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 EGYPT
3. Ptolemy
Lagus 20 39
4. Ptolemy
Philadelphus 38 77
5. Ptolemy
Euergetes I. 25 102
6. Ptolemy
Philopator 17 119
7. Ptolemy
Epiphanes 24 143
8. Ptolemy
Philometor 35 178
9. Ptolemy
Euergetes II.29 207
10. Ptolemy Soter 36 243
11. Ptolemy Dionysius 29 272
12. Cleopatra 22 294
KINGS
OF THE ROMANS
13. Augustus 43 337
14. Tiberius 22 359
15. Caius 4 363
16. Claudius 14 377
17. Nero 14 391
18. Vespasian 10 401
19. Titus 3 404
20. Domitian 15 419
21. Nerva 1 420
22. Trajan 19 439
23. Adrian 21 460
24. Antoninus 23 483
Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome; this
was the order Ptolemy saw in looking back;
this was the retrospect of
the historian, and it accords -absolutely with the outline seen beforehand
by the prophet. Moreover, as Faber points out:?
"In each case the principle of continuous arrangement is identical."
Where Ptolemy makes the Persian Cyrus
the immediate successor of the Babylonic Nabonadius, or Belshazzar,
without taking into account the preceding kings of Persia or of Media,
there, in the image, the silver joins itself to the gold; where Ptolemy
makes the Grecian Alexander the immediate successor of the Persian Darius,
without taking into account the preceding kings of Macedon, there, in the image, the brass joins itself to the silver; and where Ptolemy
makes the Roman Augustus the immediate successor of the Grecian Cleopatra,
without taking into account the long preceding roll of the consular
Fasti and the primitive Roman monarchy, there,
in the image, the iron joins
itself to the brass. In short, the Canon of Ptolemy may well be deemed
a running comment upon the altitudinal line of the great metallic image.
As the parts of the image melt into each other, forming jointly one
grand succession of supreme imperial domination, so the Canon of Ptolemy
exhibits what may be called a picture of unbroken
imperial rule, though administered by four successive dynasties,
from Nabonassar to Augustus and his successors.?
The same Divine care which raised up
Herodotus and other Greek historians to carry on the records of the
past, from the point to which they had been brought
by the writings of the prophetsthe same providence which raised up Josephus,
at the termination of New Testament history, to record the destruction
of Jerusalemraised up also this Ptolemy, to show the historian?s view of the four great empires of their succession
and chronology. Nor does Ptolemy stand alone in his review of history.
Ancients and moderns all are agreed as to the main outline of the history
of those nations of which prophecy takes cognisance; i.e.,
the nations which formed
the environment of the people of God in the world, and have had to do
with the Jews and the Christian Church. The ancient Jewish Targum of
Jonathan Ben Uzziel, written shortly before the first advent; the writings
of Josephus, who was born during the lifetime of our Lord, the Commentary
of Jerome, and the writings of other Fathers, of the early centuries
of our era, the histories of Sulpiciusall give the same outline. In
fact, ancient history is written on this principle; all the best writers divide their subject
thus, and the experience of school and college teaches us the truth
of Daniel?s outline. Do we not study as four separate branches the histories
of Rome, of Greece, of Persia, and of Babylon?
The latter is often combined with the Assyrian empire which preceded it,
for until recent archeological discovery made it comparatively plain,
-the successions and distinctions of the earliest monarchies of the
East were obscure, and their annals were often combined under the general
title of ?Ancient History.? The four empires of this prophecy start
with the later Babylonian empire of Nebuchadnezzar.
Moreover, these empires, and especially
the two latter, are the sources whence we derive the laws and politics
and the foundation of the literature still prevailing among us, the
arts of sculpture and drawing, and especially that of architecture.
But little is known comparatively of the history of the other nations
of antiquity, and there can be no question that these four had a special relation to the people of God and to the history of redemption.
It was Babylon who led the Jews captive, Medo-Persia who restored them
to their own land; Alexander who in his turn conquered Jerusalem and
held Palestine, in and about which his successors the Ptolemies and
the Seleucidae were always warring; it was under the empire of Rome
the glorious redemption itself was accomplished, and the Christian Church
founded, while Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Jewish people were finally
expelled from Palestine. So general is the consensus of opinion on this
point among all who have any acquaintance with history, that it is needless
to dwell on it. The succession of Normans, Plantagenets, Tudors, and
Stuarts in our own history is not more patent than that of Babylonians,
Persians, Grecians, and Romans in the history of the world since the
days of Daniel, including
in the last, the modern nations of Latin Christendom, the tenfold commonwealth
of European nations which arose out of the ruins of the old Roman empire.
For it must be borne in mind that the
double prophecy not only presents these four empires as successive,
but as filling the whole interval until the second
advent of Christ in glory, and the establishment of the everlasting
kingdom of Messiah on earth. They exclude by implication any other or
different state of things. The last, or Roman rule, continues in its
tenfold state to the end of the existing order; there is nothing in
the image lower than the feet, and there is no ?beast? subsequent to
the fourth. What follows is another age altogether. It is the kingdom
of the Mountain that fills the whole earth the kingdom of the God of
heaven, to which we must revert presently. Meantime, a few details as
to the history which has justified and fulfilled this first leading
feature of Daniel?s program must be given, to recall the familiar facts.
The expressions used in ver. 38 about
THE FIRST BABYLONIAN EMPIRE denote universality, but they must not be
taken in a strict but in a popular sense, and with reference to the
then known world only. As a matter of fact, Nebuchadnezzar?s kingdom
never extended even at all into Europe, nor into Africa beyond the bounds
of Egypt; and even over the Asiatic countries he conquered, his dominion
did not descend into the actual administration of government in them
allit was simply a general control, a superior power, and the exaction
of tribute. As we have seen in other cases, Scripture occasionally uses
unlimited terms in limited senses, and this principle must always be
borne in mind in considering such statements as those in this prophecy.
The principal conquests of Nebuchadnezzar were Syria, Palestine, Moab,
Ammon, Tyre, Lydia, and Egypt. His successors were none of them equal
to himself in administrative ability, and the empire did not last long.
It was coterminous in its duration with the Babylonish captivity, seventy
years: the conquest of Babylonia and capture of Babylon by Cyrus brought
it to an end in accordance with Jeremiah?s predictions.
It should be realized that during the
period of its dominion, and while the exploits of Nebuchadnezzar were
engaging the minds of men, Greece and Romemuch more Spain, France, and
Britainwere merely occupied by nomadic tribes, and not known even by
name to the kingdoms of the East, The birthplace and nursery of mankind
was the sphere in which the first empires were developed. The two rivers
of Paradise, the Tigris and Euphrates, had numerous and populous cities
all along their courses; and Mesopotamia was the busy, rich, and influential
part of the world, when Europe had not yet emerged from obscurity, and
was unknown even by name to the Assyrians and Babylonians. How wonderful
the contrast with the present state of things! What remains of all this
ancient wealth and power? The mounds of Babylon, the ruins of Nineveh,
the shattered temples of Mesopotamia, a few traditional sites and names,
broken tablets and buried inscriptions, and a history contained for
the most part in a few chapters of the word of God. The spirit which
inspired Daniel foresaw the transitory nature of the glory of the then
existing empires; his predictions dwell very briefly on them, mention
them only in a verse or two, and pass on rapidly to the more important
dominion of the fourth empire. An
uninspired writer would have done the reversedwelt on the then absorbing
present at length, and paused lightly over the dim, uncertain future.
But things are not what they seem. The glory of Babylon was the passing
incident, the mighty king would soon be forgotten. The true greatness
is moral, not material. The fame of Daniel remains; his writings are
pondered and studied to this day; the record of the faith and fortitude
of the Hebrew children stimulates and influences mankind even now; while
the doings of -Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, except in as far as their
histories were a fulfillment of prophecy, are simply matters of literary
curiosity.
THE SECOND, OR MEDO-PERSIAN, EMPIRE,
represented by the breast and arms of silver, and by the bear which
raised itself up on one side, is in the subsequent vision (chap. viii.)
represented as a ram having two horns, interpreted as ?the kings of
Media and Persia? (ver. 20). History shows us that Media was originally
the stronger power of the two, but that it yielded to the ascendant
of Persia in the days of the talented and enterprising young Cyrus.
The way in which he rapidly obtained empire is well described by Herodotus,
recalling the words of this prediction that ?no beasts could stand before
him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand, but he
did according to his will and became great? (ver. 4). He says of his
prosperity in war: ?Wherever Cyrus turned himself to march, it was impossible
for that nation to escape.? Xenophon also describes in detail his conquests
?But Cyrus, receiving the tribes of
Asia in a similar state, under their own laws, and starting with a small
army of Persians, ruled the Medes and the Hyrcanians by their own consent;
and subverted the Syrians, Assyrians, Arabians, Cappadocians, both the
Phrygias, the Lydians, Carians, Phenicians, Babylonians; and ruled also
over the Bactrians, and Indians, and Cilicians in like manner over the
Sacae, and Paphlagonians, and Mariandyni, and many other tribes, whose
very names one can scarcely mention. And he ruled also over the Greeks
in Asia, having come to the sea coast, and over the Cyprians and Egyptians.
He reigned, therefore, over these nations, which were neither of the
same language with himself nor with each other; and yet he was able
to range over so great a territory by the fear he inspired, so that
he struck all with dread, and none assailed him; and was able to infuse
such a desire into the minds of all men to obtain his favour, that they
consented continually to be ruled by his judgment. And he subverted
so many tribes as it is troublesome to recount, in whatever direction
we start from the royal palace, to the east and west, north and south.?
THE THIRD, OR GRECIAN, EMPIRE is represented
in the image by ?the belly and thighs of brass, ? and in Daniel?s own
vision by ?a leopard with four wings of a fowl and four heads.? Both
are remarkably suitable emblems for the Grecian empire. Brass is frequently
used as a symbol of eloquence, a feature in which Greece surpassed all
other nations, and one which was applied by the Greeks to themselves,
Theodoret writes: ?The prophet has very fitly compared Alexander to
the leopard, for swiftness, speed, and variableness.? The empire of
Greece in another part of the prophecy is compared also to a he-goat
with a notable horn on his head, on the breaking of which four other
horns appear. Rapidity of conquest, irresistible power, and geographical
origin are all expressed in the words: ?A he-goat came from the west
on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground. He ran unto
the ram in the fury of his power, smote him and brake his two horns.
