1 by its two horns, the Median and Persian kingdoms united in it: by its pushing so as no beast might stand before it, its conquests and supremacy over other powers; (a characteristic of the Persians for some fifty or sixty years, from the time of Cyrus's accession to that of the Greek expedition of Xerxes :) and, once more, by the directions of its butting, specified at the opening of the vision, "westward, and northward, and southward," either the general directions of Persian aggrandizement during these fifty years, towards Lydia, and Thrace, and Egypt, and India,2 or the particular directions of the very remarkable, and up to a certain point triumphant, expedition of Xerxes, at their close.-Again, by the goat was figured as meetly the Macedonian power:* by the great horn between its eyes, the sovereignty of Alexander the Great; under whom the symbolic goat rushed with irresistible swiftness and fury on the Persian ram; and, having destroyed its kingdom, waxed very great by adding this latter kingdom in all its amplitude to his own, and uniting the two as one mighty empire. By the great horn's breaking when it was strong was figured Alexander's death in the plenitude of his power, and consequent breaking-up of his kingdom; by the four notable horns that stood up in its place, and out of the nation, towards the four winds of heaven, the four Macedonian kingdoms apportioned by treaty after the death of Alexander's brother and son, and the great battle of Ipsus, to four of his chief generals, on the 5 6 1 On the later rise of the higher or Persian horn, Mr. Cuninghame remarks, p. 231, that in Dan. v. 31 and vi. 1, it is said that Darius the Mede took the kingdom; but that afterwards Persia is introduced as the first and chief name of the united kingdom; as in Esther i. 3, 14, 18, 19, "Persia and Media," &c. 2 Lydia conquered by Cyrus, Egypt by Cambyses, India in one direction, and Thrace in another, by Darius Hystaspes. "Ahasuerus," it is said in Esther i. 1, "who reigned from India even to Ethiopia over 127 provinces." 3 Through Asia Minor westward, Thrace and Macedonia northward, Thessaly southward.-Theodoret, on Dan. viii., takes Xerxes' expedition as the epoch of the highest Persian greatness. * See the emblem of a goat on the appended Macedonian coin; and also what is said on it in the same Note1, p. 400 of my first Volume, just before referred to. 5 By the victories of the Granicus, Issus, and Arbela, in the years 334, 333, 331 B.C. respectively. 7 So verse 22. 6 B.C. 323. same great platform of the joint territory of the goat and ram:-viz. that of Greece to Cassander, of Thrace with Bithynia and the adjacent Euxine provinces to Lysimachus, of Egypt and Palestine to Ptolemy, and the rest of Asia to Seleucus.'-Thus much, I say, is plain. The explanation of the latter part of the vision, and of the little horn to which it relates, is more difficult: the interpreting Angel not having described with absolute distinctness either the place where, or the time when, of the rise of this Little Horn; nor, again, the particular power and people that it was to desolate. The following indications, however, are given respecting it; which, when considered with the additional light of subsequent history reflected on the subject, will, if I mistake not, direct us with sufficient clearness to the power intended. 1st. It was to originate out of one of the four abovementioned Macedonian Empires-whether out of the Greek dynasty ruling, or out of the territorial domain, and perhaps with the same capital city, comprised in it; for the latter as well as former relation to the originating horn will satisfy the prefigurative emblem. (See the proof below.)-2. As to time, it was to rise "at the latter time of their kingdom," i. e. of the kingdom 1 On Alexander's death, Philip Aridaus, his half-brother, was proclaimed King at a meeting of the chief generals; and, in conjunction with him, so soon as born, a son of Alexander of whom Roxana was then pregnant, called Alexander Egus. And during their life the generals forbore from assuming the royal title; professing themselves simply governors under Alexander's son and brother. But in 316 Philip Aridæus was murdered; and in 309 Alexander Ægus, then fourteen years old, and his mother Roxana. Whereupon followed what is said in 1 Macc. i. 7; "Alexander died; and his servants bare rule every one in his place; and they all put crowns on themselves." The ambition of Antigonus, governor in the first instance of Phrygia, and his attempt at subjugating the other princes, having caused a general war between