Daniel 11
The fighting kings of north and south
Heaven helped invaders
1The celestial messenger [1] who looked human said, “I helped Darius the Mede [2] during his first year.Coming kings, north and south
2Now I’m going to tell you the truth about what’s going to happen. [3] Three more kings will rule over Persia. [4] Then comes a fourth one, [5] the richest of all. When he piles up enough wealth, he’s going to take his kingdom to war against Greece.3After him, a soldier [6] will take the throne. He’s going to dominate others with incredible power. He’ll do whatever he wants. 4But while his kingdom is still gaining strength, it will suddenly fall apart. It breaks into four pieces. [7] This king’s dynasty dies with him. His kingdom will go to rulers who aren’t related to him and who don’t represent him at all.
5The southern king [8] will grow strong. But a former colleague, king of the north, will eventually rule over even more territory. 6These two kings will make a peace treaty, and seal it with a marriage. A daughter of the southern king will marry a son of the northern king. [9] But the daughter will lose her influence, and then her life. Her children, husband, and servants will all be slaughtered.
War of revenge
7A relative [10] of the slaughtered woman will rise to power. He will march his army north and capture the fortress. 8He will go home to Egypt a richer man, loaded with idols and treasures made of silver and gold. He won’t attack the north again for some years. 9But the northern king will try to retaliate by invading the south. However, he will have to turn around and go home. [11]10Sons who succeed the northern king will gather a huge army and invade Egypt in the south. They’ll cover the ground like a flood, reaching all the way to the king’s fortress. [12]
11Enraged, Egypt’s king will rally his army and defeat the invaders. 12Then, Egypt’s king will gloat over the thousands his men killed. [13] He won’t gloat long. 13A few years later, the northern king will return with a bigger army, better equipped.
14During this time, many Egyptians will rebel against their king. Some of your own fellow Jews will join the revolt, inspired by a vision. But it will fail. 15The northern army will push into Egypt, surround the fortress, and attack with siege weapons. They will break through Egypt’s strong defensive barriers and overpower even the elite forces. Nothing will stop them. 16The king of the north will be able to do whatever he pleases. And it will please him to take control of your land of Israel. [14]
The princess bride
17The northern king will use his power to bully Egypt into a peace agreement. He’ll seal the deal with a woman. He’ll give his daughter to the king as a bride. [15] He’ll try to use this to his advantage and defeat Egypt from within. It won’t work. [16] 18So, he’ll turn his attention to nations along the coast. He’ll capture some. But one commander [17] will stop him and send him away humbled. 19Defeated, he’ll go back to his own land. He’ll stumble and fall. Then he’s gone for good. [18]20Next king of the north [19] will send an official on a mission to glorify the kingdom and make it look good. That king doesn’t last long. He dies—and not in the glory of battle. [20]
King goes treasure-hunting
21The next ruler of the north will be a king people love to hate. He’ll be a wretched man, not worthy of the title “Your Majesty.” He’ll use treachery to become king. 22He will crush armies and overpower the Jewish high priest. 23He will make and break peace agreements. He’ll start by making an alliance with a small group. [21] But he’ll grow strong because of it.24Suddenly, he will dive into the richest treasures in the land—something none of his royal ancestors had done. [22] He will plunder the wealth and use part of it to buy allies. Then he’ll plot to capture fortresses, but he won’t last long. 25This king will march his huge army south to attack Egypt. But the Egyptians will come with a larger army. It won’t help them, though. Treasonous plots against the Egyptian king will bring him down. 26Some of the people who eat at the king’s own table will turn against him. Many Egyptian soldiers will die because of it. [23]
27The two kings—north and south—will meet and swap lies about what they plan to do. It will be a waste of time. By then, time will almost be up. 28The northern king will return home much richer than when he left. On the way home, he’ll attack God’s holy people.
King of north loses round two
29Soon, the northern king will go back to Egypt, but with different results. 30An army will sail in from the west. When he sees it, he will quickly retreat. Angry, on the trip home he will vent all over God’s holy people. But he won’t hurt the Jews who have turned their backs on God. They’ll work out an agreement.31Then the king will send officials to take charge of the walled city of Jerusalem and its Temple. They will desecrate the Temple by stopping the traditional sacrifices. They will replace these sacred offerings with an abomination that ritually pollutes the Temple. [24] 32This king will brag on the Jewish people who go along with him and break their covenant agreement with God. Other Jews hold onto their traditions.
