This vision came two years after the previous revelation, for the latter was beheld in the first year of Belshazzar, whereas this was beheld in the third year. And so he informs us, after that which I had seen at the first.

Now, it is not without purpose that he indicates the time: it is to inform us that long before these things happened, he received foreknowledge of them from the God of all.

I saw in a vision means I was not awake, nor did I see it during the day: the God of all showed it to me in a dream.

We may render, as Symmachus has translated it, in the city of Elam, from which of course the region took its name, just as the Babylonians were named from Babylon. So also the Elamites were thus named from Elam, in consequence of which the Septuagint translates it the region of Elamais. And Susis [that is, Susa] is the chief city of the region of the Elamites.

Instead of this Aquila translated over the Ubal of Ulai; Theodotion rendered above Ubal; the Septuagint above the gate of Ulai. But it should be understood that Ulai is the name of a place, or else of a gate, just as there was in Troy a gate called the Skaia (Western), and among the Romans there is one called Carmentalis. In each case the name has originated from special circumstances. ^[1] THE GATE OPENS ON THE RIVER ULAI. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: That is, before the vestibule and the gate where the river Ulai passed, that is, the gate that opens on the river Ulai. ^[1]

He sees the Persian Empire in the form of a ram since it was flush with wealth and had a great abundance of resources.

He signifies Darius the Persian by saying it had two horns, as Darius ruled the Medes and the Persians. Both horns were long, but one was longer than the other: this is referred to the Persians, whose power was superior to that of the Medes and rose to a higher level. And the longer one came up second: this is said because the Persians, after the Medes, would have obtained the rule over the world.

He calls Darius, Cyrus’s uncle, a ram. He reigned over the Medes after his father, Astyages. And the one horn, which was higher than the other and growing still larger, signified Cyrus, who succeeded his maternal grandfather, Astyages, and reigned over the Medes and Persians along with his uncle, Darius, whom the Greeks called Cyaxeres.

He perceived two horns on the ram because Cyrus was the first to reign over it and transmitted the empire only to his sons; when his son Cambyses died, soothsayers held power for a few months, but shortly afterwards Darius son of Hystaspes, who passed the empire on to his offspring and theirs up to the last Darius, whose empire Alexander the Macedonian took over after slaying him. So by the two horns he means two races of kings, seeing both to be tall, but the second taller than the first.

He was speaking of the Persian power and dominion that overran the whole earth.

Not that he saw the ram itself, that is, the ram of Cyrus or Darius, but rather the ram of the same kingdom as theirs, that is, the second Darius, who was the last king of the Persian power and who was overcome by the king of the Macedonians, Alexander the son of Philip. And as to the fact that Darius was a very powerful and wealthy king, both the Greek and the Latin and the barbarian historical accounts so relate.

By beasts he refers again to the other kingdoms individually, Syria, Cilicia, Arabia, Egypt, calling them beasts on account of their being fearsome to those they ruled. So no kingdom, he is saying, could resist that empire charging to the north, south and west, nor could any human being liberate anyone from that power. Yet for all its appearance it met its end.

So that no one will think that I am attaching a private interpretation to this, let us simply repeat the words of Gabriel as he explained the prophet’s vision. He said, The ram you saw with two horns is the king of the Medes and Persians. This was, of course, Darius the son of Astyages, in whose reign the kingdom of the Medes and Persians was destroyed. There was in addition a he-goat, who was coming from the west, and because of his extraordinary speed he appeared not to touch the ground. This was Alexander, the king of the Greeks, who after the overthrow of Thebes took up arms against the Persians. Commencing the conflict at the Granicus River, he conquered the generals of Darius and finally smashed against the ram himself and broke in pieces his two horns, the Medes and the Persians. Casting him beneath his feet, he subjected both horns to his own authority.

The dream’s riddle here suggested the Macedonian Empire, calling it a goat because of its speed and fleetness of foot, a goat being faster than a ram. He said it came from the southwest: since it had previously subjugated Egypt, it thus advanced into the land of the Persians, conquering Darius in Cilicia, and from there traversing Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine, taking some of the cities by surrender, securing others by force. It then also gained possession of that empire, occupied the Persians and destroyed the greater part of their power.

By the one horn visible, in the sense of famous and illustrious, he refers to Alexander; he says the horn was growing between its eyes on account of the shrewdness, intelligence and sagacity of Alexander’s thinking.

