records, ‘ p. 224.
The king then goes on to describe how
he subsequently resumed his
great building works on his recovery, including the erection of the
‘Ingurbel.’ ‘In a happy month and on an auspicious day its foundations
I laid in the earth, ‘ he says. ‘I completely finished its top... and
made it the high place of my kingdom. A strong fort of brick and mortar
in strength I constructed. Inside the brick fortification another great
fortification of long stones, of the size of great mountains, I made.
Like Shedim I raised up its head. And this building I raised for a wonder;
for the defence of the people I constructed it.’ Rule; ‘Oriental Records, ‘ p. 225.
This, then, was the proud, pagan, cruel,
conquering, busy, building, wealthy, and worldly monarch, into whose
court the providence of God introduced at the crisis of the fall of
Judah four young scions of the Jewish royal family, taken captive among
others in the destruction of Jerusalem. This Babylon was the magnificent
city in the midst of whose glory, iniquity, and idolatry, Daniel and
his fellows grew up wiser than their teachers, prayerful and pious,
pure and holy, steadfast to the God of their fathers, faithful unto
death. Blessed illustration of the truth, that without taking His people
out of the world, God can keep them from the evil!
The character of Daniel is lofty, beautiful,
and gracious, a model character in many respects, and one befitting
a prophet of peculiar privilege. It is not deliberately sketched, but
comes out incidentally; it does not obtrude itself on the attention
as we read his prophecy, the book being mainly autobiographical in its
form, and the prophet having no desire to make himself prominent. This
style of writing, in which it is peculiarly easy to fall unconsciously
into egoism, serves only to exhibit Daniel’s singular self-abnegation
and noble simplicity. We learn that he was an exile, a captive, and
a slave like Joseph, as is indicated by the change of his name. This
change, intended to remind the slave of his servitude, was a custom
of the East and of the period, and continued even to Christian times.
Chrysostom says: ‘ The master having bought a slave, wishing to show
him that he is master, changes his name.’ And again, ‘that the imposition of names is a symbol
of mastership is plain from what we too do’ (St. Chrysostom, Serm. 22,
Op. iii. in). And Daniel was, not only a slave, but a life-long sufferer
at the hands of his captors, one of those in whom was fulfilled the
prediction to Hezekiah, {#Isa 39:7} as appears from the fact stated in chapter i. 3. This makes his noble and faithful character
all the more remarkable, as his class were proverbially addicted to
intrigue, assassination, and conspiracies. Gibbon dwells on their notoriously
pernicious influence on courts and kings.
He was only about fourteen when he came
to Babylon, as we judge from the fact that it was at that age lads were
committed to royal instructors to be trained for the king’s service,
on which they entered at sixteen or seventeen. The three years during
which he was ‘taught the learning and tongue of the Chaldeans’ early
displayed his character manifesting a beautiful boyish simplicity of
faith, and that high-principled self-denial in trifles for conscience
sake, which is the sure earnest of future greatness, and gives the best
promise of a grand career. His faith grew by exercise, till it prevailed
to bring down the interpretation of the king’s dream, and it lasted
through life, leading the prophet in his old age to ‘continue in prayer,
‘ even when the den of lions was the penalty. Bold and uncompromising
where allegiance to God was concerned, Daniel was, however, singularly
respectful and deferential, sympathetic, polite, and patient. Though
never dazzled or deluded by the splendours of Nebuchadnezzar’s court,
he evidently both admired and respected his vast power. It had, indeed,
elements of greatness as the first
which changed the ‘robber-tyrant domination of Assyrian and Babylonian
might into organized rule.’ This respect is consistently shownin his
explanation of the king’s dream of the image, and subsequently in that
of the tree cut down, which predicted Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity. How
reluctant is the prophet to explain this latter vision He sat astonished
for an hour, and his thoughts troubled him, not because he feared the
results to himself of the unwelcome intelligence he had to deliver,
but out of sincere sorrow for and sympathy with the proud monarch before
him. Tenderly and respectfully he at last, when urged, reveals the counsel
of God to the king, accompanying the announcement with words of gentle
yet earnest exhortation, if perchance reformation of life might lead
to a lengthening of tranquillity. The same deferential, respectful tone
marks his words to the weak and unjust Darius: ‘Before thee also, O
king, have I done no hurt.’ And especially it comes out in his interview
with Belshazzar on the eve of the capture of Babylon, when he recalls
the glory of Nebuchadnezzar as he had seen it in his own early days.