33Wise Jewish leaders will teach and encourage the people. But for a time, the king will order some of those leaders executed by sword or fire. Others will be arrested and robbed. 34Some will give these oppressed leaders a little help. Others will give them empty words—promises that are more blow than go. 35Some leaders will die. But their deaths will cleanse, sharpen, and empower other Jews for the time that is coming.
King who says he’s more than a god
36The king will do whatever he wants. He’ll think he’s more god than king—and more divine than the gods. He’ll trash God with his mouth. Yet he will look like the model of success until his time is up.37He’ll be a godless man. He won’t respect the gods of his fathers [25] or the gods of women. [26] 38The only god he’ll worship will be the god of strength. He’ll feed this god a huge offering of gold, silver, gems, and expensive treasures.
39He’ll attack the walled cities with the help of his god—the strongest army. He’ll reward loyal officials by making them richer and giving them lucrative positions in the kingdom. And he’ll trade them land for bribes.
The end: clock is ticking
40The end will come when the king of the south invades the northland. But the king of the north will come roaring through the land like a hurricane of chariots, cavalry, and ships. He will go as far as he wants. 41He will pass through your beautiful homeland and kill tens of thousands. But he’ll bypass most of Edom, Moab, and Ammon. They’ll escape this horror.42But your nation and Egypt take the full force of the hit. They don’t have a chance. 43When the fighting is over, he’ll own the wealth of Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia.
44But messengers will bring him alarming news from the east and the north. And he will charge off, livid and determined to destroy and annihilate. 45He’ll pitch his royal tent between Jerusalem’s hilltop and the deep, blue sea. When his time is up, no one will be able to save him. [27]
Footnotes
The writer doesn’t say who is talking to Daniel, in a conversation that started in Daniel 10. But the speaker fits the description of a “glowing” celestial being (see note for Daniel 10:6).
King Darius the Mede hasn’t shown up in history outside the Bible. And on the timeline of most scholars, it seems, there’s no room for him. The Book of Daniel says he was the king of Babylon after Belshazzar but before Cyrus the Great. Yet ancient documents say Cyrus took over when his army invaded, and Belshazzar was executed.
Some students of the Bible say most of this chapter is about the future and about a ruler called the Antichrist. But there’s no one called that in the Bible. Four short Bible verses describe people who reject Jesus as “antichrist” (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 1:7). And it says they are “already here, crawling all over the place” (1 John 2:18). The idea of a world leader called the Antichrist seemed to develop in the Middle Ages, especially approaching the turn of AD 1000, with the fear of what might be coming. French Queen Gerbera (about 939-954) asked a monk named Adso to explain what the world could expect of the mysterious Antichrist. He pieced together descriptions of mysterious evil men of the Bible to form a portrait of one man who became known as the Antichrist—fiction to some Christians, future to others. It’s a debatable mystery.
Cyrus the Great was the first Persian king of this dynasty, known as Achaemenid (about 559-334 BC). Kings after Cyrus: Cambyses II (son of Cyrus), Bardiya (another son of Cyrus or an imposter), Darius the Great, and Xerxes the Great.
There’s wide agreement among Bible scholars that this ruler was Xerxes, famous for invading Greece and defeating Spartans in a narrow seaside passage at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC. That battle inspired the blockbuster film, “300.” Daniel 11 tracks remarkably with history from Daniel’s time in the 500s BC until the 100s BC. Scholars say someone wrote this history and sold it as prophecy or Daniel was unusually specific and forward-thinking for a prophet. A lot of the prophecy in the Bible reads more like a sermon, a message from God about life in the time of the prophet and the near future. Reading Daniel might seem more like watching history play out in a crystal ball. Most Christians seem to agree that prophets did get messages from God about the future. But this chapter is rare.
The continuing flow of the story suggests this soldier was Alexander the Great. His Greek empire swallowed up what are now parts of Europe, the Middle East, and northern Africa. When he died in 323 BC at age 32, four of his generals divided the kingdom. See “kingdom…breaks into four pieces” (Daniel 11:4).
Alexander the Great’s empire split four ways, divided among four generals: Ptolemy ruled Egypt, Seleucus ruled Persia, Antigonus ruled what now includes Turkey (called Asia Minor), and Cassander ruled northern Greece (called Macedon). The two strongest kingdoms belonged to Ptolemy and Seleucus.
Ptolemy ruled the southern tip of Alexander the Great’s former empire. He allied himself with Seleucus and defeated the Turkey-based general Antigonus. Seleucus added that northern land to his eastern kingdom, becoming the largest part of Alexander’s former empire.