There was no power in the ram to stand before him; he cast him down
to the ground and stamped upon him, and there was none that could deliver
the ram out of his hand. Therefore the he-goat waxed very great; and
when he was strong, the great horn was broken.? The history could not
be more exactly symbolised. Its period is that following the close of
Scripture history. Thucydides tells the story and traces the struggle
between the he-goat and the ram. The rapidity of Alexander?s conquests
in Asia was marvelous; he burst like a torrent on the expiring Persian
empire, and all opposition was useless. The gigantic armies collected
to oppose him melted like snow in the sunshine. The battles of Granicus
B.C. 334, Issus in the following year, and Arbela in B.C. 331, settled
the fate of the Persian empire, and established the wide dominion of
the Greeks.
The entire and wonderful career of Alexander
the Great was comprised in twelve brief years and seven months; he was
only thirty when he drank. himself to death. From the straits of Gibraltar
to the banks of the Indus, ambassadors came to congratulate him on his
glory and to seek his friendship. He had himself traversed Asia victoriously
from the Hellespont to India, stamped upon the Persian ram destroyed
its power, and none could deliver out of his hand. But when the world
lay at his feet, and its suppliant embassies came seeking his favour,
? when the he-goat was strong, the great horn was broken.?
The connection of this great conqueror
with the Jewish people is peculiarly interesting. The story is related
by Josephus, and there seems no ground for questioning its truth. The
Jews had taken an oath of allegiance to Darius, and did not feel at
liberty to provision the troops of Alexander engaged in the siege of
Tyre as he had ordered them to do. He was enraged, but could not at
once punish them. As soon as he was at liberty, he started on this errand,
however; and the fate of Jerusalem would have been that of Tyre but
for a remarkable providential deliverance.
Jaddua, the high priest, warned of God
in a dream, opened the gates and decorated the city, and dressed in
his official robes, and with the priests and people dressed in white
following him, he went forth to meet Alexander. On seeing them, the
conqueror?s anger was at once abated, and he told Parmenio, his general,
that while still in Macedonia he had in a dream seen this person Jaddua,
who had promised him victory. He entered Jerusalem in company with the
priest, who then showed him this very prophecy of Daniel (then between
two and three hundred years old), thereby greatly encouraging his hope
of overthrowing the Persian empire. ?When the Book of Daniel was shown him wherein
Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of
the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended.?(Antiq.
Bk. XI. viii.5.)
Alexander not only did no harm to the
Jews and their city and temple, but granted them immunities and gave
them gifts.
It is interesting to observe that in
the two visions we are specially considering, the whole history of this
heroic period from Cyrus to Alexander, a period more celebrated probably
than any other in history, is again passed over in a few verses. Profane
historians and poets have dwelt on the glorious epoch which included
the conquests of Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, the wars of Greece, the
expedition of Xerxes, the battles of Marathon, Thermopyke, and Salamis,
the names of Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles,
the struggles of Athens and Sparta, of Sparta and Thebes, the eloquence
of Demosthenes, and the victories of Alexander. Arts and arms, taste
and genius, conspire to make the era memorable for ever in the eyes
of men. And yet how briefly does the Spirit of God dismiss the whole
narrative. Alexander?s empire was divided on his death among his generals,
and formed the four kingdoms of Asia Minor, Syria, Greece, and Egypt.
The mutual relations of these kingdoms are given in a later prophecy
(chaps. x. and xi.), which we must not here attempt to consider fully.
The prediction of the fourfold division was fulfilled, when Ptolemy
Seleucus, Lysimachus, and Cassander shared Alexander?s dominions between
them, and assumed the title of kings.
THE FOURTH, or iron, kingdom symbolised
the great EMPIRE OF ROME, which was to exist in two different stages:
the first united with a strength like that of iron, which would devour
the whole earth and break it in pieces; the second divided into ten,
the iron sharing the weakness of clay. The first or unbroken stage covers
a period of about six centuries, from the conquests of Scipio, Sylla,
and Pompey to the fall of the last emperor of Rome, Romulus Augustulus,
AD. .476. Jerome at the beginning of the fifth century clearly perceived,
not only the fulfillment of the first part of the prediction, but the
commencement of the second, which was observable even in his day, though
abundantly more clear afterwards. He says ?
?But the fourth kingdom, which clearly
relates to the Romans, is iron, which breaks in pieces and subdues all
things. But its feet and toes are in part iron and in part clay; which
is proved very plainly at this time (A.D. 400). For as in the beginning
nothing was harder and stronger than the Roman empire, so in the end
of things nothing is weaker.?
Marvelous was the announcement in the
days when it was given, before even Greece had risen into notice, and
when Italy was the home of only a few feeble and constantly warring
tribes, that an empire born among-those barbarians was to extend its
sway over the East, and be endued with a firmness of which oriental
monarchs knew nothing. So little known was Rome even two hundred years
later that Herodotus, in describing the earth with all its towns and
cities, rivers and mountains, etc., never once mentions either the city
of Rome or the Tiber on which it stands. For five centuries from its
foundation there was very little indication that the Roman power would
ever become a great one. Even when the empire of Alexander was falling
into decay, Rome was nearly brought to destruction by the Punic wars;
and not till just before the end of the Macedonian monarchy were the
Romans sufficiently free from domestic enemies to enter on a career
of conquest. But then indeed it fulfilled to the letter the remarkable
predictions in the prophecy, carried its victorious arms throughout
the world by conquest, and by its singular power of governing subdued
all nations and attained dimensions that had never before been equalled,
and a degree of power which has never been paralleled since. When the
victories of Trajan carried the power of Rome to its height, all nations
were merely vassals to the mistress of the world. Gibbon?s description
of the might and majesty of the Roman empire should be read in the light
of the prophecy in order to a real appreciation of the wonderful fulfillment
of the latter. After reviewing in detail the different countries subjected
to its sway, he says
?This long enumeration of provinces,
whose broken fragments have formed so many powerful kingdoms, might
almost induce us to forgive the vanity or ignorance of the ancients.
Dazzled with the extensive sway, the irresistible strength, and the
real or affected moderation of the emperors, they permitted themselves
to despise, and sometimes to forget, the outlying countries which had
been left in the enjoyment of a barbarous independence; and they gradually
usurped the licence of confounding the Roman monarchy with the globe
of the earth. .. .
That empire was above two thousand miles in breadth, from the wall of
Antoninus and the northern limits of Dacia to Mount Atlas, and the Tropic
of Cancer. It extended, in length, more than three thousand miles from
the Western Ocean to the Euphrates. It was supposed to contain above
sixteen hundred thousand square miles, for the most part of fertile
and well-cultivated land. The arms of the republic, sometimes vanquished
in battle, always victorious in war, advanced with rapid steps to the
Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean; and the images of gold,
or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations and their
kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome..
?The empire of the Romans filled the
world; and when that empire fell into the hands of a single person,
the world became a safe and dreary prison for his enemies. The slave
of imperial despotism, whether condemned to drag his gilded chain in
Rome and the senate, or to wear out a life of exile on the barren rock
of Seriphus, or the frozen banks of the Danube, expected his fate in
silent despair. To resist was fatal, and it was impossible to fly. On
every side he was encompassed with a vast extent of sea and land, which
he could never hope to traverse without being discovered, seized, and
restored to his irritated master. Beyond the frontiers his anxious view
could discover nothing except the ocean, inhospitable deserts, and hostile
tribes of barbarians of fierce manners and unknown language, or dependent
kings who would gladly purchase the Emperor?s protection by the sacrifice
of an obnoxious fugitive.?Gibbon:
?Decline, ? chaps. i. and 3: #Da
7:26, 27
We have seen that Daniel?s fourfold
image and the vision of the four beasts both represent the Roman power
as continuing in existence up to the time of the second advent, and
as being destroyed and succeeded only
by it. They represent the fourth, or Roman empire, as rising on
the fall of the Grecian, and as occupying the
whole interval between that date and the close of the times of the
Gentiles. There is no break or gap in the
image, and the fourth beast it is distinctly said continues till the establishment of the kingdom of the Son of man and of the
saints.{#Da 7:26, 27}
Now the old empire of Rome ended in
the fifth century; has any other form of power exercised from Rome arisen
and is it now in existence, and has this revived power of Rome been
exercised over a commonwealth of ten kingdoms? This is evidently an
exceedingly interesting and most important part of our inquiry into
the fulfillment of this Daniel program, because if history has realized
this part of the foreview as exactly as the former portion, the fulfillment
must embrace our own times, since
the tenfold condition of the Roman world is to continue to the end of
the age. Now it is one thing to read of a fulfillment in the past, and
another to see it with our own eyes in the present. The Canon of Ptolemy
and Gibbon?s history of the Decline and Fall are doubtless good and
trustworthy evidence; but, after all, ?seeing is believing, ? and there
is nothing like experience for producing conviction. Present phenomena
must needs impress the mind more than past; hence the importance of
the inquiry, Was the Roman
world divided into ten kingdoms on the fall of the empire? Has this
division continued from that day
to this clearly traceable? Is it evident even now? What were the
ten kingdoms at first? What have they been ever since? and what are
they at present? The answer to these inquiries is profoundly interesting,
because among other reasons it must needs afford an indication of our
present position in the stream of time with regard to the second advent.
That indication may be to some extent indefinite, but it must be there,
and it is the clearest information on the all-important subject which
is attainable. The program presents five episodes the four empires and
the tenfold commonwealth and then follows the second advent. The four
empires are past. When we have examined history on the subject of the
tenfold commonwealth, we shall see how much of that is also past, and
be able to judge to some extent how much remains; and this, though not
the main object of our investigation, is a deeply interesting incidental
result. To trace the fulfillment of the prophecy as an evidence of the
inspiration of Scripture is our object; but who can fail to welcome
any light on the subject of our Lord?s return?
The first question that arises for consideration
is, In what sphere are we
to look for the ten kingdoms? Shall we seek for them in the whole extent
of the Roman empire at the time of its widest dominion? or in that part
of its territory which was properly Roman as distinguished from the
countries belonging to previous empires subjugated by Rome?