Again the ram was lifted up and exalted, and it pushed with its horns toward the west, and toward the north and toward the south, and it humbled many beasts. And they could not stand before him, until the he-goat came from the west and struck the ram and broke his horns and humbled the ram completely. But the ram was the king of Media and Persia, that is, Darius; and the he-goat was Alexander, the son of Philip, the Macedonian. . . . And the he-goat of the goats came up from the region of the Greeks and exalted himself against the ram, and he struck him and broke both his horns, the greater and the lesser. And why did he say that he broke both his horns? Clearly because he humbled both the kingdoms that he ruled; the lesser, that of the Medes, and the greater, that of the Persians. But when Alexander the Greek came, he killed Darius, king of Media and Persia. ^[1] THE HORNS REPRESENT TWO POWERS. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: The words breaking its two horns, that is, the two powers, which Darius possessed, as the kingdom was subjected to two races, since the Medes and Persians were indicated together. In the same manner Cyrus, who was the first to rule, was a Mede on his mother’s side and a Persian on his father’s side. As their first king was called a Persian and a Mede, so the peoples, who were under his dominion, were indicated with the same names, because these two territories made a single kingdom. ^[1]

After the defeat of Darius, Alexander extended the empire of the Greeks in every direction and made it firm with strong garrisons. In the meantime the great horn was broken, that is, Alexander died, and in its place there came up four horns. Indeed, since Alexander had died without children, he left his divided monarchy to his friends Seleucus, Demetrius, Philip and Ptolemy.

Despite that great conquest, Alexander met the common fate of humankind.

When Alexander died in Babylon at the age of thirty-two, his four generals rose up in his place and divided his empire among themselves. For Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, seized Egypt; the Philip who was also called Aridaeus (variant: Arius), the (half-) brother of Alexander took over Macedonia; Seleucus Nicator took over Syria, Babylonia and all the kingdoms of the East; and Antigonus ruled over Asia Minor. . . . And a long time afterward there shall arise a king of Syria who shall be of shameless countenance and shall understand [evil] counsels, even Antiochus Epiphanies, the son of the Seleucus who was also called Philopator.

By four horns he hints at the four kings who succeeded Alexander at the one time: Ptolemy son of Lagus took control of Egypt; Seleucus Nicanor got possession of Babylon and the other parts bordering on Syria; Antigonus was in charge of Asia; Antipater, Macedonia—or, as some historians think, Philip, who is also called Arrhideus, brother of Alexander.

This is Antiochus, who was born from the family of Seleucus Nicanor. It grew great toward the south and toward the east. Antiochus extended his empire especially in these two parts of the world.

As Josephus told the story, Daniel saw a smaller horn rise up from these, and it grew strong. God, who showed Daniel the vision, was telling him that war would come on his nation, that Jerusalem would be taken by storm, the temple would be pillaged, the sacrifices would be hindered and cut short, and this would last for 1,290 days.

After he had been a hostage in Rome and had without the knowledge of the Senate obtained rule by treachery, Antiochus fought with Ptolemy Philometor, that is, against the South and against Egypt; and then again against the East and against those who were fomenting revolution in Persia. At the last he fought against the Jews and captured Judea, entering into Jerusalem and setting up in the temple of God the statue of Jupiter Olympius^[1] . . . and against the power of heaven, that is, against the children of Israel, who were protected by the assistance of angels. He pushed his arrogance to such an extreme that he subjected the majority of the saints to the worship of idols, as if he would tread the very stars beneath his feet. And thus it came to pass that he held the south and the east, that is, Egypt and Persia, under his sway.

The first and second books of the Maccabees inform us of this more clearly, and the historian Josephus made a precise record of it, and we shall outline concisely the facts about him. When the Jews of the high-priestly family rebelled against the high priest of the time, those anxious for the position went to Antiochus and persuaded him to change the Jewish way of life to the Greek and to build a gymnasium in the city. When this happened, devout people were in mourning at seeing the blatant violation of the laws, while the remaining throng had no qualms about trampling on the divine law and treating with contempt the commandment about circumcision. When the uprising became more serious, Antiochus arrived and put to death most of the devout, and he had the audacity even to enter the precincts of the temple; after entering he sacked the whole temple, appropriating to himself the treasures, all the offerings, cups and bowls and vessels, the golden table, the golden censer, the lampstands made of gold, and in short all the instruments of divine worship. In addition to this he built in God’s temple an altar to Zeus, filled the whole city with idols and obliged everyone to sacrifice, while he himself sacrificed a pig on the divine altar and named the temple after Zeus of Olympus.

He signifies here the priestly order, which he compares with the host of heaven. It threw down to the earth some of the host and some of the stars and trampled on them. Here he prophesies about the sons of Semona and the allies killed by Antiochus. ^[1] THE MACCABEES. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: The host of heaven and the stars and princes of the host: he recalls in this way Onias and Eleazar and those of the house of the Maccabees.^[1] He calls them stars because of the brightness and beauty of the fear of God, by alluding to the words I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven.^{[2] [3]}

Most of the people by transgressing God’s law quickly fell away from heavenly things, and they were trampled down by this tyrant to their own destruction. He referred to them as stars on account of the fame and splendor of their piety, hinting also at the promise to Abraham, I shall make your offspring like the stars of heaven.^[1]

This means that [Antiochus] lifted himself up against God and persecuted his saints. He even took away the endelekhismos or continual offering, which was customarily sacrificed in the morning and at evening, and he prevailed to the casting down of the place of his sanctuary. And he did not do this by his own prowess but only on account of the sins of the people. And thus it came to pass that truth was prostrated on the ground, and as the worship of idols flourished, the religion of God suffered an eclipse.

