Commentary on Daniel

Contents

Staged up to the opening of Bel and the Dragon (14:1), where the OCR text breaks off in mid-sentence; the remainder of the commentary is not yet staged.

Reading pages: 0.1–0.5 · 1.1–2.8 · 2.12–2.44 · 2.46–3.38 · 3.39–3.87 · 3.88–3.100 · 4.1–4.34 · 5.1–5.30 · 5.31–7.1 · 7.2–7.25 · 7.26 · 8.1–8.27 · 9.3–9.24 · 9.25–9.26 · 10.1–11.5 · 11.6–11.33 · 11.38–14.1

1. 0.1Theodoret explains why he writes a commentary: not all have equal knowledge, Scripture commands teaching the next generation, and friends have urged him to explain Daniel.
2. 0.2Theodoret answers Jews who deny that Daniel is a prophet by listing what Daniel foretold about the successive kingdoms.
3. 0.3Theodoret argues that Daniel, who foretold the fortunes of the great kingdoms, is a prophet as truly as Abraham, Samuel, Obadiah, Jonah, and Nahum.
4. 0.4After a damaged passage, Theodoret recounts the last kings of Judah, the fall of Jerusalem, and God's continued care for the Jews through prophets.
5. 0.5God provided Daniel and his companions as teachers for the exiles, and Daniel's wisdom benefited even the Babylonian king and his subjects.
6. 1.1Daniel dates the first capture of Jerusalem by the reign of Jehoiakim, as the other prophets date their prophecies, which shows that he is a prophet.
7. 1.2God, not Nebuchadnezzar's power, gave up Jerusalem and the temple vessels, teaching the Jews that he needs nothing and later showing his power to the Babylonians; Nebuchadnezzar then chooses royal Israelite youths for his service, fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy.
8. 1.5The king grants the four youths food from his own table, and Daniel modestly names only their tribe, not their royal descent.
9. 1.7The chief eunuch gives the youths Chaldean names as a mark of servitude, and Daniel resolves not to defile himself with the king's food, offered to idols.
10. 1.9God gives Daniel favor with the chief eunuch, as he did Joseph, but the eunuch fears the king, so Daniel turns to the steward Amelsar.
11. 1.12Daniel asks for a ten-day trial of vegetables and water, trusting God that he and his companions will look healthier than those who eat the king's food.
12. 1.14After ten days the youths who ate vegetables look healthier than those fed from the king's table.
13. 1.16The steward gives the youths vegetables, gaining both a lesson about fasting and their portion of the king's food.
14. 1.17God, not Chaldean schooling, gave the four youths wisdom, and Daniel the gift of interpreting visions; the king finds them ten times wiser than all his magi.
15. 1.21Daniel's note that he lived until Cyrus's first year fixes the span of the prophecy and shows that he saw the end of the captivity, which Cyrus decreed after learning Isaiah's prophecy.
16. 2.1Theodoret harmonizes the dates of Daniel and Jeremiah and explains that God took the dream from Nebuchadnezzar's memory in order to make Daniel known.
17. 2.3The Chaldeans ask the king to tell them the dream, speaking Syriac, the common language of the many nations among them.
18. 2.5The king threatens death and promises rewards; the Chaldeans reply that they can interpret a dream but cannot recover one he has forgotten.
19. 2.8The king accuses the Chaldeans of stalling; they reply that only gods could tell the dream, which prepares for Daniel's showing that the true God reveals it.
20. 2.12Nebuchadnezzar orders the wise men killed; Daniel, not yet known to the king, learns the cause from Arioch and asks for time to find the dream.
21. 2.17Daniel and his friends pray for mercy, the mystery is revealed, and Daniel thanks God in a hymn that includes his companions in the answered prayer.
22. 2.24Daniel asks Arioch to spare the Babylonian wise men, seeking their salvation as well as his own.
23. 2.25Arioch presents Daniel as an unknown captive, and the king, using his Babylonian name, asks whether he can tell the dream.
24. 2.27Daniel denies that any diviner could tell the dream and proclaims the one God in heaven who reveals mysteries, prefacing his hard news with a blessing on the king.
25. 2.29Daniel tells the dream of the statue of four metals and interprets them as the Babylonian, Persian, Macedonian and Roman kingdoms; the stone cut without hands is Christ, born of the Virgin, whose kingdom will end them all.