A very little consideration will show
that prophecy regards the four empires as being as distinct in territory as in time; as distinct in geographical boundaries as in chronological
limits. They rise in a definite sequence; the supreme dominion of one
does not in point of time
overlap the supreme dominion of the following one, nor is the territory
of a former ?beast? or empire ever regarded as belonging to a later
one, though it may have been actually conquered. Each has its own proper
theatre or body, and the bodies continue to exist after the dominion
is taken away. This is distinctly stated, both in connection with the
fourfold image and with the four beasts, In the first case the stone
falls upon the clay and iron feet only, but the iron legs, the brazen
body, the silver breast, and the golden head, are all by it ?broken
to pieces together.? Now the
empires represented by these
have long since passed away. They cannot therefore be ?broken to pieces?
by the second advent. But the territory
once occupied by them is still existing and still populous, and exposed
to the judgments of the day of Christ just as much as Rome itself.
Similarly we read that the three earlier
beasts did not cease to exist
when the fourth arose. ?Their dominion
was taken away, yet their lives
were prolonged for a season and time.? {#Da 7:12} That is to say, the first
three empires are regarded as co-existing with
the fourth after their dominion
has ended. This proves that they are regarded as distinct in place as well as in time. They continue to be recognized
as territorial divisions of the earth after the disappearance of their
political supremacy. Now the eastern empire of Rome which it acquired
by conquest occupied precisely the same territory as the Grecian empire
had done, and its conquests
in Asia occupied the territories which originally formed the Babylonian
and Medo-Persian empires. None of this territory belongs to ?the legs
of iron.? It constitutes the golden, silver, and brazen portions of
the image. It cannot be regarded as forming any part of the empire proper
and peculiar to Rome.
The ten horns or kingdoms of the fourth
empire must none of them be sought in the realms of the third, second,
or first, but exclusively in the
realm of the fourth, or
in the territory PECULIAR to ROME, and which had ne&er formed part
either of the Grecian, Medo-Persian, or Babylonian empires. Sir Isaac
Newton says on this point: ?Seeing the body of the third beast is confined
to the nations on this side the Euphrates, and the body of the fourth
beast is confined to the nations on this side of Greece, we are to look for all the four heads of the
third beast among the nations on this side the Euphrates, and for all
the eleven horns of the fourth beast among the nations on this side
of Greece. Therefore we do not reckon the Greek empire seated at Constantinople
among the horns of the fourth beast, because it belonged
to the body of the third.?
Our question then becomes more definite
and takes this form was the territory
peculiar to Rome, the territory
which is sometimes spoken of as the Western Empire, and of which Rome
itself was the capital, divided
on the fall of the old empire into ten kingdoms? It is notorious that such was the case. From the rise of the Roman
empire to its fall in the fifth century it was one and undivided; since
its decline and fall as an empire,
the territory peculiar to Rome has been broken
up into many independent sovereignties, bound together into the one family of Latin Christendom by a common submission
to the popes of Rome, The number of distinct kingdoms has always been about ten at times
exactly ten, sinking at intervals to eight or nine, rising occasionally
to twelve or thirteen, but averaging on the whole ten. The prophecy
distinctly predicted that the number would not be constantly or invariably
ten. It represents a little horn springing up among the ten, then there
must have been eleven. It represents that three of the horns were plucked
up before this little horn, then there could have been for a time eight
only. Fresh horns must however have taken the place of the uprooted
ones, for at the close of the beast?s history the number is represented
as still ten.
Hence the number of the kingdoms was
to be generally, but not rigidly or unvaryingly, ten; there would as
a rule throughout the whole period be ten kingdoms, occupying the sphere
of the western empire of Rome; but the number would be elastic, sometimes
less, sometimes more, but always about
ten, so that no other number
of horns would as correctly represent the facts of the case. Alexander?s
empire was represented by one notable horn, the dynasties that arose
amidst its broken fragments by
four horns; but Rome was to break up into a larger number, and ten
different kingdoms would appear upon the scene, and occupy even till
the end, the territory belonging to the fourth beast, still having Rome
as in some sort their center and bond of union, for they were to be
horns of the Roman beast.
Such are the symbols, and they are the
more remarkable because they foretell a state of things which had never
existed in the world at the time when the prophecy was given, and which
never did exist till a thousand years afterwards. Babylon Persia, Greece,
and Rome in its first phase, all sought and obtained universal
dominion, and could brook no rival power. The prophecy foretold that
in the distant future another state of things should arise, and that
co-existing side by side, a family of ten kingdoms should divide the
heritage of Rome, and while no longer in subjection to it as provinces,
should yet, as independent kingdoms, continue to have a common connection
with Rome. The fact that the portion of the prophecy devoted
to the detailed history of these horns is two or three times as long
as that devoted to the history of the undivided empire, suggests that
their actual history might probably extend over a much longer period
than that of the undivided empire; and there is no question that they
continue in existence until the coming of Christ, and the establishment
of His millennial kingdom.
They rise on the fall of the empire, for there is no gap in the image, and no break in the continuity
of the history of the fourth beast, no indication whatever that any
interval is to exist between the united and the dismembered conditions
of the Roman world, The iron legs run right
on to the ten toes, and
the story of the beast is continued without a break in the story of
the ten horns.
What now have been the facts of history?
Was the Roman empire on its
fall divided into a number of separate kingdoms, and has it continued
to be so ever since? Has the number of such kingdoms averaged ten? Have
they retained a common connection with Rome? And how many such kingdoms
now occupy the scene?
The ten kingdoms must first of course
be sought among the Gothic dynasties of the fifth and sixth centuries
by which the empire of the West was overthrown; and then at intervals
ever since. Should we find that Europe has for ages been united under
one monarch, or should we on the other hand find that it has been divided
as a rule into thirty or forty kingdoms, we shall be driven to conclude
that the prophecy has failed of fulfillment. But should we on the contrary
find that amid incessant changes the number of the kingdoms of the European
commonwealth has, as a rule, averaged ten, we must surely admit that
this portion of the prophecy is as much fulfilled as the earlier portion
of the four undivided empires. What further evidence of. fulfillment
can be desired, than that the thing predicted has come to pass?
As it would be impossible to note the
exact number of kingdoms for each year of the thirteen or fourteen centuries
which have since elapsed, we must content ourselves with taking a census
each century.
The historian Machiavel, without the slightest reference to this prophecy,
gives the following list
of the nations which occupied the territory of the Western Empire at the time of the fall of Romulus Augustulus,
the last emperor of Rome.
The Lombards, the Franks, the Burgundians,
the Ostrogoths, the Visigoths, the Vandals, the Heruli, the Sueves,
the Huns, and the Saxons; ten
in all.
After a time the Huns disappeared, but
other powers arose and obtained a home in the domains of old Rome. The
changes were incessant, as horde after horde of barbarian invaders pressed
in on every side to share the spoils; but still the number of established
kingdoms was again and again ten. It never rose to twenty or thirty,
it never fell to two or three. Charlemagne in his day reduced it for
a time, and attempted, like Napoleon in a later age, to restore unity;
both utterly failed, and after a very few years the normal ten kingdoms
reappeared.
The following list gives the contemporary
kingdoms existing in Western Europe at intervals of a hundred years
apart, from the 9th to the 19th centuries. It is extracted from a much
longer series in ?The Four Prophetic Empires, ? by the Rev. T. R. Birks,
and is introduced by the remark that a measure of uncertainty must exist
as to whether some of the States should be included, as ?it is sometimes
doubtful whether a kingdom can claim an independent sovereignty on account
of the complex and varying nature of its political relations.? But as
exactly as it can be estimated from the records of history, the following
lists present the members of the family of kingdoms as they appeared
from century to century. Where a note of interrogation follows a name,
it implies that there are some elements of doubt as to whether it should
be included or not.
A.D. 86o.
Italy, Provence, Lorraine, East France,
West France, Exarchate, Venice, Navarre, England, Scotland. Total, 10.
A.D. 950.
Germany, Burgundy, Lombardy, Exarchate,
Venice, France, England, Scotland, Navarre, Leon. Total, so.
AD. 1050.
Germany, Exarchate, Venice, Norman Italy,
France, England, Scotland, Arragon, Castile, Normandy (?), Hungary (?). Total, 9 to 11.
A.D. 1150.
Germany, Naples, Venice, France, England,
Scotland, Arragon, Castile, Portugal, Hungary, Lombardy (?). Total,
10, or perhaps 11.
A.D. 5250.
Germany and Naples, Venice, Lombardy,
France, England, Scotland, Arragon, Castile, Portugal, Hungary. Total,
so.
A.D. 5350.
Germany, Naples, Venice, Switzerland
(?), Milan (?), Tuscany (?), France, England and Scotland, Arragon,
Castile, Portugal, Hungary. Total, 9 to 12.
AD. 5453.
Austria, Naples, Venice, France, England,
Scotland, Arragon, Castile, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland (?), Savoy
(?), Milan (?), Tuscany (?). Total, is to 14.
A.D. 1552.
Austria, Venice, France, England, Scotland,
Spain, Naples, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland (?), Lombardy (?). Total,
9 to 11.
A.D. 1648.
Austria, Venice, France, Britain (?),
Spain and Naples, Portugal, Hungary, Switzerland (?), Savoy, Tuscany,
Holland. Total, 8 to 10.
A.D. 1750.
Austria and Hungary, France, Savoy and
Sardinia, Venice, Tuscany
Spain, Portugal, Switzerland (?), Naples
(?), Britain (?), Holland.
Total, 8 to Is.
A.D. 1816.
Austria, Bavaria, Wurtemburg (?), Naples,
Tuscany, Sardinia, Lombardy (?), France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Britain
(?), Switzerland (?). Total, 9 to 13.
An examination of this list reveals
the surprising fact, which would only become more apparent were the
list lengthened ten times, so as to present a census of each decade instead of each century, that, amidst unceasing and almost
countless fluctuations, the kingdoms of modern Europe have from their
birth to the present day averaged
ten in number. They have never since the break-up of old Rome been united
into one single empire; they have never formed one
whole even like the United States. No scheme of proud ambition seeking
to reunite the broken fragments has ever succeeded; when such have arisen,
they have been invariably dashed to pieces. Witness the legions of Napoleon
buried beneath the snows of Russia, the armadas of Spain wrecked by
Atlantic storms, and all the futile royal marriage arrangements by which
monarchs vainly sought to create a revived empire.
In spite of all human effort, in defiance of every attempt at reunion,
the European commonwealth for thirteen or fourteen centuries has numbered on an average ten
kingdoms.