‘The Most High God gave thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory,
and honour: and for (or on account of) the majesty that He gave him,
all peoples, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him:
whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he
would he set up; and whom he would he put down.” Chapter v. 18, 19.
Daniel’s career of prosperity in a strange
land never weaned his affections from his fatherland, or lessened his
longing for the restoration of his people and the temple at Jerusalem.
Three times a day he prayed ‘towards Jerusalem, ‘ as we learn incidentally
in his old age. He led a life of earnest, longing prayerfullness for
Jewish interests, while all those seventy years doing faithfully the
king’s business. So perfect was his fidelity that his enemies could
find no fault in him in his official capacity, and the length of his
career makes the statement remarkable.
The stripling of seventeen sat ‘in the king’s gate (‘in the Porte,
‘ as we say, retaining the oriental term), president over all the colleges
of’ the wise men, and of the whole province of Babylon. Daniel continued even unto the fist year of
King Cyrus, are the simple
words; but what a volume of tried faithfullness is unrolled by them!
Amid all the intrigues, indigenous, at all times, in dynasties of oriental
despotism, where intrigue too rolls round so surely and so suddenly
on its author’s head; amid all the envy towards a foreign captive in
high office as a king’s councillor; amid all the trouble incidental
to the insanity of the king, or to the murder of two of his successors,
in that whole critical period for his people Daniel continued.
‘The force of the words is not drawn
out; but, as perseverance is the
one final touchstone of man, so
these scattered notices combine in a grand outline of one, an alien,
a captive, of that misused class who are proverbially the intriguers,
favourites, pests of oriental courts, who revenge on man their ill-treatment
at the hand of man; yet, himself; in uniform integrity, outliving envy,
jealousy, dynasties; surviving in untarnished uncorrupting greatness
the seventy years of the captivity; honored during the forty-three years
of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign; doing the king’s business under the insolent
and sensual boy Belshazzar; owned by the conquering Medo-Persians; the
stay doubtless and human protector of his people during those long years
of exile probably commissioned to write the decree of Cyrus which gave
leave for that long longed-for restoration of his people, whose re-entrance
into their land, like Moses of old, he was not to share. Deeds are more
eloquent than words. Such undeviating integrity, beyond the ordinary
life of man, in a worshipper of the one God, in the most dissolute and
degraded of the merchant-cities of old, first minister in the first
of the world-monarchies, ‘ gives him a place among the highest and holiest
men the world has ever seen. Pusey: ‘Lectures on Daniel the Prophet, ‘ pp.
20, 22.
This was the prophet to whom He who
sees the end from the beginning, was pleased to reveal THE SIXTH SECTION
OF THE PROGRAM OF THE world’s
history.
This section was fuller and more detailed
and definite than any which had preceded it, and extending from its
own date, five to six centuries before Christ, to the end of the present
state of things, the resurrection of the dead and the era of blessedness.
It contains, with some unfulfilled
predictions, a prophecy of the
outline of history for twenty-five centuries, and a comparison of its statements with the well-known course of
events must either attest its supernatural inspiration, or confute it
even more clearly than any of the programs we have as yet considered.
