Daniel 7:4

The first beast.

eagle's wings The -eagle" (nesher) of the O.T., as Tristram has shewn (Nat. Hist. of the Bible, p. 172 ff.), is properly a vulture, though not the ordinary carrion vulture, but the Griffon-Vulture, or Great Vulture, a "majestic bird, most abundant, and never out of sight, whether on the mountains or the plains of Palestine. Everywhere it is a feature in the sky, as it circles higher and higher, till lost to all but the keenest sight, and then rapidly swoops down again" (Smith's Dict. of the Bible, Exodus 2, i. 815).

were pluckt were plucked off.

lifted up from the earth on which, as an animal, it had been lying.

upon the feet upon two feet.

a man's heart i.e. a man's intelligence: cf. on Daniel 4:16.

The first beast was like a lion, with the wings of the Griffon-Vulture: it combined consequently the characteristics of the noblest of quadrupeds and of one of the most majestic of birds the indomitable strength of the lion, and the power of the vulture to soar securely on high, to descry its prey from afar, and to alight unerringly upon it. It corresponds to the head of gold in Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Daniel 2:32; Daniel 2:38), and denotes, analogously to that, the Babylonian empire (comp. the simile of the lion applied to Nebuchadnezzar in Jeremiah 49:19, and that of the Griffon-Vulture to either Nebuchadnezzar, or his armies, in Jeremiah 49:22; Habakkuk 1:8; Ezekiel 17:3 (see Daniel 7:12); Lamentations 4:19). After a time however a change passes over the figure. Its wings are taken away, i.e. it is deprived of the power of flight; its rapidity of conquest is stopped; nevertheless it is lifted up into an erect position, and receives both the form and intelligence of a man. It seems that Ewald, Keil, Pusey (p. 69 f.) and others are right in seeing here an allusion to what is narrated in ch. 4: the empire is regarded as personified in its head; in Nebuchadnezzar's loss of reason its powers were crippled: during this time he is described (Daniel 4:16) as having a beast's heart; afterwards, when his reason returned, and he glorified God (Daniel 4:34; Daniel 4:37), he gave proof that he possessed the heart(intelligence) of a man; the animal (i.e. heathen) character of the empire disappeared, and it was, so to say, humanized in the person of its representative.