26. 2.40The iron kingdom is Rome, which conquered nearly all nations and brought them under ordered government.
27. 2.41The feet of iron mixed with clay are not a fifth kingdom but the Roman kingdom in a weaker final state, still partly strong.
28. 2.43The mixing of iron and clay means intermarriage within one weakened kingdom; Theodoret rejects interpreters who made the iron Alexander and the feet his Macedonian successors.
29. 2.44The everlasting kingdom that crushes the statue is Christ's kingdom at his second coming, not at his first, since Rome grew stronger under Augustus; God cared even for the impious king by humbling his pride.
30. 2.46The proud king falls down before the captive Daniel and confesses Daniel's God as God of gods, though he still calls his idols gods.
31. 2.48As with Joseph, God raised Daniel to high office so that a pious ruler might benefit his subjects, and Daniel shared the honor with his companions.
32. 2.49Daniel obtains office for his three companions, showing the faith, hope and love of which Paul speaks.
33. 3.1Ignoring God's lesson in the dream, Nebuchadnezzar makes a statue entirely of gold, as if to prove false the prophecy that other kingdoms would follow his.
34. 3.2Nebuchadnezzar summons all his officials and orders everyone to worship the golden statue on pain of the furnace; only the three youths refuse, and the Chaldeans report them.
35. 3.12The Chaldeans accuse the three youths out of envy; the king, forgetting his confession, threatens them and blasphemes like Sennacherib, and the youths answer that they need not reply.
36. 3.17The youths answer that God can save them, and that even if he does not they will not worship the statue; thrown bound into the furnace, they are unharmed while the flame kills their accusers.
37. 3.23The youths walk in the flames praising God, like the apostles who rejoiced in suffering; Azariah's prayer confesses that God's judgment on Israel was just because they had sinned.
38. 3.31Azariah declares that all God has brought on Israel is a just judgment.
39. 3.34Azariah confesses that Israel's sins have brought them under a wicked king and silenced them, yet asks God, for his name and his covenant, not to abandon them.
40. 3.35Azariah recalls God's promise to Abraham, Isaac and Israel to make their descendants as many as the stars and the sand.
41. 3.37Azariah explains that Israel became few not because God failed his promise but because of their sins.
42. 3.38Azariah laments that in exile Israel has no ruler, prophet, priesthood or place of sacrifice, since the law allowed sacrifice only in Jerusalem.
43. 3.39Unable to sacrifice in exile, the youths offer a contrite heart in place of sacrifices, as David taught in Psalms 51 and 50.
44. 3.41Chastened by punishment, the youths promise to follow God wholeheartedly and seek his face, that is, his favor and the restoration of the temple.
45. 3.42Azariah asks God to save them by his mercy and wonders so that his name may be glorified by all who see it.
46. 3.44Azariah prays that God's enemies be shamed and know him as the only God; the furnace is stoked to forty-nine cubits, but an angel brings a cool breeze to the youths.
47. 3.50The angel makes the furnace like a dewy breeze; the youths had faced the fire expecting death, and God crowned their contest by saving them.
48. 3.51The three youths praise God with one voice, a harmony set against the music that summoned the worship of the statue.
49. 3.52The Song of the Three begins with superlative praise, the words of ardent love, naming God as the God of their fathers.
50. 3.53The youths, true to the law, direct their praise toward the burned temple, then add God's heavenly throne so as not to confine him to a place.
51. 3.55The youths praise God who sees the depths and, lest he seem confined to the cherubim of the temple, go on to place him in the firmament.
52. 3.56God is praised in the firmament as filling all things, and the youths call all creation to join the hymn.
53. 3.57The youths summon all God's works to praise him, one by one.
54. 3.58Theodoret summarizes the summons to the angels, heavens, luminaries, weather, light and darkness, noting how the song pairs natures with their workings and sources.
55. 3.74The earth is called to praise God.
56. 3.75The mountains and hills are called to praise God.
57. 3.76Plants, springs, seas and rivers are called to praise God.
58. 3.79The song calls sea creatures, birds, beasts and finally humanity to praise God in the order of creation in Genesis, and then Israel and its priests.