Questions as to the date of the Book
of Daniel have been raised by rationalistic critics to whom real prophecy
in any sense is as incredible as real miracle. The objections raised
are about as baseless as objections well could be; and the counter-theories
as to the date of the prophecy are one and all incredible, some even
ludicrous. The true date, as we will presently show, has been abundantly
confirmed and verified both from external and internal evidence. No
further proof of the authenticity of the accepted date ought to be demandednor
can any be given, until further Babylonian exploration brings to light,
as it probably will do, contemporaneous evidence of the existence and
career of the prophet. But our present argument requires no consideration
of this question. Because, even if we accept the latest date suggested
for the publication of Daniel, it fails to abate the claim of the book
to contain supernatural predictions which were published hundreds and
some of them thousands of years before they were fulfilled, and remains
therefore an unanswerable witness to the prescient wisdom of God, to
the intense reality of His providential government of the world, and
to the Divine inspiration of the Scriptures.
In treating on this subject, we must
presume on an acquaintance with the Book of Daniel on the part of our
readers. As a mere work of very ancient literature it is an intensely
interesting one, while as an important part of the word of God it well
repays study. Its life-like sketches of the state of things in which
the writer lived, and of the characters of those with whom he came in
contact; its graphic accounts of the tragic and wonderful incidents
of his career; its pictures of saintly devotion, heroic self-sacrifice,
calm faith, holy courage, and prevailing prayer, of fidelity under most
ensnaring temptation, and of patriotism that nothing could shake; above
all, its glorious witness to the delivering power and grace of God,
and its lessons of lofty morality, to say nothing of its wonderful anticipations
of the world’s historyall conspire to make it a document of surpassing
attraction. The greatest and wisest philosopher may ponder its pages,
as the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton loved to do; while the simplest
child finds no stories more interesting than those of the den of lions,
the Hebrew children, and the handwriting on the wall; and evangelists
like Moody find no theme more moving than the experiences of the holy
prophet. The book is partly historic and partly prophetic, facts and
foreviews being blended in about equal proportions. The second and the
last six chapters of the book are mainly prophecy, the remainder history,
in which however detached predictions of events which were near at hand
at the time occur.
The prophecies, with the exception of
the one great Messianic prediction, and the few closing ones of the
book, are political in character; they relate to
kings and kingdoms, victories and defeats, treaties and royal marriages,
and the fortunes of different nations; and in this fact we have a fresh
proof of the suitability of the instruments divinely selected for the
work they are destined to do. Moses, trained in college and at court,
and placed in command of armies and expeditions, familiarized subsequently
with the mountains and valleys and resources of the Sinaitic peninsula,
was appointed to lead the Exodus of Israel, and convey the law of God
to the Jewish nation. David, the first great king of Israel, is chosen
to receive revelations as to the kingdom, and as to the Messiah who
should rule to the uttermost ends of the earth. And now Daniel with
his noble Jewish lineage, his high and careful Gentile education and
training, his familiarity with the imperial politics of Nebuchadnezzar
and with the varied civilization of Chaldea, Daniel with his statesmanlike
experience of government, with his personal faith and his pure aspirations,
with his strong national sympathies, yet his wide acquaintance with
the world, Daniel the royal exile, the ‘ruler over the whole province
of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon’,
{#Da
2:48} is made the medium of revelations embracing the political
outline of long centuries of Gentile history, the first and second advents
of Messiah the Prince, the hope of Israel and the salvation of the world.
His training and experience, his character and position, all adapted
him peculiarly for his work, and to be the channel of the wonderful
revelation which was committed to him.
So numerous are the predictions in this
short book that it would require a volume to consider them in detail.
We must take up the main outline only of its program of the future,
and that outline is so clear and so comprehensive that subsequent history
must have either definitely verified or absolutely falsified it. There
can in this case be no possible uncertainty or doubtfullness as to the
correspondence of prophecy and fulfillment. When a long series of consecutive
events, embracing the political fortunes of all the leading nations
of the world for twenty-five centuries, together with the characters
and epochs of the greatest heroes of history, are predicted in succession
as luminously and clearly as if the prophecy were a narrative, it must
be either plainly fulfilled or not so. In this sixth section of the
program there is evidence of greater strength than in any of the. previous
ones of Divine foreknowledge, and of the control of the course of history
by Divine power.
