The following are the essential features of the pro- phetic tenor of the book of Daniel, while the visions in
ch. ii and vii, together with their diflbrent symbols, may be considered as embodying the leading notion of the whole. The development of the whole of the heathen power, until the completion and glorification of the kingdom of God, appeared to the prophet in the shape of four powers of the world, each successive power always surpassing the preceding in might and strength, namely, the Babylonian, Medo- Persian, Greek, and Sjrrian (otherwise Roman). The kingdom of God proves itself conqueror of them all ; a power which alone is everlasting, and showing itself in its utmost glorification in the appearance of the Messiah, as Judge and Lord of the world. Until the coming of the Messiah, the people of God have yet to go through a period of heavy trials. That period is par- ticularly described, ch. viii and xi, in the struggles of the Maccabasan time, illustrative of the last and heav- iest combats which the kingdom of God would have to endure. The period until the appearance of the Mes- siah is a fixed and sacred number — seventy weeks of years (ch. ix). After the lapse of that period ensues the death of the Messiah ; the expiation of the people is realized ; true justice is revealed, but Jerusalem and the Temple are in punishment given up to destruction. The true rise from this fidl and corruption ensues only at the end of time, in the general resurrection (ch. xii).
The interpretation of Daniel has hitherto proved an inexhaustible field for the ingenuity of commentators, and the certain results are. comparatively few. Ac- cording to the traditional view, which appears as early as the fourth book of Ezra [see Esdbas] and the epis- tle of Barnabas (ch. iv), the four empires described in ch. ii and vii are the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek, and the Boman. With nearly equal con- sent it has been supposed that there is a change of subject in the eleventh chapter (xi, 81 sq.), by which the seer passes from the persecutions of ^tiochus to the times of Antichrist. A careful comparison of the language of the prophed^ with the history of the Syr- ian kings must, however, convince eveiy candid stu* dent of the text that the latter hypothesis is wholly unfounded and arbitrary. The whole of the eleventh chapter forms a history of the struggles of the Jewish Church with the Greek powers up to the death of its great adversary (xi, 45). This conflict, indeed, has a typical import, and foreshows in its characteristic out- lines the abiding and final conflict of the people of God and the powers of evil, so that the true work of the interpreter must be to determine lustorically the na- ture of each event signalized in the prophetic picture, that he may draw fh>m the past the lesson of the fu- ture. The traditional interpretation of ' * the four em- pires" seems to spring fh>m the same error as the other, though it still finds numerous advocates (Hof- mann, Auberlen, Keil, Hftvemick, Hengstenberg, and most English commentators). It originated at a time when the triumphant advent of Messiah was the ob- ject of immediate expectation, and the Roman empire appeared to be the last in the series of earthly king- doms. The long interval of conflict which has fol- lowed the first Advent formed no place in the antici- pations of the first Christians, and in succeeding ages the Roman period has been unnaturally prolonged to meet the requirements of a theory that took its rise in a state of thought which experience has proved folse. See HoBN, Little.
The parallel character and striking fulfilment of Daniel's predictions, many of which are carried out with a detail elsewhere unknown, may be seen fh>m the following synoptical table. Those relating to the seventy weeks (ch. ix, 24-27) will be treated separate- ly under that head.
2. The language of the book is partly Chaldee C^ 4 ; vii, 28) and partly Hebrew. The latter is not un- like that of Ezekiel, though less impure and corrupt, and not so replete with anomalous gprammatical forms. The Chaldee is noways that of the ChaldsMns proper,
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