Then he foretells with greater clarity the audacity that would be committed by Antiochus. On account of him sacrifice was disrupted by transgression: he did not permit the sacrifices prescribed by law to be made, requiring instead that they be performed in the Greek manner. ^[1] THE SACRIFICES WERE ABOLISHED. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: The host was given over, so that the regular burnt offering that is, the sacrifices and offerings, were abolished and removed from their place. They were called so, because they had been established since the days of Moses and had continued constantly, or because the Jews offered sacrifices in the morning and the evening; and they came to an end as a consequence of the intervention of that criminal. The place of his sanctuary, that is, he destroyed, scattered and overturned the vessels and adornments of the house of the Lord. ^[1] AN ALTAR WAS BUILT TO ZEUS IN THE TEMPLE. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: The sanctuary^[1] was cast to the ground. Indeed, when Antiochus gets into Jerusalem and kills forty thousand [inhabitants] and rapes the women, he then enters the temple, destroys the candlestick, breaks the table of the breads of the presence and all the vessels of the sanctuary, builds an altar to Zeus inside the temple, which he calls temple of Zeus, and offers a pig to him. He gets into the treasury, where he steals eighteen hundred golden talents and the vessels of the cult. When he departs from [the city], he leaves behind some immoral men in order to overturn the prescriptions and laws of the righteous. ^[2]

The word phelmouni means a person in Greek; Syriac, which is close to Hebrew, also confirms this. So blessed Daniel is saying, I heard one holy one asking another holy one. Clearly he is witnessing angels conversing and wanting to learn how long is the period of the offenses of impiety and lawlessness, the devastation of the temple, the illicit and loathsome sacrifice and the oppression of the people. ^[1] THE NAME OF THE ANGEL. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: Plūmni:^[1] interior. This name is given to the angel on the basis of his actions and the place that he occupies; it indicates the one who is in the inside and close to the Judge and who knows the secrets and the events that are about to happen. It is a Hebrew term. ^[2]

One angel asks another angel for how long a period the temple is by the judgment of God to be desolated under the rule of Antiochus, king of Syria, and how long the image of Jupiter is to stand in God’s temple (according to his additional statement: . . . and the sanctuary and the strength be trodden under foot?).

Most of our commentators refer this passage to the antichrist and hold that what occurred under Antiochus was only by way of a type that shall be fulfilled under antichrist.

By evening he referred to the beginning of the calamities and by morning to the end of the calamities, since night and darkness are figures of distress. From the present time, the beginning of the troubles, to the end, he is saying, the period is of that length [twenty-three hundred evenings and mornings].

The intention of the angel who asked the question was to learn for how long the holy things would be given into the hands of immoral people. To him the angel who interprets the vision says, For two thousand three hundred days, to which the times, time and half time^[1] mentioned above correspond.

He beheld the vision by way of a picture or likeness, and he failed to understand it. Consequently, not everyone who sees comprehends what he has seen; it is just as if we read the holy Scripture with our eyes and do not understand it with our heart.

Angels, after all, are not actually humankind by nature, but they resemble humankind in appearance. For example, three persons appeared as human beings to Abraham at the oak of Mamre,^[1] and yet they certainly were not human beings, for one of them was worshiped as the Lord. And so the Savior also stated in the Gospel: Abraham beheld my day; he beheld it and rejoiced.^[2]

I heard someone else as well using a human voice and bidding the one standing near me, whom he called Gabriel, to interpret the riddle of the revelation to me. It is possible from what was said to come to the conclusion that the one giving the orders was the Lord.

The guardian angel of Daniel, who never parted from him, asked the angel Gabriel, who was now by him, now by all the other saints in everything concerning visions, to explain to Daniel his dream.

The Jews claim that this man who directed Gabriel to explain the vision to Daniel was Michael. Quite appropriately it was Gabriel, who has been put in charge of battles, to whom this duty was assigned, inasmuch as the vision had to do with battles and contests between kings and even between kingdoms themselves. For Gabriel is translated into our language as the strength of, or the mighty one of, God. And so at that time also when the Lord was about to be born and to declare war against the demons and to triumph over the world, Gabriel came to Zacharias and to Mary.^[1] And then we read in the Psalms concerning the Lord in his triumph: Who is this king of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle; he is the King of glory.^[2] . . . Of course the significance of the name indicates the fact that the only true remedy is to be found in God.^[3]

And I became frightened, being struck by the excessive brightness of this angel.