The program has four main divisions,
the last of which is still unfulfilled
I. The twice-repeated prediction of
a succession of FOUR GREAT EMPIRES, followed by the kingdom of God.
II. The full and chronological prophecy
of the FIRST ADVENT OF CHRIST, and the DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM.
III. A long and detailed prediction
of the events connected with the second and third of the four great
monarchies, including especially the wars of the Ptolemies and Seleucidæ,
the Maccabean persecutions and martyrdoms, and the career of Antiochus
Epiphanes.
IV. Predictions relating to events still
futurethe second advent of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, the
restoration of Israel, the cleansing of the sanctuary, and the establishment
of the kingdom of the Son of man.
We shall only have time to consider
the first two of these sections in detail and to glance at the third,
a large portion of which is fulfilled already, though it passes towards
the close into the unfulfilled.
On the first pointthe four empiresthe
following is the revelation which was given first in a dream to Nebuchadnezzar,
and secondly in a vision to Daniel
‘Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a
great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood
before thee; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was
of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs
of brass. His legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote
the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to
pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the
gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer
threshing-floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was
found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain,
and filled the whole earth.’ Dan.
ii. 3135. ‘Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and,
behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And
four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The
first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings
thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made
stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. And
behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself
on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth
of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh. After this
I beheld, and lo - another, like a leopard, which had upon the back
of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion
was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a
fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it
had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the
residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts
that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another
little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked
up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes
like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.
‘I beheld till the thrones were set,
and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and
the hair of his head like the pure wool: his throne was like the fiery
flame, and his wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came
forth from before him: thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten
thousand times ten thousand stood before him: the judgment was set,
and the books were opened. I beheld then because
of the voice of the great words which the horn spake: I beheld even
till the beast was slain, and his body destroyed, and given to the burning
flame. (As concerning the rest of the beasts, they had their dominion
taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and time.) I
saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came
with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they
brought Him near before Him. And there was given Him dominion, and glory,
and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve
Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away,
and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.’{#Da 7:2-14}
Both these prophecies are conveyed by
means of symbols. Is their meaning doubtful, obscure, and uncertain
on this account? By no means. The divinely selected symbols are divinely interpreted, and
hence there is happily no room for doubt as to their precise signification.
The following is Daniel’s interpretation of the king’s vision ‘This
is the dream; and we will tell the interpretation thereof before the
king. Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath
given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever
the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of
the heaven hath He given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over
them all. Thou art this head of gold. And after thee shall arise another
kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which
shall bear rule over all the earth, And the fourth kingdom shall be
strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all
things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces
and bruise. And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’
clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall
be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron
mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron,
and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly
broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall
mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one
to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay. And in the days of
these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never
be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but
it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms,
and it shall stand for ever. Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone
was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces
the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God
hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the
dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.’ Dan.
ii. 3645.
And again the angel’s interpretation
of Daniel’s own vision is as follows
‘These great beasts, which are four,
are four kings (or kingdoms), which shall arise out of the earth. But
the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the
kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever.’
This explanation was comprehensive and
clear, but went no further than the former revelation given fifty years
previously to Nebuchadnezzar, though the vision had suggested much additional
matter. Daniel consequently was not satisfied. He asks for fuller explanation,
especially of certain features of the fourth beast.
‘Then I would know the truth of the
fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful,
whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake
in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet; and of the ten horns
that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom
three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake
very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld,
and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;
until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints
of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom.’
The desired explanation was graciously
givengiven with the brevity, authority, and clearness, which always
characterize angelic communications, in which every word has weighty
meaning.