And the division is as apparent now
as ever! Plainly and palpably inscribed on the map of Europe this day,
it confronts the sceptic with its silent but conclusive testimony to
the fulfillment of this great prophecy. Who can alter or add to this
tenfold list of the kingdoms now occupying the sphere of old Rome?
ITALY, AUSTRIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE,
GERMANY, ENGLAND, HOLLAND, BELGIUM, SPAIN, and PORTUGAL.
Ten, and no more; ten, and no less!
The Franco-Prussian war and the unification of Italy have once more
developed distinctly the normal number of the kingdoms of Europe.
Nor is this all. The most marked feature
of this prophecy is neither the four beasts nor the ten horns of the
fourth, but the little horn with eyes and mouth that came up among them;
it is neither the four empires nor the ten kingdoms, but the one supremely
influential and singularly wicked dynasty that rises with, and rules
over, the latter; exalts itself; blasphemes God, wears out His saints,
and ultimately brings down Divine judgment on the beast and all his
horns, itself included; i.e., on apostate Latin Christendom, and its centerROME.
What was this little horn? To answer
this question we ask another. What was the central ruling power in the
European commonwealth of nations throughout the thousand years of the
dark ages from the sixth to the sixteenth centuries? It was a power
that ruled from Rome as did the Caesars. It was the succession of Roman
pontiffs, the line of tiara-crowned monarchs who for more than twelve
centuries governed papal Rome; who ranked as temporal sovereigns as
well as high priests in the Church, and who united under their sway
the separate kingdoms of Latin Christendom. Every feature of the prophecy
was fulfilled in their dynasty, and in no other. Those features are
eight in number. The prophecy lays its finger on the place where we
are to find the great enemyRome; on the point of time in the course
of history at which we may expect to see him rise the fall of the empire
and the division of the Roman territory into a commonwealth of kingdoms;
it specifies the nature of the powerpolitico-ecclesiastical, a horn,
and yet an overseer or bishop; its character blasphemously self-exalting,
lawless and persecuting; it measures its durationa time, and times,
and the dividing of time (or 1, 260 years); and it specifies its doomto
have its dominion gradually consumed and taken away, and then be suddenly
destroyed for ever by the glorious epiphany of Christ and the introduction
of the kingdom of God on earth.
The proof that the Papacy is the power
intended is strictly cumulative. If it answered to one of these indications,
there would be a slight presumption against it; if to several, a strong
one; if to the majority, an overwhelming one; while if it answer to
all, then the proof that it is the power intended becomes irresistible.
There is not a single clause in the prophecy that cannot be proved to
fit the Roman Papacy exactly, except the last, which is not yet fulfilled.
Rome, which in her pagan phase defiled
and destroyed the literal temple of God at Jerusalem, in her papal days
defiled and destroyed the anti-typical spiritual temple of Godthe Christian
Church. Was it not worthy of God to warn that church beforehand of the
coming of this dreadful anti-Christian power, and to cheer her in all
the sufferings she would have to endure from its tyranny by a knowledge
of the issue of the great and terrible drama? Was it not right that
the Roman power, pagan and papal, should occupy as paramount a place
on the page of Scripture as it has actually done on the page of history?
The eighteen Christian centuries lay open before the eye of the omniscient
God, and no figure stood out so prominently in all their long course
as that of the great Antichrist. The pen of inspiration sketched him
in a few bold, masterly strokes; and there is no mistaking the portrait.
The prophecy identifies the greatest power of evil that has ever arisen
in the earth and unmasks the most treacherous and deceptive foe which
the Church has ever had to meet; for if the ten horns be the kingdoms
of modern Europe, there can be no question as to what the little horn
is. Throughout Western Europe and throughout the dark ages all men reverenced,
served, and obeyed the popes of Rome, whose dominion was exceeding evil,
and whose pretension was the blasphemous one to be quasi
Densas God on earth. The idolatry of ancient Babylon was revived
under this modern Babylon in another form, and the judgment that descended
on the former will ere long descend on the latter according to this
prophecy. We must, however, refer to another work for the full exposition
of the subject, as space forbids our going further into it here.? ?Romanism
and the Reformation from the Standpoint of Prophecy, ? also ?The Approaching
End of the Age, ? part 3.
We have now reviewed the predictions
of the course of Gentile empire in the earth and the leading events
of the last twenty-five centuries. Is there any harmony between the
two? The reply must needs be, never did key fit a complicated lock better
than Daniel?s foreview fits this extended series of facts We have not
paused to point out the precise agreement which actually exists between
the minor items of the program and the corresponding parts of the history,
as in this brief sketch space compels us to confine ourselves to the
broad outlines only. This we regret, for we are painfully conscious
that such an outline must needs fail to exhibit the full correspondence
between the prophecy and its fulfillment. No skeleton can convey the
life-like appearance of the man. Vague and slight must be the impression
produced by such brief reminders of long-lasting, important, and influential
historical episodes. We are so apt to live in our own days and the days
of our immediate ancestors, and to lose sight of the far-reaching family
traditions of our race; yet we are the outcome of all that long past,
and when we go into its records sufficiently to realize what it was,
we are impressed with its absolute similarity to the present in all
essential features. The men and women of Egypt and Assyria were precisely
what the men- and women of Europe in this nineteenth century are. We
see them in all their domestic, social, and public life, in their fashions
and foibles, their virtues and vices, their work and their worship,
their ambitions, hopes and fears, and we realize that conquest and captivity,
barbarian inundations, bloody persecutions, political struggles, religious
revivals, and similar changes, meant to them precisely what they would
mean to us. The revolutions of history, the changes of dynasty, the
ascendancy of one race over anotherthese seem little matters when we
merely read of them, but what would they be if we experienced them?
Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Gothic invasions, the papal tyranny
and the dark ages, the Reformation, the French Revolutionare these things
mere words to us, or do we conceive the realities they recall? Who would
imagine from the outlines of the four continents in a student?s blank
map the variety, beauty, wealth, and glory of the world? Every square
inch of the map means a thousand square miles perhaps of land and water,
mountain and valley, city and town and village; it means forests, lakes,
caverns and mines, rocks bearing gold and silver, cornfields and flowers,
pastures and gardens, countless living creatures, and millions of mankind,
each man and woman of those millions being as precious as we ourselves
are in the sight of God, and equally redeemed by the death of Christ.
So as to history. These four Gentile empires mean a hundred generations
of mankind, each one of which numbered millions of individuals. These
historical changes so little to us were to them all important. Marvelous
is the
variety and magnitude of the events
condensed into the words Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, with its second
still extant stage, Latin Christendom. And God foresaw each and all.
He marked the ravages of these wild beasts; He noted how they would
destroy wonderfully in the earth; He anticipated their oppressions and
persecutions of His people; every page of the long and terrible story
lay naked and open to His eye. His wisdom saw fit to suffer so long
the reign of monsters, but His purpose to destroy this evil state of
things and to follow it by one as blessed as this has been the reverse,
is revealed for the comfort of His people and the Vindication of His
providence. The four empires are but the brief and passing introduction
to the fifth, to the eternal kingdom of the Son of man and of the saints.
It is most important to observe that
the introduction of Christianity into the world as a religion at the time of the first advent of Christ is not the
fulfillment of this last blessed prophecy, though it is often alleged
as such to the great weakening of the prediction, as if it taught that
human history was to wind up with Christianity as we now have it become
universal! This is not what Daniel?s program presents as the outline
of the future, but very far from it. The symbol of the falling stone
cannot predict this reality; first because of its own intrinsic nature,
and secondly because of the period at which it is placed in the prediction.
As to the first point, its nature. The sudden descent of a stone
massive enough to crush a great image to powder and annihilate it utterly
would be a most inappropriate symbol, and one wholly inapplicable to
represent the slow and gradual spread of the healing, having faith of
Christ. He came at His first advent, not as a mighty victor overthrowing
the hosts of evil, but as a helpless babe, a suffering witness to the
truth, and a dying Savior of mankind; and He sent forth His disciples
as sheep amid wolves. It is an insult to Divine intelligence to suppose
that such a symbol would have
been selected to foreshadow such an event. A sudden and awful catastrophe making an end at once
and for ever of all monarchiesthe symbol of what happened to the world,
when ?Jesus of Nazareth went about doing good, and healing all that
were oppressed of the devil, ? and saying, ?I came not to judge the
world, but to save it?? Impossible. Besides, after the catastrophe the
stone becomes a mountain and fills the whole earth, taking
the place of the image. This did not happen after the first advent.
A spiritual religion spread among men, it is true, but not by force. Christianity destroyed no kingdoms or nations. Force was arrayed
against it. The Roman empire sought to destroy the faith of Christ.
The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church, but neither Christ
nor His disciples tried to overthrow the Roman empire. The fall of the
stone cannot possibly represent something thus wholly distinct and even
contrasted in character. Its gradual cutting out without hands, while
the image still stood in all its imposing majesty, its silent and mysterious
formation by an unseen power in preparation for its subsequent descent,
may indeed represent the present spiritual process of the separation
of the Church of Christ out of the world, and its spiritual union with
Him through the invisible power of the Holy Ghost. But the fall of the stone must represent something
very different, even the coming of the Lord from heaven hereafter with
ten thousand of His saints in glory and judgment. The first advent and
the introduction of Christianity into the world did
not do to Gentile empires what the fall of the stone did to the image.
The thing prefigured is a sudden crushing blow of final judgment. Nothing
of the kind has ever happened under the influence of Christianity. Its
operation and its results have been of another kind altogether. Mohammedanism
overthrew kingdoms in abundance, though it never filled the earth, but
Christianity never overthrew one. The empire of the Caesars, under which
it was born, stood firm for centuries after its birth, and Gentile empire
still exists as much as in Daniel?s day.
And, secondly, the first advent did
not occur at the time predicted
in these prophecies. The stone falls on the clay-iron feet of the image.
The kingdom of the mountain, the kingdom of the God of heaven, is in
both visions set up at the end of the last or tenfold
state of the fourth monarchy, and is in itself a fifth, more universal
and more enduring than they all. It does not co-exist
with the Roman power, but
it follows it in chronological sequence. Now
the tenfold condition of the Roman world did not commence until the
sixth century, and the first advent took place five hundred years too
soon for it to fulfil this prediction. The ten kingdomed
state continues still, so the fifth monarchy, or kingdom of the mountain,
cannot have commenced as yet. It is a future manifested kingdom of God on earth, which is predicted herethe same
kingdom which had previously been predicted to David, the universal
and eternal kingdom of the Son of David and Son of God? the kingdom
of the Son of man and of the saints.?