them, and Antigonus fallen in the decisive battle of Ipsus, a Phrygian town, in the year 301,-the celebrated quadri-partition of the provinces was made between Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy, which I have noticed in the Text. See Rollin ad Ann. 301, or the Universal History, Vol. ix. p. 50, &c. 2 In case of a family or people being perpetuated before the world, unmixed in the main from generation to generation, then in the largest and most sudden chronological transitions of prophecy, a princely scion even at a very distant age rising from it, might evidently be prefigured as a later horn springing out of an earlier horn, typical of the nation or family; and this in the strictest construction of the figure. Hence the peculiar propriety of Ezekiel's language, with reference to Israel's restoration at the latter day, "I will cause the horn of Israel of these Greek dynasties: in which phrase the use of the singular noun kingdom, not kingdoms, is to be remarked, as deserving notice.'-3. The character of the Little Horn is described as that of "a king of fierce countenance, understanding (or causing to understand) 2 dark sentences;" whether enigmas generally, or specially dark religious oracular sayings as from heaven.3-4. His success was to be such that he would wax (or be) exceeding great; in directions "toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the glory: "-in regard of which to bud" (Ezek. xxix. 21); though by a cotemporary prophet it had been said, "He hath cut off all the horn of Israel." (Lam. ii. 3.) But what when the successive fortunes of a country or of its ruling dynasty are glanced at in prophecy, with the same rapid transition from an earlier to a later age, in cases where invasions and revolutions, many and great perhaps, intervening, have more than once revolutionized the country; and so intermixed other races as to constitute the inhabitants in respect of blood, and perhaps language too, and religion, very much a different population? In strict genealogical truth unity could not be then represented as existing between the earlier inhabitants or dynasty and the later; nor the figure of a later horn springing out of one earlier correctly used to designate them. Yet in fact, even in these cases, the community of local site, and of a certain measure of the same stock in the population, is sometimes so regarded as an identification in prophecy, that a continuity of political existence is ascribed to the earlier and later people, or dynasty,―the common designation given them of one and the same impersonating appellative, -and, in symbolic predictions, the symbol of a horn out of the old head applied. For example, in Balaam's prophecy, Numb. xxiv. 22, 24, we read, "The Kenite shall be wasted until Ashur carry thee away captive; and ships shall come from Chittim, and shall afflict Ashur : "-where the continuity of the impersonation is kept up, though it was Assyria under a pure Assyrian and then Babylonian dynasty, that carried away the Kenite; and Assyria half Macedonized, and under the Macedonian dynasty of the Seleucide, against whom came the conquering ships from Chittim, that is Rome and Italy.-Again in Dan. xi. we have the sketch in continuity of the history of the King of the North and King of the South; the impersonation being kept up in either case throughout, as of a connected dynasty; though at the beginning of the Chapter the Ptolemies of Egypt and Seleucidæ of Syria be manifestly meant, who succeeded on Alexander the Great's demise to empire; and at the end of the Chapter, dynasties of the latter day (perhaps those of the Saracens and the Turks) holding rule in the same countries. Once more in the prophetic vision of the four wild beasts in Daniel vii, the Goths and Vandals having invaded and revolutionized France, Spain, and other countries, but connected themselves afterwards, in respect of religion, with Rome,-i. e. Christian or Papal Rome,―they are symbolized in the vision as horns growing out of the head of the Beast that signified in the first instance the old Roman Pagan Empire. See Note p. 376 above. Mr. Clarke has remarked on this in his Treatise on the Dragon and Beast, p. 355. 2 See Note § p. 376 suprà on the Hebrew word. "With 3 The Hebrew word is the same that is used Numb. xii. 8; him will I speak mouth to mouth, and not in dark speeches:" also Psalm xlix. 4; "I will open my dark saying upon the harp;" repeated Psalm lxxviii. 2. It is also used Judg. xiv. 12, of an ænigma, and Prov. i. 6, of a proverb; "the words of the wise, and their dark sayings." |