‘Thus he said, The fourth beast shall
be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms,
and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break
it in pieces. And the ten horns
out of this kingdom are ten kings
that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall
be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall
speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints
of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall
be given into his hand until a time, and times, and the dividing of
time. But the judgment. shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion,
to consume and to destroy it unto the end.
‘And the kingdom and dominion, and the
greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the
people of the saints of the Most High, whose kingdom is an everlasting
kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey Him.’ {#Da 7:17-27}
The Jewish captivity was the occasion on which this pro. gramme was
given, and its main object
was to cheer aud sustain the people of God
through the ages of delay, and the frequent times of tribulation that
were to intervene prior, not to the first advent, but to the Kingdom of Messiah. The two prophecies each announce a succession
of four Gentile empires to fill the interval between Nebuchadnezzar’s
days and that Everlasting Reign; four, and four only,
and then the Kingdom of
the Son of man and of the saints. To Daniel and his fellows, and to
others like him, this prediction must have brought strong consolation.
Pagan wild-beast-like empires, cruel, ravening, destructive, and brutal
in their degradation and ignorance of God, were not, however, fierce
and strong to last for ever. After a brief succession of four,
-of which one was already in existence, they
were to cease and give place to the Kingdom of Messiah. The fall of
Judah had not then abrogated the covenant! The dark and terrible experiences
of the present were only an interlude, the sure mercies of David were
not to fail, though there was room for
the patience of hope. No chronology at all had been attached to the
first prophecy; and though a mystical period was named in the second,
it did not convey any such clear notion as to the duration of the four
empires as would damp the hope that the time might be comparatively
brief. In any case pagan dominion had
its limits, idolatrous tyranny was not to endure for ever,
the Kingdom of the Son of man and of the saints was the glad goal of
human history.
On Nebuchadnezzar, too, the moral effect
of the vision had a strong and wholesome bearing. It was given to him
just after his great empire was established, when thoughts came into
his mind upon his bed, ‘What should come to pass hereafter, ‘ what should
be the future of the dominion he had established, and the dynasty of
which he was the head. It was a salutary lesson for a monarch so rich
and mighty, for a man so proud and vainglorious, and for a worshipper
so devoted to idols, to learn that he owed his dominion to ‘the God
of heaven, ‘ and that it was a very passing one; that he was merely
the head of a great image, that other empires were destined to succeed
the one he had founded, and that all such empires would be destroyed
ere long by a dominion of a very different character, one which would
last for ever. On him, however, the vision seems to have produced but
little effect. He was pleased to have the dream which had so impressed
him, recalled and interpreted; he duly rewarded Daniel, and accorded
also a place in his pantheon to Daniel’s God, to whom the prophet had
carefully attributed the revelation. But that was all. It needed a more
painful and personal lesson to produce in the mind of this heathen despot
the profound conviction which in his old age he so heartily expressed,
of the glory and absolute supremacy of the God of heaven.Chapter iv. 34.
The two prophecies agree as to the fourfold succession; but the second
adds expressly a marked and important feature which the first only intimates,
i.e., that the fourth empire was to exist in two different stages, first
as a single empire, and secondly as an association of ten kingdoms. The ten toes of the image
had hinted this distinction, the angelic interpretation of the ten horns
of the fourth beast emphasizes
it, and seems to attach special importance to this stage of the history
prefigured, for stress is laid on this feature. The fourth and last
empire is interpreted much more fully than all the other three, and
its last tenfold section is dwelt on more fully than its first.
The two predictions indicate unquestionably
one and the same reality; they give one and the same simple definite
outline of the future, they present an identical program, first in bare
outline and then more filled in; they agree in the assertion that the
Gentile age then beginning would witness first four successive universal
empires, and that then the fourth would dissolve into a commonwealth
of ten separate but associated kingdoms.