Is then the first advent silently ignored
in Daniel?s program of the future? Though only five hundred years distant
from his own day, do his comprehensive foreview~ take no notice whatever
of so all-important an event? On the contrary, Daniel?s program devotes
an entire chapter to the great theme, or rather Daniel?s God granted
him a distinct and supremely important revelation about it. The first
advent, as we shall presently see, forms the
sole subject of a separate prophecy; but this prediction of the
four empires does not introduce it at all. It were altogether beneath
its inherent dignity to mention the supreme event of time and of eternity
as a mere incident in the history of the fourth empire. Incarnation
and redemption are properly passed by in silence here,
where the
succession of earthly monarchies is the subject; but the second advent of Christ to judge and rule the world as King to
establish the kingdom of Godis presented as the grand terminus of all
Gentile dominion. His is the fifth monarchythe mountain that fills the
whole earth and stands for everand it is introduced by the sudden and
complete destruction of the image whose very dust is blown into oblivion.
THE PROPHECY OF THE SEVENTY WEEKS.
But we must turn now to a consideration
of the second great feature of the Daniel program. If the first be,
as we have seen, a world-wide and most comprehensive outline of the
political changes of twenty-five centuries, the second is an absolute
contrast to it.
The Messianic revelation of the ninth
of Daniel relates mainly to a single half-century of history, to Daniel?s
own people, to one individual among them, and a few years of his one
brief life. If the earlier visions threw their beams abroad over the
known world, and onward through the ages of history, this concentrates
its rays on one limited spot, sheds its brilliant blaze of prophetic
light on one specified era, on one human life, the life of all livesthe
life on which the salvation of the world depends. The political prophecies
were like a wide landscape painting, with a Babylonian and Persian foreground,
a Greek and Roman middle distance, and a papal extreme distance, stretching
away to a glorious golden horizon line where earth and heaven meet and
mingle in the coming kingdom of God. But this Messianic prediction is?
On the contrary, like a beautiful portrait, and the eye, that like Noah?s
dove could only rove restlessly over the blood-stained scenes of earth?s
ever-shifting empires, can rest with joy on this matchless miniature,
for the impress of Divinity sits on the holy brow, and the light of
infinite love and benevolence beams from the eye, while the lips have
language and utter wondrous words of pardon, peace, reconciliation,
renewal, and everlasting righteousness. Of all the prophecies in the
Bible, Daniel?s of the ?seventy weeks? is the most wonderful and the
most important. It stands erect among the ruins of time like the solitary
and colossal obelisk amid the mounds of Heliopolis, grandly evident,
archaic in its rugged simplicity, covered with an ancient script, whose
decipherment demands indeed some study, but richly repays it; its authoritative
assertions cut clear and deep in the hard granite, defying time?s power
to efface their record; its sentences few, but full of meaning, their
very style betraying their origin and Divine authority.
Not dynastic but personal, not Gentile
but Jewish, not temporal so much as spiritual, this prophecy is framed
in a setting altogether unlike that of the previous ones. They were
given in dreams and visions, and expressed by hieroglyphic signs. This
falls gently from angelic lips on the ear of the man greatly beloved,
and comes at a moment when the prophet?s heart is tender from recent
prayer, his spirit contrite after heartfelt confession, his hope fresh
kindled by study of previously given predictions, and his faith strengthened
by earnest supplication. Daniel had set his face unto the Lord, with
prayer and fasting, sackcloth and ashes; making a confession remarkable
in its fullness of the sins of his people. Thirteen times over in the
course of his prayer he uses expressions confessing sinwe have done
wickedly, we have rebelled, we have transgressed, we have sinned. He
speaks of ?our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, ? ?my sin and
the sin of my people, ? and makes earnest supplication for pardon. ?O
Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! Let Thine anger and Thy fury be turned
away from Thy city Jerusalem and cause Thy face to shine upon Thy sanctuary
that is desolate.? He urges the Christian argument, if we may so say,
?for the Lord?s sake, ? and pleads, ?We do not present our supplications
before Thee for our righteousnesses, but for Thy great mercies.?
Daniel was an old man at this time.
The monarch whom he had served so faithfully for over forty years, Nebuchadnezzar,
had long since passed away, with all his weak and unworthy successors.
The short-lived empire of Babylon was over, and Darius the Median was
now master of the city. Cyrus, the promised deliverer of Israel, was
commander of the army, though not yet king. Daniel was still honored
and respected at court, but his heart yearned more intensely than ever
over his fatherland, though he had been exiled from it since boyhood.
His longing for the restoration of his people was a perfectly unselfish
one, as he knew that he personally could never again set foot on Mount
Zion. His tomb in any case would have to be by the banks of the Euphrates,
for the patriarch of fourscore years could not journey over desert and
mountain back to Palestine. But Daniel thought not of himself; but of
his people, of the house of God, of the sanctuary of Israel lying desolate,
of the name of Jehovah dishonored; he thought, too, of the cause of
all this, and blameless and holy as his own life had been, he appropriates
all the sins of his people both before and during the captivity, confesses
with heartfelt contrition the righteousness of God in afflicting them,
praying that the Divine displeasure may cease, and that Israel?s sin
may in mercy be forgiven. While asking the restoration of Israel, his
deepest desire seems to be
for forgiveness of sin and reconciliation with God. What a contrast
this to Nebuchadnezzar?s frame of mind when revelations of the future
were made to him! The mighty monarch cared for worldly matters only,
and such alone were made known to him. The holy prophet yearns after
heavenly blessings, pardon, peace, and purity; and Gabriel?s visit is
God?s answer to his holy aspiration. ?He touched me about the time of
the evening oblation, ? says Daniel, ?and he informed me, and talked
with me, and said, O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill
and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment
came forth, and I am now come to show thee; for thou art greatly beloved:
therefore understand. the matter, and consider the vision. Seventy weeks
are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the
transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation
for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal
up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the most Holy. Know therefore
and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore
and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks,
and three score and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and
the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks
shall Messiah be cut off but not for Himself: and the people of the
prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and
the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war
desolations are determined. And He shall
confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the
week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for
the overspreading of abominations He shall make it desolate, even until
the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.?
It will be perceived that this prediction
given in response to Daniel?s prayer says nothing at all about the restoration
of Israel, which was then close at hand. The reason fdr this is evident:
the restoration, and even its date, had already been predicted with
singular distinctness by Jeremiah, and the name of the appointed deliverer,
Cyrus, had actually been mentioned by Isaiah. Daniel had not prayed
that any further revelations should be granted on this point; such were
needless. He had prayed rather that the thing promised might be performed.
His prayer was itself a fulfillment of prophecy. Jeremiah had said,
?After seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and
perform My good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place....
Then shall ye call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I
will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek Me, and find Me, when ye shall
search for Me with all your heart. I will be found of you, and will
turn away your captivity.? The great burden of Daniel?s petition was
not therefore for any new prediction of Israel?s return to their own
land, but it was an echo of David?s words when he received the promise
of God: ?Now, O Lord God, the word that Thou hast spoken concerning
Thy servant, and concerning his house, establish it for ever, and do
as Thou hast said?. {#2Sa
7:25} There was therefore no need for Gabriel to inform Daniel
that the restoration edict of Cyrus would be issued within twelve months
or so. The prophet well knew that the captivity was all but over, and
that fact is taken for granted in the new prediction, and that restoration
becomes the starting-point instead of the goal, the terminus
a quo of a fresh prophetic period, the point of departure for this
prophecy of seventy weeks.
As the ambassadors of God are never
lavish in their performance of miracle, so His angelic messengers never
waste words. Gabriel?s message here goes directly to the heart of the
matter. The thing about which Daniel had been most deeply exercised
was the forgiveness of sin, and the answer which was given promised
first that blessingaddressed itself to the fundamental desire of his
heart, lifted once more the veil of futurity, and allowed him to behold
what the earlier visions had not shown himthe first
advent of Christ ?to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.? From
Nebuchadnezzar?s dream and his own vision he had learned the coming
and kingdom of Messiah at the end of the fourth empire, but that glorious
reign seemed to have no connection with the question of sin and its
pardon. Now a new thing is revealed to himan advent of Messiah ?to make
an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in
everlasting righteousness.? Here indeed was a response to Daniel?s deepest
yearnings; here was strong consolation for the aged saint. The promise
in Eden, the covenant with Abraham, were then approaching their fulfillment;
sin was to be put away; redemption was to be brought into the world;
God would actually bring near to man His everlasting righteousness.
This was a renewal of all the highest and holiest hopes of the nation
through whom the redemption of the world was to come; and, for the first
time, the period of Messiah?s coming was indicated. Many things had been
revealed about it before, but never its time. The period of the second advent had been fixed in history
as at the close of the fourth empire, though this assigned no actual
date. But now the precise interval to the appearance of Messiah the
Prince is revealed, together with the results both spiritual and temporal
of His first advent. The spiritual results were to include the putting
away of sin, making reconciliation for iniquity, the introduction of
everlasting righteousness, the sealing up of vision and prophecy, the
anointing of a most Holy One, and the establishment of a covenant with
manya new covenant, a covenant that should replace that of Sinai, and
secure all these blessings for ever to those who have a share in it.
The temporal results were to be strange indeed, and to Daniel probably
incomprehensible. Messiahand the word is here used for the first time
as a proper namethe name of the hope of IsraelMessiah was indeed to
come and to accomplish this glorious redeeming work; but He was not
at that time to rule over Israel as expected, or to establish the kingdom
so long foretold. Instead of that, He was to be ?cut off.? Cut off?
How Daniel must have paled and started at the strange announcement!