Israel lay between the Ptolemy’s Egypt and the empire of Seleucus. The two kingdoms fought for control of Israel, the best land bridge between northern nations and Africa. Half a century later, around 250 BC, Ptolemy II tried to heal the rift. He married his daughter Berenice to Antiochus II. But Antiochus first had to divorce his wife Laodice and ban her sons from succeeding him, which he did. It’s complicated. It got worse. Two years later, Antiochus reconnected with his ex. She killed him. Then she had her supporters murder Berenice and her sons, along with the Egyptian servants Berenice had brought north with her. Berenice’s father died in Egypt that same year. This quickly uncomplicated things for Laodice, until she met Berenice’s brother, Ptolemy III. He avenged his sister by killing Laodice.
Ptolemy III, the brother of Berenice, avenged his sister by attacking and defeating the Seleucid empire, and by killing Laodice in 244 BC.
The two empires didn’t fight again for two years. But in 242 BC, the northern kingdom wanted to get even. But they got decimated. Their invasion failed and they retreated with a smaller army.
Greek historian Polybius reported that the northern king, Antiochus III, invaded Egypt with 62,000 soldiers, 6,000 cavalry, and 102 elephants. He pushed through what is now Lebanon, Israel, and Palestinian Territory, reaching all the way to Egypt’s fortress at Raphia on the northern border. Ptolemy rushed to defend Egypt with 70,000 soldiers, 5,000 cavalry, and 73 elephants.
Soldiers of Egypt’s King Ptolemy IV (221-203 BC) killed a fourth of the invading army—4,000 soldiers. But he didn’t finish the job of killing them all or of forcing a peace treaty.
Antiochus III (the Great) continued capturing Egyptian-controlled territory, including what is now Israel, Palestinian Territory, Lebanon—even land as far north as Greece.
In 193 BC, Antiochus’s 11-year-old daughter, the first Cleopatra (not THE Cleopatra), married the 17-year-old King Ptolemy V of Egypt.
It turned out that Antiochus’s 11-year-old daughter, Egypt’s first Cleopatra, loved her 17-year-old Egyptian husband. And that’s where she invested her trust. Daddy misjudged that.
Antiochus launched a four-year war with the Roman Republic, fighting in Greece in the fall of 192 BC. Romans beat him at the Battle of Magnesia. He retreated and went home.
Antiochus returned home. Later, someone murdered him in the town of Susa (Iran) in 187 BC, while he was stealing money from a temple devoted to his own god, Bel. He wanted the money to pay the tribute taxes Rome charged him for starting the war with them.
This king, many scholars agree, was Seleucus IV (reigned 187-175 BC). He had the burden of paying Romans the tribute taxes levied on them after his dad challenged Rome to war and lost. He sent his chief financial officer Heliodorus on a fund-raising campaign. He tried to clean out the treasury of the Jerusalem Temple, but apparently saw a terrifying vision of a horseback rider inside the Temple. He left town after offering a sacrifice to God, according to 2 Maccabees 3, a book preserved in some Christian Bibles. A Greek historian from the AD 100s, Appian, said Heliodorus orchestrated Seleucus’s assassination—with help from the king’s little brother, Antiochus.
This reads like an insult.
Antiochus made an alliance with the influential family of Tobiad, who agreed to set up a Greek-style community in Jerusalem.
Antiochus stole from the Jerusalem Temple treasury. He probably rationalized that he was simply taking the tribute taxes due him as master of the Jewish territory.
Antiochus’s army defeated Egyptians in 170 BC, captured Egypt’s northern border town of Pelusium, and arrested the Egyptian king’s nephew Ptolemy VI.
Antiochus IV Epiphanes desecrated the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem with pagan sacrifices to Zeus. Jewish rebel fighters led by Judas Maccabaeus drove out the invaders and won their independence. Jewish priests ritually cleansed the Temple in eight days in December 167 BC. Jews later came to celebrate this with an eight-day religious holiday known as Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights.
Zeus was the top god of the Greeks. Antiochus IV claimed he was the human incarnation of Zeus.
Women looked for help from Zeus and many other gods including: Athena and Aphrodite, Demeter, Hera. But some scholars say it’s possible the writer was referring to the gods of Egypt by speaking of Egypt as “women,” weaker than men. Either way, the point is that this king ranked himself in glory above those gods.
This sounds like Antiochus died here, in 168 BC. He did not. Historians from Bible times report that he died about four years later, in 164 BC, in what is now Iran. Yet the tide turned for him in 168 BC, when a Roman ambassador named Gaius Popillius Laenas humiliated him in public by drawing a circle around him and ordering him not to leave the circle until he agreed to leave Egypt. This took place somewhere between Jerusalem and Alexandria, Egypt—and the deep blue sea.
Discussion Questions
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