59. 3.85The servants of the Lord, though not priests, and the souls of the righteous are called to praise God.
60. 3.87The holy and humble are called to praise God; the long list of creatures expresses the youths' gratitude for creation and teaches the Chaldeans that the elements they worship are God's works.
61. 3.88The youths end the song by praising God's everlasting mercy; Nebuchadnezzar sees a fourth figure in the fire, frees them, blesses their God and promotes them; Theodoret then introduces the king's letter in chapter 4 with Isaiah's oracles against the arrogant Assyrian and Babylonian king.
62. 3.100Nebuchadnezzar confesses that God's kingdom alone is everlasting before telling his story.
63. 4.1Nebuchadnezzar names himself at the start of his account so that his fame may vouch for what he tells.
64. 4.2In the midst of prosperity the king sees a dream that frightens him because he cannot understand it.
65. 4.4The Babylonian diviners fail, and the king turns to Daniel, whom he credits with the holy Spirit of God, a phrase Theodoret thinks he learned from Daniel.
66. 4.6Remembering Daniel only in his need, the king tells him the dream of the great tree, whose height, breadth, leaves and fruit Theodoret explains as Nebuchadnezzar's pride and empire, and the watcher's sentence as God's decree to cut it down.
67. 4.12The stump left in the ground with iron and bronze bands means the king's madness and confinement, limited to seven times so that he might repent.
68. 4.14The angel's sentence teaches that the Most High rules the kingdoms of men and gives them to whom he wills, even the lowliest.
69. 4.15The king asks Daniel to interpret the dream, since his wise men cannot and Daniel has the Spirit of God.
70. 4.16Daniel, troubled at first, tactfully wishes the dream on the king's enemies and then tells him plainly that he is the tree that grew great.
71. 4.19Daniel applies the tree's height to the king's proud imagination and its breadth to his worldwide rule.
72. 4.20Daniel applies the watcher's sentence to the king, calling him lord as Paul teaches subjects to honor authorities, yet telling him the hard truth.
73. 4.22Daniel foretells the king's madness for seven times (which Theodoret reckons as three and a half years) and urges him to atone by mercy to the poor; the king ignores the year's grace given him.
74. 4.26A year later the king boasts that he built great Babylon by his own might, and God's punishment follows at once.
75. 4.28A voice from heaven pronounces the sentence on the king who wished to climb to heaven: he loses his kingdom until he acknowledges the Most High.
76. 4.30The king is driven out in madness, eats grass and lives untended like a beast, a fitting punishment for his beastlike rule, until God restores him.
77. 4.31Restored to his senses, Nebuchadnezzar lifts his eyes to heaven and praises the Most High, whose kingdom is everlasting.
78. 4.32The restored king confesses that all humanity is as nothing before God, who does as he wills in heaven and on earth, echoing Isaiah and David.
79. 4.33Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom and dignity are restored, and he piously speaks of greater majesty as given to him by God.
80. 4.34Nebuchadnezzar praises the King of heaven who humbles the proud, and Theodoret urges humility after the example of Christ, who became poor for our sake.
81. 5.1Theodoret explains that Belshazzar reigned after Evil-merodach, whom Daniel omits because he writes prophecy rather than full history, and introduces Belshazzar's feast.
82. 5.9Drunk, Belshazzar profanes the temple vessels and praises idols; a hand writes on the wall, the diviners fail, and the queen, probably his mother, comes in to calm him.
83. 5.11The queen reminds Belshazzar of Daniel, in whom is the Spirit of God and whom Nebuchadnezzar made chief of the wise men.
84. 5.12The queen describes Daniel's Spirit-given gifts, and Belshazzar, who had neglected Daniel since his father's death, summons him.
85. 5.14Belshazzar offers Daniel rewards, which Daniel refuses as one who will not sell divine things, and he begins by reminding the king that God gave Nebuchadnezzar his power.
86. 5.20Daniel reminds Belshazzar how God humbled his proud father, rebukes him for profaning the temple vessels and praising lifeless idols instead of the God who holds his life, and begins to interpret the writing.
87. 5.28Belshazzar, unlike his father, is given no time for repentance, because he ignored his father's punishment and God foresaw his lasting impiety; he honors Daniel, but the sentence stands.