The question before us is, Has this
program been fulfilled, and how? Did there actually and conspicuously
occur such a succession, not of kingdoms merely, but of empires exercising by right of conquest dominion over many kingdoms empires universal as far as the known world of
their day extendedempires that brooked no rival, but lorded it over
all during their span of supremacy. Can four such be indicated, as having
succeeded each other from Nebuchadnezzar’s day onwards? And was the
last dissolved into a ten-kingdomed commonwealth?
It is notorious that four such universal
empires did arise, and did rule the world in succession. Scripture itself
names them all, as well as
profane history. It speaks of four supreme ruling kingdoms, and of four
only, as having existed from Daniel’s day to its own close. The first,
that of Babylon; to whose king it was said, ‘Thou art this head of gold.’
The second, as the angel Gabriel told the prophet, was, ‘The ram having
the two horns, ‘ ‘the kings of Media
and Persia.’ The third, symbolised by ‘The rough goat, ‘ was ‘The
king of Grecia.’ And in the Gospels we meet with the fourth: ‘There went out
a decree from Caesar Augustus,
that all the world should be taxed.’ ‘If we
let him alone, all men will believe on him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and nation.’
The testimony of profane history is
equally clear.
One of the most invaluable relics of
antiquity which we possess is the Syntaxis or Almagest of Ptolemy, an
astronomer and chronologist who lived at the time of Hadrian’s destruction
of Jerusalem. This accurate writer records in his Canon (in connection
with astronomic data verified by modern observations and absolutely
certain) the names and dates of fifty-five successive sovereigns whose
reigns extended over 907 years, from Nabonassar, the first king of Babylon
(B.C. 747), to Antoninus Pius, the Emperor of Rome, in whose days Ptolemy
wrote. He traces thus the succession of the greatest monarchs in the
world from before Daniel’s time to his own, a period of nine centuries,
and presents in one unbroken line imperial rule as it was administered
by different dynasties of monarchs from various centers of government,
in Asia, Africa, and Europe. This Canon of Ptolemy is an unquestioned
and unquestionable authority both as to history and chronology. He was
not a Jew or a Christian, and had probably no knowledge of the prophecies
of Daniel. How did the world’s history for those nine centuries present
itself to him? He divides it into four
successive parts, and enumerates
twenty BABYLONIAN kings, ten PERSIAN (terminating with Alexander the
Great, eleven in all); twelve GRECIAN, and ends with twelve ROMAN emperors,
thus bringing the list down to his own time, which was that of the early
Roman empire. He could not, of course, go any further, or foretell the
fall of the empire, and the rise of the Gothic kingdoms of the middle
ages. We append his celebrated Canon, a document of supreme importance
to the historian.
THE CANON OF PTOLEMY
PTOLEMY’S CANON OF KINGS OF THE ASSYRIANS AND MEDES.
Each. Sum
1. Nabonassar
14 14
2. Nadius
2 16
3. Khozirus
and Porus 5 21
4. Jougaius
5 26
5. Mardocempadus
12 38
6. Archianus
5 43
7. First
Interregnum 2 45
8. Belibus
3 48
9. Apronadius
6 54
10. Regibelus 1 55
11. Mesesimordachus 4 59
12. Second Interregnum 8 67
13. Asaridinus 13 80
14. Saosduchinus 20 100
15. Khuniladanus 22 122
16. Nabapolassar 21 143
17. Nabokolassar 43 168
18. Ilvaradamus 2 188
19. Nerikassolasar 4 192
20. Nabonadius 17 209
PERSIAN
KINGS
21. Cyrus 9 218
22. Cambyses 8 226
23. Darius I. 36 262
24. Xerxes 21 283
25. Artaxerxes I. 41 324
26. Darius II. 19 343
27. Artaxerxes II. 46 389
28. Ochus 21 410
29. Arogus 2 412
30. Darius III. 4 416
31. Alexander of Macedon 8 424
YEARS
OF THE KINGS AFTER THE DEATH OF KING ALEXANDER
1. Philip, after 7 7
Alexander
the Founder
2. Alexand. AEgus 12 19
KINGS OF THE GREEKS IN