Joshua, the son of Nun,^[1] and Daniel bowed in veneration before an angel of God, but they did not adore him. For adoration is one thing, and that which is offered in order to honor something of great excellence is another.

The first definite person we find named in Scripture son of man is, speaking at the moment from memory, Daniel. And after him, Ezekiel. They were prophets in the captivity, so far as our researches go in the undisputed books that pass currently as inspired, there is no one named by this title. . . . It was, as we think, because the people of captivity were sinners that Daniel alone, to their reproach, because they preserved the dignity of human nature, made according to the image and the likeness, was ad-dressed as the son of man. As much may be said also of Ezekiel. For the name man was first given to him who was made by God according to his image and likeness, so that he would be man in the true sense.

Do not think that these things come to fulfillment in the present age; they will happen after a great number of years. When the set time has run its course, then each of them will reach its fulfillment.

Perceiving me prostrate with fear, he first set me upright, then consoled me by making known why he had come, to inform me in my anxiety of the future and what in turn would overtake my people as a result of God’s wrath. Then, in his wish to allay the fear besetting me, he mentioned that this would happen after a time and interpreted to me the meaning of each of the things I had seen.

As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, this is the king^[1] of the Medes and the Persians. [Gabriel] alludes to Darius. The two horns signify the two kingdoms, the Persian and the Mede. The male goat is the king of Greece: Alexander. And the great horn between his eyes signifies his highest power and his exceedingly extended empire all over the world. After the horn was broken, four kingdoms arose from it: the monarchy of Alexander, after his death, will be diminished and divided into parts assigned to his friends Seleucus, Philip, Demetrius and Ptolemy.

After [Alexander’s] death his empire will be divided into four kingdoms, but though those reigning over them are four, they will not succeed in achieving what he achieved but will be seen to be much inferior to his strength.

When the Jews begin to abandon the law and faith of God and to estrange themselves, the grandchildren of Seleucus Nicator will invade the last part of their kingdom. A king of bold countenance shall arise: this is Antiochus, who is able to understand riddles, is cunning and is ready to weave intrigues and to prepare his domination by means of his intelligence.

Nothing will be an obstacle to him; instead, he will do what he wishes. Of such people blessed David says in exhortation, Do not vie with the one who prospers in his way, with the one who commits lawlessness:^[1] it often happens that people living a godless and lawless life prosper considerably in their lawless pursuits.

[Gabriel] says this because [Antiochus] got into the city through fraudulence, polluted the precious vessels of the temple and committed pillages and demolished the walls. Without warning he shall destroy many: he killed forty thousand Jews and captured just as many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes: either because Antiochus would have attacked God with curses and blasphemies or because he would have violated the temple of God and would have destroyed the holy vessels.

Having explained the vision that we have examined above to the best of our ability, the angel Gabriel adds at the end, You, therefore, seal up the vision, because it shall come to pass after many days. By the mention of a seal, he showed that the things spoken were of a hidden character and not accessible to the ears of the multitude or susceptible of comprehension prior to their actual fulfillment by the events themselves.

Seal up the vision because it will be in many days time, that is, leave it obscure for many people; I have made it clear to you in your longing before the event.

Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and after these things write.^[1] This shows that what is now undisclosed is to be explained through experience and the course of the events themselves. And from the heavenly voice the Evangelist learned that the voices are to be imprinted on the mind, but that the final understanding and the clear interpretation of them is reserved for the last times. Also Daniel learned that such words are to be sealed and locked away.

This is the same thing as we read in Genesis about Abraham, for after he had heard the Lord speaking to him, he averred that he was but dust and ashes.^[1] And so Daniel states that he languished as a reaction to the horror of the vision and suffered illness. And after he had risen from his sickbed, he says he performed the tasks assigned to him by the king, rendering to all people all that was due them and bearing in mind the Gospel principle: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.^[2]

On learning the troubles that would overtake the people in due course, I became so unwell as to fall a victim to illness. Yet despite being thus indisposed, I managed the work entrusted to me by the king, with no one aware of the cause of the sickness. He was in the habit of saying along with blessed Paul, Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant?^[1] and Weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice,^[2] and If one limb suffers, all the limbs suffer together.^[3] This man felt the same way, and he had this affection for his fellow slaves; and on learning of the calamities to overtake his fellow slaves many generations later, he kept weeping and wailing. He had a precise knowledge that he personally would not experience those things but would instead be freed from the present life before long.

If there was no one who could interpret it, how was it that the angel interpreted it in the previous passage? What he means is that he had heard mention of kings and did not know what their names were; he learned of things to come, but he was tossed about with uncertainty as to what time they would come to pass. And so he did the only thing he could do: he marveled at the vision and resigned everything to God’s omniscience.