88. 5.30Belshazzar is slain that night, ending the Chaldean kingdom, and Theodoret warns against the hardening of heart that pleasure and sin produce.
89. 5.31Theodoret rejects Josephus's identification of Darius the Mede with Cyaxares, son of Astyages, and argues from Jeremiah's prophecy that Darius was Nebuchadnezzar's grandson through a daughter, while leaving the question open.
90. 6.5Daniel's piety keeps him honored under every king, and his envious colleagues can find no fault in him except in his worship of God.
91. 6.6Envy drives Daniel's rivals to an impious decree against prayer, and Daniel defies it by praying openly toward Jerusalem, as Solomon's dedication prayer had taught.
92. 6.14The accusers force Darius to keep his own law; he hands Daniel to the lions but declares that Daniel's God will save him.
93. 6.18The king's sleepless, fasting night shows both his kindness toward Daniel and his cowardice before the accusers.
94. 6.19Darius hurries to the den at dawn and calls Daniel servant of the living God, asking whether God has been willing to save him.
95. 6.21Daniel greets the king with the customary wish for long life, like the title "eternal" still given to emperors in contracts.
96. 6.22Daniel explains that God, who governs justly, shut the lions' mouths because he had put God's worship first without ever wronging the king.
97. 6.23The accusers are devoured before they reach the floor of the den, proving that the lions were not merely sated and displaying God's justice and wisdom.
98. 6.25Darius publishes the miracle to all nations with a greeting of peace, like the Christian greeting at the head of letters.
99. 6.26Darius decrees reverence for Daniel's living and eternal God, and Theodoret urges readers to put piety before everything, as Daniel and the apostles did.
100. 7.1Theodoret marks the turn from Daniel's historical narratives to his visions, beginning with the dream of the four beasts, which parallels Nebuchadnezzar's image.
101. 7.2The sea is the turbulent present life and the four winds the shifting successions of empire; the eagle-winged lioness is the Assyrian-Babylonian kingdom, humbled to a human heart.
102. 7.5The bear is the cruel Persian kingdom, whose three "wings" are the regions it conquered under Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius, and which survives, reduced, on one side.
103. 7.6The four-winged, four-headed leopard is Alexander's swift Macedonian empire and its division among four successors.
104. 7.7The fourth beast is Rome, its ten horns ten kings, and the little horn the Antichrist foretold by Paul; the Ancient of Days enthroned shows God's eternity, purity, power, and coming judgment, while God's appearances are shaped visions, not his nature.
105. 7.11The beast's "body", the carnal members of the last kingdom, is burned; the one like a Son of Man coming with the clouds is Christ at his second coming, receiving the kingdom as man, as the Gospels, Paul, and Psalm 2 also teach.
106. 7.16Daniel asks one of the attendants of the heavenly court, whose ranks of ministers and bystanders resemble the officers of a human court.
107. 7.17The four beasts are the same four kingdoms as the image (the clay is not a fifth), and after them the endless kingdom is given to the saints.
108. 7.19The fourth beast's iron teeth are Rome's tribute from all nations, and its bronze claws the soldiers drawn from the former Macedonian (bronze) kingdom.
109. 7.20The horn is small at its rise from the Jewish nation but looks greater than the rest once it has uprooted three kings.
110. 7.22The horn humbles the saints only until the Ancient of Days gives his just verdict and hands them the kingdom.
111. 7.23Theodoret says his own generation sees the fourth kingdom's oppression fulfilled in daily experience.
112. 7.24The ten kings reign simultaneously at the end, since the Antichrist, arising after them, humbles three at once.
113. 7.25The Antichrist will blaspheme, persecute the saints, and try to overturn the Christian way of life, but God permits this only for "a time, times, and half a time", three and a half years.
114. 7.26Paul's teaching on the lawless one and Christ's words on the last tribulation explain the judgment of the little horn; against teachers who made the fourth beast Macedonia and the Maccabees the saints, Theodoret argues that it is Rome, after whose end Christ will come and give the saints the eternal kingdom.
115. 8.1Daniel's second vision, dated to Belshazzar's third year, is seen in a dream at Susa, the Persian capital, fittingly since it concerns Persia's fall.
116. 8.3The two-horned ram is the Persian kingdom with its two royal lines, the second greater; the swift he-goat is Alexander's Macedonian kingdom, its single horn Alexander himself.