Messiah the Prince, the glorious King who was to reign in righteousness,
and whose kingdom was to be like a mountain filling the whole earth
for everMessiahto be ?cut off?! The word admitted of no double sense,
however; it was one used for the execution of a judicial sentence by
death. Messiah was to be ?cut off.? What could the unexpected announcement
mean? The next words of the angel implied that this cutting -off would
be the result of His rejection by His people. They are rendered in our
version by a clause which is beautiful, but incorrect, ? but not for
Himself.? However true this thought as regards Christ, the original
here does not bear this translation, and contains no intimation of the
vicariousness of the death of Jesus. It would, indeed, be out of place
in this immediate connectionthe treatment of Messiah at His advent by
the Jewish nation. The marginal reading is a better rendering of the
brief and rather obscure clause in the Hebrew. Messiah will be ?cut
off? and ?shall have nothing.? The literal expression is, ?and none
unto Him, ? the meaning being apparently that no one was for Him, no
one on His side in the crisis of His fate, that He would be rejected
as Messiah by His people, and ?cut off? because of this rejection. The
strange prediction was therefore doubly clear: Israel?s Messiah would
come at the close of a certain definite period, andmarvel of marvels!His
people would doom Him to die. In punishment of this crime, the city
and temple about to be rebuilt would be again destroyed, and the people
and land given up to desolation. There is some obscurity as to certain
points of this great prediction, though the drift of the whole is perfectly
clear. The extreme condensation and brevity which mark it are one cause
of the difficulty, and an occasional ellipsis in the Hebrew affords
room for alternate constructions in one or two of the expressions. An
immense amount of controversy has for ages been carried on about this
prophecy- controversy attributable to several causes: first, its absolute
clearness as a whole combined with its difficulties in minor points;
secondly, the inveterate determination of the Jews to silence its glorious
witness to the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth; thirdly, the equal
anxiety of infidels to blunt the edge of a prophecy which establishes
indubitably Divine inspiration; and, lastly, the intrinsic difficulties
of sacred chronology. We cannot here enter into any controversial exposition
of the
prophecy, as that would require a volume,
and it is not necessary to our argument to settle the exact force of
every word, or the precise application of every detail. The obvious
and unquestionable meaning of the prediction as a whole, together with
its marvelous fulfillment, are all that we need establish.
This prophecy was given just as the
seventy years? captivity in Babylon was drawing to a close. It announced
the duration of the restored national existence of Israel, up to the
great epoch of all historythe advent of Messiah the Prince. It was foretold
that within 490 years from the date of the decree to restore and to
build Jerusalem, the long-foreshadowed, long-predicted atonement for
sin was to be accomplished by the advent of Messiah, reconciliation
for iniquity effected, and everlasting righteousness brought in that
vision and prophecy should be sealed up, and the Most Holy anointed.
The period was then subdivided into
three parts: 7 weeks, 62 weeks, and one week; i.e., 49 years, 434 years,
and 7 years. The rebuilding of the city and the re-establishment of
the Jewish polity would occur in the first forty-nine years, or ?seven
weeks.? Four hundred and thirty-four years -more would elapse, and then
Messiah the Prince would appear. After that, at some time not accurately
defined, but within the limits of the seventieth week, or last seven
years, of the period, Messiah would be cut off and ?have nothing.? It
is further foretold that Jerusalem and its temple would subsequently,
and as a consequence, be destroyed; and that a flood of foreign invasion
would overthrow the land. But though thus cut off, Messiah would confirm
the covenant with many (not the whole nation) during the course of the
?one week? (i.e., the last week of the seventy); in the midst
of it He would ?cause sacrifice and oblation to cease.? Jerusalem should
then be made desolate, until a certain predetermined doom should fall
upon the power that should desolate it; a fact which our Lord afterwards
foretold in the words, ?Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles,
until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.?
All this was accomplished with wonderful
exactness. The edict to restore and build the city was issued by Artaxerxes,
and Ezra and Nehemiah were the two great restorers of the Jewish people,
polity, and religion. Their joint administration occupied about ?seven
weeks, ? or forty-nine years; the wall and the street were rebuilt in
troublous times. After the lapse of 434 years more, Messiah the Prince
did appear, saying, ?The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is
at hand?; i.e., the time indicated by this very prophecy. He came unto His own, and,
alas! His own received Him not! He was cut off, and had nothing. Shortly
after the Roman soldiery? the people- of a prince that shall come ?(Titus)
destroyed the city and the sanctuary; the end of Jewish independence
came with a flood of foreign invasion, and predetermined desolation
fell on land and people. But though the nation was thus judged, Messiah
did ?confirm the covenant? with many; not with Israel as a people,
but with an election according to grace.
What covenant? and how did He confirm
it? ?This is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you, ?
said He to His disciples the night before His passion; {#Lu 22:20} or as Matthew and Mark
give the words: ?This is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed
for many for the remission of sins.? ?He shall confirm the covenant
with many, ? said the angel to Daniel. ?My blood of the new covenant
shed for many, ? said Christ. Is not His blood declared to be ?the blood
of the everlasting covenant?? And is not He Himself repeatedly styled,
?the Mediator of the new covenant?? See
#Heb 8:6 9:15 12:24 And can any Bible
student doubt what is the event predicted, when in immediate connection
with the coming and cutting off of Messiah, it is added, ?He shall confirm
the covenant with many??
The chronological precision with which
this prophecy was fulfilled is most remarkable, and the more so because
it was accomplished both in solar and lunar years. To prove this, it
is necessary to go a little more carefully into the chronological measures
and historical facts. The starting-point was to be a decree to restore
and to build Jerusalem, and the terminus was to be ?Messiah the Prince.?
Now there were two restoration decrees issued by Artaxerxes, and they
were thirteen years apart. Either of them may be taken as the starting-point,
as? each involved a measure of rebuilding of Jerusalem and of re-establishment
of Jewish polity and national existence. The two decrees are associated
with the two names of Ezra and Nehemiah, and the second of the two that
given to Nehemiah answers most fully to the terms of the prophecy. The
first was given by Artaxerxes in the seventh year of his reign, B.C.
457, and the second in the twentieth year of his reign, B.C. 444. The
490 years ran out on the solar scale from the first date, in A. D. 34;
and, more accurately, on the lunar scale from the second date, A.D.
323. In both cases the last or seventieth week of years included most
of the ministry of Christ, His death, resurrection, and ascension; together
with the formation of the Church by the descent of the Holy Ghost at
Pentecost, and the early proclamation of the gospel in Palestine.
But the prophecy states that the Messiah
was to be cut.off before the close of the seventy weeks (or 490 years),
?after? the sixty-ninth had elapsed, and before the seventieth fully
ran out; that is to say, in the course of the seventieth week. He was
to be cut off ?in the midst of the week, ? i.e.
of the last supreme week, the one week which is marked off from its
fellows; the week which stands pre-eminent, not only among the seventy,
but among all the weeks the world has ever seen; the week of seven years
which witnessed the miracles, the death, the resurrection, and the ascension
of the Son of man and Son of God. In the middle of this terminal week
of the seventy, Messiah would, according to the prophecy, be ?cut off,
? and by shedding of His own blood would confirm the new covenant with
?many ?not with the nation of Israel, but with many, both Jews and Gentiles.
He would also cause all Jewish sacrifice and oblation to cease by putting
away sin for ever ?by the sacrifice of Himself.?
This chronological prediction was fulfilled
on the solar scale from the first edict of Artaxerxes, and on the lunar
scale to a day from the second. A simple calculation shows this. Seventy
weeks are 490. years, but sixty-nine and a half weeks are only 486½
years; this is therefore the number of the years predicted to elapse
between Artaxerxes? decree and the death of Christ. Nehemiah commenced
his journey to Jerusalem in accordance with the decree given in the
twentieth of Artaxerxes, during the passover month, the month of Nisan,
B.C. 444; and, as we know, our Lord was crucified at the same season,
the Passover, A.D. 29.
JULIUS AFRICANUS ON THE SEVENTY
WEEKS OF DANIEL.
?This passage, therefore, as it stands thus, touches on many marvelous things.
At present, however, I shall speak only of those things in it which
bear upon chronology, and matters connected therewith. That the passage
speaks then of the advent of Christ, who was to manifest Himself after
seventy weeks, is evident. For in the Savior?s time, or from Him, are
transgressions abrogated, and sins brought to an end. And through remission,
moreover, are iniquities, along with offences, blotted out by expiation;
and an everlasting righteousness is preached, different from that which
is by the law, and visions and prophecies (are) until John, and the
Most Holy is anointed. For before the advent of the Savior these things
were not yet, and were therefore only looked for, And the beginning
of the numbers, that is, of the seventy weeks, which make up four hundred
and ninety years, the angel instructs us to take from the going forth
of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem. And this happened
in the twentieth year of the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia. For
Nehemiah his cup-bearer besought him, and received the answer that Jerusalem
should be built. And the word went forth commanding these things; for
up to that time the city was desolate. For when Cyrus, after the seventy
years? captivity, gave free permission to all to return who desired
it, some of them under the leadership of Jesus the high priest and Zorobabel,
and others after these under the leadership of Esdra, returned, but
were prevented at first from building the temple, and from surrounding
the city with a wall, on the plea that that had not been commanded.
?It remained in this position, accordingly, until Nehemiah and the reign
of Artaxerxes and the 155th year of the sovereignty of the Persians.
And from the capture of Jerusalem that makes 185 years. And at that
time King Artaxerxes gave order that the city should be built; and Nehemiah
being despatched, superintended the work, and the street and the surrounding
wall were built, as had been prophesied. And reckoning from that point,
we make up seventy weeks to the time of Christ. For if we begin to reckon
from any other point, and not from this, the pOriods will not correspond,
and very many odd results will meet us. For if we begin the calculation
of the seventy weeks from Cyrus and the first restoration, there will
be upwards of one hundred years too many, and there will be a larger
number if we begin from the day on which the angel gave the prophecy
to Daniel, and a much larger number still if we begin from the commencement
of the captivity. For we find the sovereignty of the Persians comprising
a period of 230 years, and that of the Macedonians extending over 370
years, and from that to the sixteenth year of Tiberius Caesar is a period
of about sixty years.
?It is by calculating from Artaxerxes, therefore, up to the time of Christ,
that the seventy weeks are made up, according to the numeration of the
Jews. For from Nehemiah, who was dispatched by Artaxerxes to build Jerusalem
in the 115th year of the Persian empire, add the twentieth year of the
reign of Artaxerxes himself; and the fourth year of the eighty-third
Olympiad, up to this date, which was the second year of the 202nd Olympiad,
and the sixteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, there are reckoned
475 years, which make 490 according to the Hebrew numeration, as they
measure the years by the course of the moon; so that, as is easy to
show, their year consists of 354 days, while the solar year has 365
and, a quarter days. For the latter exceeds the period of twelve months,
according to the moon?s course, by eleven and a quarter days. More accurately
10 days 21 hours. Hence the Greeks and the Jews insert three intercalary month~ every eight
years. For eight times eleven and a quarter days make up three months.
