Daniel 8

This was in about 552 BC, give or take a few years. Belshazzar was a co-regent, according to ancient Babylonian records, not a king. He was more of an Associate King. His father, Nabonidus, was king. But he preferred to live in Arabia. His son Belshazzar served as co-regent from 555-539 BC, until Persian invaders from what is now Iran captured the city of Babylon and executed him. He was 41 years old.

Susa was a city roughly 200 miles (320 km) east of Babylon, in what is now Persia. It would later become the capital of the Persian Empire that swallowed up the Babylonian Empire and expanded far beyond it, stretching from Greece in the west to India in the east.

There was a hand-dug canal by the city, Ulai Canal, according to Persian records pressed into clay and written in wedge-shaped cuneiform letters.

The angel Gabriel says in 8:20 that the two-horned ram represents the Medes and Persians. West, north, and south are directions the Medes and Persians advanced when they swallowed up the Babylonian Empire.

The Hebrew word paraphrased here as “beautiful homeland,” is sebi, in the original Hebrew language. Sebi can mean: beautiful, glorious, splendor. In context, it seems like the writer may have been talking about what used to be Israel.

Some students of the Bible and history say this sounds like the little horn with the big mouth in Daniel 7:8, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. He was a Greek ruler of Syria. And he invaded the Jewish homeland, sacrificed to pagan gods in the Jewish Temple, and tried to erase the Jewish religion. He sparked a revolt, and the Jewish people drove him out. The “people of heaven” (verse 10) may represent the Jewish people of God and their leader the high priest.

“Days and nights” are more literally “mornings and evenings,” which were the times of day when Jerusalem Temple priests offered the daily sacrifices on behalf of the nation.

Gabriel is the angel that the New Testament book of Luke says announced the births of John the Baptist and his younger relative, by a few months, Jesus (Luke 1:26-27). Gabriel said he reported directly to God (Luke 1:19). Daniel will later write that the angel Gabriel fought a battle for 21 days before the angel Michael arrived as backup (Daniel 10:13). Ancient Jewish tradition said there are seven archangels, which some students of the Bible associate with the book of Revelation’s angelic leaders: seven angels who stand before God, and who were given seven trumpets (Revelation 8:2). Jewish tradition says the seven are called Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel, and Remiel.

“Human” in the original Hebrew language is ben adam, more literally translated “son of man.” This is a title Jesus used a lot to describe himself. In the Jewish Bible, the phrase contains hints of divinity in some passages and humanity in others—such as this passage. That seemed to make it a fit title for Jesus, whom Christians teach was both divine and human.

“The timing of when this ends” is often translated “end times” or “time of the end.” In Hebrew, those words are et qes, or “time end.” So, is it about the timing of some event 2,000 years ago or more? Is it about the end of humanity. Or might it be both? Someone needed to ask Gabriel follow up questions. Some scholars say Daniel’s choice of words describing the “wrath” or period of violence toward the Jews suggests it started with the exile, when Daniel and others were marched out of their homeland and into captivity in the 500’s BC. This period of oppression continued beyond the prophesied 70 years of exile, some say, and through Antiochus IV Epiphanes’s persecution of the Jews in the 100’s BC.