117. 8.6The goat's attack on the ram is Alexander's defeat of Darius's generals, then Darius at Issus and finally near Babylon; the two broken horns are the Medes and Persians united under Cyrus.
118. 8.8Alexander's death at the height of his power is the breaking of the great horn, and the four horns are his four successors, matching the four heads of the third beast.
119. 8.9The strong horn is Antiochus Epiphanes, whose Hellenizing of Jerusalem, plundering and profanation of the temple, and seduction of many Jews from the law are told in Maccabees and Josephus.
120. 8.11Antiochus rages against the God of Israel until the archangel who protects the people brings deliverance, and he forces the sacrifices into pagan form.
121. 8.19The holy ones ask how long the profanation will last and are told 2,300 days, the span of the Jews' calamity under Antiochus; Gabriel is sent to interpret, and Daniel's terror at an angel refutes Eunomius's claim to know God's essence.
122. 8.20The ram is the joint kingdom of the Medes and Persians, from Darius the Mede and Cyrus to the last Darius.
123. 8.21The he-goat is the kingdom of the Greeks and its great horn Alexander.
124. 8.22Alexander's kingdom will be divided among four weaker kings.
125. 8.23The shameless king of the last Seleucid times is Antiochus, cunning and powerful only by God's permission, who seduces many by deceit, attacks the temple of the King of kings, and crushes a people abandoned for their negligence.
126. 8.26The appointed time is certain, but Daniel is to seal the vision, leaving it obscure to the many until its distant fulfillment.
127. 8.27Daniel falls ill grieving over calamities far in the future that he would never see, an example of the sympathy members of Christ's body should have for one another.
128. 9.3Daniel, reckoning Jeremiah's seventy years as complete, turns to prayer; Theodoret reconciles Jeremiah and Ezra (seventy years to Cyrus, from the first captivity) with Zechariah (seventy years to Darius's second year, from the temple's destruction).
129. 9.4Daniel's prayer opens by naming God from his works and recalling that his covenant mercy is kept for those who love him and keep his commandments.
130. 9.5Daniel confesses Israel's sin, wrong, and impiety, setting the people's ingratitude and idolatry against God's goodness.
131. 9.6Israel refused the prophets sent to every rank of the people, so righteousness belongs to God and shame to them; Daniel includes himself in the confession.
132. 9.8Shame belongs to every rank of Israel, kings, rulers, and priests alike, and the punishment is just.
133. 9.9Mercy and forgiveness belong to God; Daniel makes the people's sin his own in confession, as Isaiah bids, and admits their constant resistance to the prophets.
134. 9.11Because all Israel sinned together, the oath of Deuteronomy 32 and the curses pronounced on Mount Ebal have fallen on them.
135. 9.12God has fulfilled his threats, and Jerusalem's sufferings are without parallel.
136. 9.13The evils foretold in the law came, yet even then Israel did not repent.
137. 9.14God justly brought the evil on Israel; Daniel appeals to the God of the exodus to spare Jerusalem and the sanctuary, not for the people's merit but for his own sake.
138. 9.18Daniel asks God to hear, forgive, and act at once, not for Israel's righteousness but for his own name; his prayer's careful order and humility are admired.
139. 9.20Gabriel, recognized from the earlier vision, flies to Daniel at the evening sacrifice; the prophecy is given in riddles so that it is not cheapened, and Daniel is called "a man of desires" for his self-denial, longing to learn, or loveliness.
140. 9.24The seventy weeks are 490 years of life under the law after Jerusalem's rebuilding, ending in the crucifixion, after which Israel received no recall; the other phrases of the verse are fulfilled in Christ, who forgives sins, is everlasting righteousness, fulfills the prophets, and is the anointed Holy of Holies.
141. 9.25Counting back from Christ's baptism, the sixty-nine weeks reach the twentieth year of Artaxerxes and Nehemiah's rebuilding: 469 solar years equal 483 lunar years; the sixty-two weeks end with the last Hasmonean high priest Hyrcanus, and the seven with the Jordan, a period of unlawfully appointed high priests attested by Josephus and Luke.