Therefore 475 years make 59 periods of eight years each, and three months
besides. But since thus there are three intercalary months every eight
years, we get thus 15 years minus a few days and these being added to
the 475 years, make up in all the seventy weeks.?(Quoted by Eusebius,
book V. Anti-Nicene Fathers, vol. ix., p. 182.)
In his Commentary on Daniel, Jerome
sets forth the measurement of the ?seventy weeks? in lunar years, from the 20th of Artaxerxes, advocated by Julius Africanus,
?Africanus in quinto temporum volumine, de septuaginta hebdomadibus,
hec loquutus ad verbum est.. -. A
vicesimo autent anno Artaxerxes regis usque ad Christum, complentur
hebdomadae septuaginta, juxta
lunarem Hebraeorum supputatione qui menses non juxta solis, sed
juxta lunae cursum numerant.?(Jerome on #Da
9)]
From Nisan, B.C. 444, to Nisan, A.D.
29, 472 ordinary solar years only elapsed, not 486. But 472 solar years are exactly 486 ½ lunar. Hence sixty-nine and a half weeks
of lunar years, from Passover to Passover, did extend between Artaxerxes?
decree in the twentieth year of his reign, and the crucifixion, or cutting
off, of ?Messiah the Prince, ? A.D. 29. Thus the prophecy was accurately
fulfilled, even to a day on the lunar scale. Who but He who foresees
the end even from the beginning could thus have foretold the exact time
of Christ?s crucifixion, five hundred years in advance? Let the date
of Daniel be as late as any critic has ever placed it, we still have
here predictionand that of the most exact chronological kind.
The prophecies whose fulfillment we
have now traced are by no means the only ones contained in the Divine
program of the world?s history given to Danielthey are the principal
ones. But the EIGHTH chapter and the ELEVENTH also contain remarkably
full and detailed political foreviews of certain portions of the history.
The prophecy of the four empires is like a map of Europe comprising
all its countries in outline and their entire history for twenty-five
centuries. The Messianic ninth chapter is, on the contrary, a map of
one country only; its predictions concern the people and holy city of
Daniel, it announces the duration of the restored nationality of the
Jews, the advent and rejection of Messiah, with its consequences in
the renewed dispersion of the Jews and desolation of their land. The
eighth chapter enlarges another detached portion of the previous all-comprehensive
map. It amplifies the account of the second and third empires. It was
given in the third year of Belshazzar, fifty-two years after Nebuchadnezzar?s
dream, when the Babylonian power was falling, and the Medo-Persian,
which was to destroy it, rising. The chapter should be carefully studied,
as it is profoundly interesting, and with it we must associate the eleventh
chapter, which goes into similar subjects and succeeding events in still
greater detail. Space forbids our tracing the fulfillment of these wonderful
predictions by quotations from the historians who narrate the facts.
Suffice it to say, that the prophecy gives beforehand, with all the
accuracy of history written afterwards, the events of three or four
hundred years especially, and then passes on more in outline to those
lying at a greater distance. The centuries whose events are so fully
predicted are those which lay between the time then present and the
first adventa period when the light of prophecy was to cease, when Israel
would be under the power of Gentile rulers, and exposed to many wars
and troubles and to some cruel persecutions, and when their faith in
Divine providence would greatly need to be sustained by - the evidence
of prophecy fulfilling before their eyes. The days of miracle had passed,
the age of prophets was over, and from the time of Malachi the last
400 years which preceded the advent of Messiah was a time of peculiar
trial of faith to the people of God. The revealing Spirit graciously
spans this interval with a prophecy so full and accurate, that sceptics
have rejected the entire book which contains it, on the ground that
these chapters must be historical
and not prophetic; a groundless objection to which we will allude more
fully in a note at the end of this chapter..
Starting from the time then present,
the close of the Babylonian empire, the eighth chapter begins by describing
the rise of the Persian empire, the conquests of Cyrus westward in Lydia,
northward in Armenia, southward in Babylon; while chapter xi. 2, speaks
of his successors, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius, and Xerxes: ?There shall
stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer
than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir
up all against the realm of Grecia. And a mighty king shall stand up,
that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. And
his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds
of heaven; and not to his posterity, nor according to his dominion.?
There are distinctly indicated the succession of Persian monarchs and
their overthrow by Alexander, the rapidity of his course of victory,
his mighty exploits, his total conquest of Persia, his universal dominion,
his sudden death in the height of his power, the fourfold partition
of his kingdom among his generals, the early extinction of his own posterity,
and the division of his dominionsnot among his childrenbut among ?others
beside those.?Chap. viii. 7, 8;
xi. 3, 4.
Space obliges us to refrain from any
detailed explanation of the eighth and eleventh chapters of the prophecy,
the last of which foretold, four hundred years beforehand, the long
complicated struggles between the dynasties which succeeded Alexander,
especially those between the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucidae of
Syria. It has been carefully expounded by many writers, and the correspondence
of its statements with the records of history prove to be absolute
and exact, although scores
of persons and incidents are definitely mentioned in their order.
Jerome observed on this prophecy: ?To
understand the last parts of Daniel, many histories of the Greeks are
necessary; namely those of Sutorius, Callinicus, Diodorus, Hieronymus,
Polybius, Posidonius, Claudius, and Andronicus Alypius, whom also Porphyry
professes to have followed; that of Josephus also, and those whom Josephus
names, and especially of our own Livy, Pompeius Trogus, and Justin,
who relate the whole history of this latest portion.?
To the same effect, Bishop Newton justly
observes:
?There is not so complete and regular
a series of these kings, there is not so concise and comprehensive an
account of their affairs to be found in any other writing of those times.
The prophecy is really more perfect than any history. No one
historian hath related so many circumstances, and in such exact order,
as the prophet hath foretold them. So that it was necessary to have
recourse to several authors, Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian,
and to collect here something from one, and there something from another,
thus to explain and illustrate the
great variety of particulars contained in the prophecy.?
The Rev. T. R. Birks remarks: ?If any
one continuous history of these wars and alliances were now extant,
the correspondence between the prophecy and the events would be easier
to trace. But now, when it results from the careful collation of separate
fragments, gathered from eight or ten authors, Polybius, Diodorus, Appian,
Josephus, Justin, and Trogus Pompeius, the writers of the two books
of Maccabees, Livy, Porphyry, and Dexippus, with medals and inscriptions;
and in several of them, from incidental allusions, or brief and passing
statements, where the leading object of the history is quite different;
the moral evidence becomes far more striking to every ingenuous mind.?
NOTE TO CHAPTER VI. ON THE DATE OF THE BOOK OF DANIEL.
The prophecies of Daniel stand pre-eminent
among all others in their evidential value. Not only does his. brief
book give a foreview of twenty-five centuries of Jewish and Gentile
history, including the first and the second advents of Christ, but it
also fixes the chronology of various episodes of the then unknown future,
with a simple certainty which would be audacious if it were not Divine.
Would any mere man dare to foretell, not only a long succession of events
lying far in the remote future, but the time at which some of them would
occur and the periods they would occupy? This Daniel did, and the predictions
have come to pass.
This unquestionable fact can be explained
away only on one of three grounds.
I. The accord between prediction and
fulfillment must be purely accidental and fortuitous; or,
II. The events must have been manipulated,
so as to fit the prophecy or,
III. The prophecy must have been written
to fit the events, i.e. after
them; it must, in other words, be a forgery of a later date.
None of these three explanations can
account for the agreement between Daniel?s predictions and history,
as reflection will show. For,
1. Such an agreement cannot be merely
fortuitous. It is too far-reaching and detailed, too exact and varied.
Chance might produce a few coincidences of fulfillment out of a hundred
predictions, not a hundred or more without
a single exception. Common sense perceives this at a glance. As
far as time has elapsed every
single event predicted in Daniel has come true, and there remain
but a few terminal points yet to be fulfilled.
2. The events were certainly not made to fit the prophecy by human arrangement.
The rise and fall and succession of monarchies and of empires, and the
conduct and character of nations, for over two thousand years, are matters
altogether too vast to be manipulated by men. Such a notion is clearly
absurd. What! did Babylonian and Persian monarchs, Grecian and Roman
conquerors, Gothic and Vandal invaders, medieval kings and popes, conspire for long ages to accomplish obscure Jewish predictions, of
which the majority of them never even heard?
3. The third and last solution is consequently
the only possible alternative
to a frank admission of the Divine inspiration of the book, and of the
Divine government of the world amid all its ceaseless political changes.
Can the prophecy have been written to fit the
events? In other words, can it be a forgery of a later date? This
is the theory adopted by all the unbelieving critics, who start with the assumption that prophecy in any true sense is impossible.
They endeavour to assign to the book a date later than the true one,
a date towards the close of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, who died
in the second century before Christ. Then they endeavour to compress
all the four empires into the four centuries previous to that date,
excluding therefore from the prophecy any allusion to the Roman empire
and the first advent of Christ. Multitudinous have been the attacks
made on these lines on the fortress of this Book of Daniel; for scepticism
has realized that while it stands impregnable, a relic of the sixth century before Christ,
all rationalistic theories must fall to the
ground, like Dagon before the ark.
But the fortress stands firm as ever, its massive foundations revealed only the more clearly by the varied
assaults it has repelled. The assailants, German as well as English,
have been beaten off time after time by one champion after another,
earnestly contending for the faith. The superficial and shallow nature
of the linguistic, historic, and critical objections has been demonstrated,
and one line of assault after another has had to be abandoned. It is simply a historical fact, that unbelief has been always the parent
of this criticism, not the criticism the cause of the unbelief. The
pseudo-criticism is a mere plea for unbelief. But even if this were
not the case, and the later date could be substantiated, it would not
in the least establish the sceptical denial of the existence of prophecy
in Daniel. The predictions of the first advent and of the Roman destruction
of Jerusalem would be in no wise affected by the later date, nor those
of the tenfold division of the Roman empire, and of the great Papal
and Mohammedan apostasies.