142. 9.26In the last seven weeks the high-priestly anointing lapses under Herod and Rome, and the city and temple will be destroyed beyond recall; the seventieth week is Christ's ministry and the apostles' preaching in Jerusalem, in whose middle his sacrifice ends the sacrifices of the law, and no Maccabean fulfillment fits the 490 years or the title Holy of Holies.
143. 10.1The date in Cyrus's third year is not an error: "until the first year of Cyrus" means only that Daniel lived into Cyrus's reign, as the angel and the end of the book confirm.
144. 10.2Daniel mourns not because of any hardship but because most of the exiles, comfortable in Babylon, refused Cyrus's offer of return; he himself stays to care for them, and fasts even from bread.
145. 10.4Daniel's fast ran through Passover season, showing that he did not keep Passover outside the land the law prescribes, which Theodoret turns against the Jews who keep the feasts in foreign lands.
146. 10.5The figure in linen with a belt of pure gold, a body like Tarshish gold, and a face like lightning is described as a radiant heavenly messenger.
147. 10.7Daniel's companions, hearing but not seeing, flee in fear, as Paul's companions heard the voice on the Damascus road without seeing the light's source.
148. 10.8Left alone with the vision, Daniel loses all strength and color from fear.
149. 10.9Daniel falls on his face at the voice, and a hand raises him to his knees and hands.
150. 10.11The angel calls Daniel by his Hebrew name, "judgment of God", fitting for one judged worthy to foresee distant events, and bids him rise and listen.
151. 10.12God heard Daniel's fasting prayer at once; the angel's delay by the "prince of Persia" shows that angels guard individuals and archangels nations, and that the guardians of other nations, not yet knowing the mystery revealed through the church, resented God's favor to sinful Israel.
152. 10.14Michael stays to deal with the angel set over the Persian kingdom while Gabriel comes to reveal Israel's future.
153. 10.15Daniel, overwhelmed, is given speech by a touch; his calling the figure "lord" is a courtesy title, as Abraham and Rebekah used it, not a sign that the figure is God, since he later swears by the Living One.
154. 10.18The angel strengthens Daniel and assures him he has come not to harm but to reveal what Daniel longed to know.
155. 10.20Of all the heavenly powers only Michael, Israel's guardian, supports the people; the angel's "fighting" is a dispute of persuasion, and the speaker is probably Gabriel.
156. 11.1The angel says that from Cyrus's first year he worked for the people's release from captivity.
157. 11.2The three Persian kings after Cyrus lead to Xerxes, whose wealth and failed invasion of Greece are famous even among pagan writers; the prophecy then passes to Alexander.
158. 11.3Alexander's empire is divided among four kings and others besides; the prophecy follows only the Ptolemies and Seleucids who afflicted the Jews, and, like Christ's discourse on the temple, mixes events of the Macedonian era with those of the end of Rome and the Antichrist.
159. 11.5The strong king of the South is Ptolemy Philopator and his prince is the general Scopas, who extended Ptolemaic rule beyond Egypt.
160. 11.6The daughter of the king of the South given to the king of the North is a short-lived marriage alliance between the Ptolemaic house and Antiochus the Great.
161. 11.7A Ptolemy profanes Jerusalem's temple and carries off Seleucid spoils, as 3 Maccabees and Josephus relate; the Jews suffer between the warring kings until they go over to Antiochus the Great.
162. 11.9The Seleucid king's "sons" are his generals, a Hebrew idiom; he will sweep like a flood into Egypt and carry the war there.
163. 11.11Antiochus defeats the Egyptian host but cannot take Egypt, then returns late in his reign with a greater army; Theodoret explains the Hebrew and Syriac idiom of doubled verbs.
164. 11.14Lawless Jews fail to overthrow the law through the kings; the king of the North takes the Ptolemaic fortresses and enters the "land of desire", Judea, where the Jews welcome him, and he gives the Egyptian king his daughter in a marriage that will not last.
165. 11.18Antiochus the Great's conquests in the islands are answered by Roman humiliation at Thermopylae, tribute, and his son Antiochus Epiphanes held hostage at Rome.
166. 11.19After Antiochus the Great's fall, Antiochus Epiphanes escapes from Rome, succeeds his brother Seleucus, and by his energy and fame alone subdues others.
167. 11.21Antiochus Epiphanes, despised as a hostage, seizes the kingdom by wealth and deceit, as Gabriel had foretold in Daniel 8.
168. 11.22The Egyptian kingdom that once overwhelmed its foes will itself be overwhelmed by Antiochus, along with the prince of the covenant.
169. 11.23The deceit against the "prince of the covenant" is the overthrow of the pious high priest Onias by Jason and Menelaus; Antiochus then deceives Jerusalem, plunders the temple, massacres its people, and plots against Egypt without success.
170. 11.25Antiochus Epiphanes' invasion of Egypt and defeat of Ptolemy, recorded in 1 Maccabees, was foretold to Daniel.
171. 11.26The Egyptian king is ruined from within, his revenue consumed and his army destroyed with great slaughter.
172. 11.27Antiochus and Ptolemy feign friendship at one table under Roman pressure, but the peace is false and will not last.
173. 11.28Antiochus returns from Egypt enriched and sets himself to destroy the law God gave the Jews.
174. 11.29Antiochus's next campaign against Egypt will end not in victory but in retreat.
175. 11.30Repulsed from Egypt with help from Kittim (Cyprus), Antiochus turns his anger on the holy covenant: his generals slaughter Jerusalem, stop the daily sacrifice, and set up the altar of Zeus, as 2 Maccabees records.
176. 11.32Apostates are seduced by flattery, while Mattathias and his sons, knowing their God, resist Antiochus's decrees and defeat his generals.
177. 11.33The faithful teachers fall by sword and fire and are refined, and the Maccabees bring little help; then the prophecy passes from Antiochus, the type, to the Antichrist, the archetype, who exalts himself above every god and regards neither his fathers' gods nor the desire of women, which cannot fit the idolatrous and licentious Antiochus.
178. 11.38The Antichrist will call himself the mighty God (Maozim), build and adorn temples to himself, and reward those who follow him with lands.
179. 11.40At the end the Antichrist, the "king of the North", will be attacked by the king of the South amid the wars of the ten kings, as Antiochus was his type and as Christ foretold wars, famines, and earthquakes.
180. 11.41Edom, Moab, and Ammon escape the Antichrist either historically, as nations he despises, or figuratively, as those reddened by Christ's blood and born of God; his conquest of Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia, which Antiochus never achieved, is the uprooting of the three horns.
181. 11.44Reports from east and north will drive the Antichrist back in rage to destroy many, which again does not fit Antiochus, recalled by Rome from the west.
182. 11.45The Antichrist will encamp near Jerusalem, between the seas, and meet sudden destruction there with no one to save him, slain by the breath of the Lord's mouth.
183. 12.1Michael will rise to help the people under the Antichrist, and Elijah will come to convert the Jews and join them to the Gentile church in one body, while those foreknown by God are saved through the unparalleled tribulation.
184. 12.2The awakening of the dead to everlasting life or shame cannot refer to the Maccabees but teaches the general resurrection and judgment; "many" means "all", as in Paul.
185. 12.3The wise will shine like the firmament and the sun, and the many righteous like stars, in differing degrees of glory.
186. 12.4Daniel is to seal the prophecy until knowledge increases; after Christ's coming the Spirit broke the seals and made it plain to believers.
187. 12.5Two further angels appear on the river banks, and Daniel asks the man in linen how long until the end of the wonders.
188. 12.7The man in linen swears by the Living One, proving he is not God, who swears by himself; "a time, times, and half a time" is the Antichrist's three and a half years, near whose end Elijah will appear and announce Christ's second coming.
189. 12.9The words are sealed because divine things are not for all; the wise will understand, and when the events come the fire of judgment will separate the wicked from the righteous.
190. 12.11The 1,290 days spell out the three and a half years; the abomination of desolation is the Antichrist himself, who will overturn the church's liturgy.
191. 12.12The extra forty-five days are Elijah's preaching after the Antichrist's fall, before Christ comes to crown those who endure; the different numbers of days show that Antiochus and the Antichrist are distinct.
192. 12.13Daniel is told he will die and rise at the end to his lot among those like him, a clear teaching of the resurrection.
193. 14.1At the opening of the story of Bel, Theodoret notes Daniel's influence with Cyrus, rebukes the Jews of his day for excluding Daniel from the prophets, cites Josephus as calling Daniel one of the greatest prophets, and closes with an exhortation to prepare for the resurrection.