Candour is shut up to the conclusion
that real, true, and marvelous foreknowledge is, beyond all question,
indicated by the predictions of the book, since twenty-five centuries
of history can be proved to correspond with it accurately, in their
chronological as xvell as in all their other features. If this be so,
the question of inspiration is settled for honest minds. Nor that alone.
For the rule of God over the kings of the earththe fact that history
is working out His Divine purposes, and that all the changing kingdoms
of the Gentiles are merely introductory to the eternal kingdom of the
Son of man and of the saintsis also established beyond controversy.
It was alleged by the sceptical school
that the late origin of Daniel was demonstrated by the presence of Macedonian
words, and of impure Hebrew expressions; that its spurious character
was proved by its position in the canon, as not among ?the prophets,
? but among the ?hagiographa?; that it contained historical errors,
and irreconcilable contradictions; that it had traces of later ideas
and usages; as well asand this was evidently the head and front of the
offendingthat the, predictions were so clear and definite, that they
must have been written after the events.
The defence has been twofold. First,
a demonstration which leaves nothing to be desired of the utter baselessness of the objections; and, secondly,
an array of unanswerable arguments in support of the authenticity and
date of the book. The contention has given rise to a whole literature,
to which we can merely allude in a few sentences. Those who wish to
examine into the subject for themselves will find the works of Hengstenberg
and Dr. Pusey thorough, candid, and learned, giving not the results
of investigation only, but the process and the fullest reference
to original documents. We must indicate briefly the nature of the defence,
though we cannot do more.
Porphyry, in the third century, in his
attack on Christianity as a whole, devoted one of his fifteen books
to an assault on Daniel. He asserted that it must be the work of a Jew
of Palestine, written in Greek in the time of Antiochus; and assigned
as the main ground of his theory the exact correspondence of events with the
predictions, asserting that
Daniel ?did not so much predict future events as narrate past ones,
?as Jerome remarked, ?this method of opposing the prophecies is the
strongest testimony to their truth, for they were fulfilled with such
exactness that to infidels the prophets seemed not to have foretold
things future, but to have related things past, ?and bearing thus a
noble testimony to the pr.ophet! Porphyry?s book was by imperial command
condemned to the flames, and we know it mostly from fragments preserved
in the writings of Jerome. Spinoza, the infidel Jew, was the first modern
to renew this old attack; and then Hobbes and Collins, and other English
deists. It was J. D. Michaelis who made the first scholarly attempt to undermine confidence
in the authenticity of Daniel, and even he decidedly maintained the genuineness of the greater
part of it. The names of more recent German critics are legion, and
we need not give them here, but simply indicate the arguments that prove
the futility of the objections alleged.
To a Christian mind the highest and
most conclusive testimony lies in the fact that our Lord speaks of Daniel as a prophet, and quotes from him. The name by which He most frequently speaks
of Himself; ?the Son of man, ? is taken from #Da 7:13. Many of His descriptions of His own coming and kingdom are
also distinctly connected with Daniel?s predictions of them. 1 Compare #Da 7:13, 14 , and 26, 27, with #Mt 10:23 16:27, 28 19:28 24:30 26:64 Joh 5:27 Da 12:2
Surely our Lord would not thus have
endorsed an impostor! Josephus tells us that the book was eagerly studied
in Christ?s days; would He have treated it as Scripture, and allowed
His disciples to regard it as such, if it were a forgery?
The apostles uniformly recognize Daniel as a prophet. Peter alludes to his inquiries as to the ?times, ? and
states that he was inspired by the Spirit of Christ. Paul in 2 Thessalonians
ii. builds his argument on Daniel?s prediction of the man of sin and
the apostasy. #Heb 11:33
alludes distinctly to Daniel and his companions and their heroic deeds;
and the whole Book of Revelation is so closely connected with that of
Daniel, that we might almost style it Second Daniel, or Daniel First
Revelation.
The allusion to Daniel as one of the
holiest and one of the wisest of men, by his contemporary Ezekiel, shows
how early he attained his high position in
the court of Nebuchadnezzar, and how far the fame of his blameless,
holy life had spread, even in his own days. As he most distinctly and
repeatedly claims to he the author of his own book, and writes much
of it as an autobiography, the very holiness
of his character makes the thought of deliberate forgery and falsehood
revoltingly inconsistent.
That the book was widely distributed
and well known and revered by the pious in pre-Maccabean times can be
demonstrated. The very accurate and reliable First Book of Maccabees
makes exact, though brief and simple, reference to the stories in Daniel.
The dying words of Mattathias to his sons are recorded, in which he
encourages them to fidelity to God amid persecution by recalling various
Bible histories, and among the rest that of the Hebrew children in the
fire, and Daniel in the lions? den. Hence it is evident that the book
was known and regarded as Scripture at that time.
Further, Josephus makes several remarkable
and explicit statements on the subject. Speaking of one of the predictions,
he says, ?Now this was delivered 408 years before the fulfillment, ?
thus recognising the received date as unquestionable, and as generally
admitted to be so in his day. In a still more conclusive and very interesting
passage he asserts that Daniel?s prophecy was shown to Alexander the
Great when he visited Jerusalem, and that this monarch took the prediction
about a Greek who was to overthrow the Persian empire to mean himself;
and was much encouraged thereby in his enterprise, and very favourably
disposed towards the Jews in consequence.
Josephus was indeed much impressed by
the remarkable fulfillments of Daniel?s predictions, which even in his
day were evident. After expounding several of these he says, ?All these
things did this man leave behind in writing, as God had showed them
to him: so that those who read his prophecies, and see how they have
been fulfilled, must be astonished at the honour conferred by God on
Daniel.? ? Antiquities, ? x. II,
7. This eminently learned man, whose works were published towards
the close of the first century, and who lived, therefore, comparatively
near the days of Daniel, thus broadly asserts the date of Daniel, expressing,
of course, the conviction of the learned of his dayan opinion which
had never apparently been even questioned.
He affirms the predictions of the book to be of an extraordinary character, and
challenges attention to their fulfillment. He was most unlikely to have
been taken in by a mere forgery, and ought surely to have been better
informed about the matter than modern critics can possibly be.
A strong argument in favour of the received
date may be drawn from the languages
in which the book is written, Hebrew and Aramæan. Both were
familiar to the Jews of the captivity era, and to those of no later
date; the one was Daniel?s mother tongue, the other the language in
which he had been educated, and by which he was surrounded for the greater
part of his life. Hebrew ceased to be used by the Jews in and from the
captivity, except as a sacred learned language. It had been entirely
superseded before the Maccabean days, and no writer of the time
of Antiochus could have counted on being even understood had he written
in that language! Daniel reckons on such a familiar acquaintance with
both languages, that it is evidently a matter of indifference to him
and to his readers which he uses. ?The use of the two languages, and
the mode in which the prophet writes in both, correspond perfectly with
his real date; they are severally and together utterly inexplicable
according to the theory that would make the book a product of the Maccabean
times. The language is a mark
of genuineness set by God on the book. Rationalism must rebel, as
it has rebelled; but it dare not now with any moderate honesty abuse
philology to cover its rebellion.? Dr.
Pusey ? Lectures on Daniel.?
Further, the exact knowledge of contemporary
history evinced in Daniel
is such that no writer of the time of the Maccabees could possibly have
attained it. Almost every single circumstance mentioned in the book
is confirmed directly or indirectly by contemporary historians, and
proved to be absolutely and even minutely correct. In the Maccabean
age, as existing remains prove, the utmost ignorance of the history
and geography of foreign countries prevailed among the Jews in Palestine,
and an exact and comprehensive knowledge of the history of a period
so dark and already so remote as the captivity era, did not exist and
could not have existed, And the same may be said of the accurate knowledge
exhibited in the book of the institutions, manners, usages, and entire
state of things, existing in the Babylonian and Medo-Persian times.
Again, it has been remarked that ?the
complexion of the prophecies of
Daniel corresponds so exactly with what is related in the historical
part of the circumstances of his life, that even the most crafty impostor would not
have been able to produce this agreement artificially. Daniel occupied
high offices of state; he was witness to great revolutions and changes
of rulers and empires; and this circumstance is very significantly impressed
on his prophecies. The succession of the various empires of the world
forms their principal subject. In the representation of the Messianic
idea also he borrows his colors from his external relations. Throughout
there is apparent a religious, as well as a political gift, such as
we meet with in no other prophet.?
Lastly, the canon of the Old Testament contains the Book of Daniel, and that canon was closed by Ezra the scribe,
and Nehemiah, the second Moses in Jewish estimation, about 400 b.c.
Hence the prophecies of Daniel were
already at that date recognized as inspired writings. It is true
the book does not appear in the list of the prophets, because Daniel
was not officially a Jewish prophet, but a Babylonian statesman. David, also,
though a prophet, was officially a king, and thus his writings, like
Daniel?s, are classed among the hagiographa, or sacred books, rather
than among the prophets. The principle of the Jewish arrangement of
the canon was, that sacred writings by men in
secular office, and not
occupying the pastoral or prophetic position, were put in
a class apart from the prophets. Hence Daniel appears not in the
list with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, but rather with David and Solomon,
and Mordecai the writer of Esther. But the Jewish rabbis hold his prophetic
revelations in the highest esteem, and the Talmud places him
above all other prophets.
There is therefore no question at all
for candid minds that the book is authentic, and rightly attributed
to the time of the Babylonish captivity and if so, it must be granted
by all that it contains prophecydefinite predictions which have been
most marvelously fulfilled.
The importance of this conclusion can
scarcely be over-estimated, though it seems to be less appreciated by
Christians than by sceptics. They regret their inability to wrest a
mighty weapon out of the hands of the Church. But wewhat use are we
making of it? What execution are we doing with it? Is it not a pity
that it is allowed to so great an extent to lie idle?
If eight or nine centuries of fulfilled
prophecy drove Porphyry, in the third century, to feel that we must
either admit Divine inspiration or prove the Book of. Daniel spurious,
ought not the twenty-five centuries of it, to which we in our days can
point, be even more efficacious in convincing candid inquirers and confounding
prejudiced opponents? The battle of authenticity has been fought and
won; no fresh objections can be invented. Archeological discovery may
yet find Daniel?s name among the Babylonian records; it will certainly
produce no evidence against the book which it has already done so much
to authenticate. It rests with Christian teachers and preachers to use
the miracle of the last days, fulfilled and fulfilling prophecy, for
the conviction and con-version of men.
Index Intro 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Conclusion
