Daniel 8:1-8

CHAPTER EIGHT

II. LOCKING HORNSDaniel 8:1-27

a. THE GOAT AND THE RAM

TEXT: Daniel 8:1-8

1

In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar a vision appeared unto me, even unto me, Daniel, after that which appeared unto me at the first.

2

And I saw in the vision; now it was so, that when I saw, I was in Shushan the palace, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw in the vision, and I was by the river Ulai.

3

Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.

4

I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; and no beasts could stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and magnified himself.

5

And as I was considering, behold, a he-goat came from the west over the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes.

6

And he came to the ram that had the two horns, which I saw standing before the river, and ran upon him in the fury of his power.

7

And I saw him come close unto the ram, and he was moved with anger against him, and smote the ram, and brake his two horns; and there was no power in the ram to stand before him; but he cast him down to the ground, and trampled upon him; and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand.

8

And the he-goat magnified himself exceedingly; and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and instead of it there came up four notable horns toward the four winds of heaven.

QUERIES

a.

Where is Shushan in the province of Elam?

b.

What is the significance of the last horn of the ram coming up higher than its first horn?

c.

Why was the he-goat moved with anger against the ram?

PARAPHRASE

In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar, I, Daniel, had a second vision from the Lord, somewhat like the first. In this vision I found myself at Susa, the capital of the province of Elam, standing beside the Ulai River. As I was looking around, I saw a ram with two horns standing on the river bank; these two horns were large, but one was larger than the other and this larger of the two grew up last! The ram butted everything out of its way as it butted toward the west, the north and the south, and there was no one who could stand against it or render aid to its victims. This ram did as he pleased and became very great. And as I contemplated what all this might mean, lo, a he-goat came from the west, traversing his course of progress over all the earth so swiftly that he hardly even touched the ground. This he-goat had one very great horn between his eyes. He butted furiously at the two-horned ram, and the farther he came, the angrier he became toward the ram. He charged into the ram and broke off both his horns and when the ram was helpless the he-goat knocked it down and stamped it with his feet and none could deliver the ram from being destroyed by the he-goat. The he-goat then became proud and powerful, but suddenly, at the apex of his greatness, his horn was broken. In its place grew four strong horns pointing toward the four corners of the world.

COMMENT

Daniel 8:1-2. A VISION APPEARED TO ME. IN SHUSHAN. BY THE RIVER ULAI. Elam was a country situated on the east side of the Tigris river opposite Babylonia in a mountainous region. Its population was made up of a variety of tribes. Their language, different from the Sumerian, Semitic, and Indo-European tongues, was written in cuneiform script, It has not yet been deciphered to any great extent. Elam was one of the earliest civilizations. In Sumerian inscriptions it was called Numma (high mountain people), which term became Elamtu in Akkadian texts; in classical literature it was known as Susiana, the Greek name for Susa, the capital city of Elam. The river Ulai runs through the province of Elam, flowing on through the city of Susa, into the Tigris-Euphrates.

Why did Daniel deem it necessary to mention these places? Because Shushan was later to become the summer capital of the Persian Empire. When the vision appeared to Daniel, nothing concerning the future importance of this site was known. But since the fortunes of Persia were involved, the future center of Persian life and activity was the best background. The yet unknown Sushan no doubt needed to be located for many of Daniel's readerswhich certainly bears witness to the predictive nature of the Scriptures.
Archaeological effort in the last part of the 1880'S uncovered in Shushan the great palace of King Xerxes (486-465 B.C.) in which Queen Esther lived. Many Jews lived here in the captivities and became prominent in the affairs of the city as the books of Esther and Nehemiah show.

Daniel 8:3-4. BEHOLD, THERE STOOD BEFORE THE RIVER A RAM WHICH HAD TWO HORNS. ONE WAS HIGHER THAN THE OTHER. HE DID ACCORDING TO HIS WILL. MAGNIFIED HIMSELF. The ram is Medo-Persit (cf. Daniel 8:20). The two horns are the two component parts of the empire, Media and Persia. The taller one came up last, which coincides with the history of this empire when Persia eventually became supreme and assimilated the Medes. How does the ram typify Persia? The ram is an emblem of princely power (cf. Ezekiel 34:17; Ezekiel 30:18; and Daniel 8:20). The contrast between a ram and a he-goat is remarkably close to the relationship between Persia and Greece. The ram likes to butt things and yet there is something of a staid and sober character to it and not quite as flamboyant as the he-goat.

The history of Persia's rapid conquest of the world is symbolized by the butting of the ram toward the west, north and south. It did not butt toward the east because she herself was the eastern most part of her empire. The three points of the compass agree with the three ribs in the mouth of the bear (chapter 7). The statement that no beasts could stand before him refers to the imagery of chapter 7 also and the command there, Arise and devour much flesh. There was little resistance to the Persian conquest of the world until Philip of Macedon (Alexander the Great's father) of whom we have spoken earlier. The phrase he did as he pleased was in a special sense true of the Persian Empire. Whatever rulers and people wanted in the course of their conquests, that they did, no matter how irregular or strange it might seem to others.
That the Persian conquerors magnified themselves may be exemplified by this historical sketch from Archaeology and Our O.T. Contemporaries, by James Kelso, pub. by Zondervan; pgs. 167-172,

In Isaiah God speaks of Cyrus as His shepherd and His anointed i.e., Messiah. These two terms designate Cyrus as a king chosen by God to be His agent in world history. And Cyrus was, indeed, one of history's most significant monarchs. Look at this abridged summary of the Persian empire which Cyrus created. For the first time in history the Persians give us a world empire dominated by Aryans. The previous Hamitic and Semitic world empires had made a tragedy of international government. But Persia brought in a veritable millennium for subject peoples. These Persians were virtually an unknown people until Cyrus in one generation made them masters of the world. Cyrus was at least as great a military genius as Alexander.
To create his empire Cyrus had to capture about twenty strong enemies including Lydia where Croesus, the richest man in the world, ruled Asia Minor; and Babylonia, the greatest of the ancient powers before Cyrus. He ruled from the Aegean Sea on the west to the Jaxartes River and the Himalayas on the east. All of these he consolidated into an empire that lasted two centuries. This is the final test of military power and it is here where Alexander was a total failure as his empire fell to pieces immediately upon his death.
Under Darius the Persian empire increased somewhat and was then twice the size of any previous world empire. Darius governed from the Balkans and Egypt on the west well into India on the east. The Persian empire ran for two centuries and gave the world the longest peace in history until the Pax Romana. About the middle of the Persian empire, Nehemiah, the last great political figure in the Old Testament, appeared. The Persian and the Roman empires were far more similar than formerly realized.
The Persian peace brought in one of the greatest periods of commercial expansion. They introduced an international language (Aramaic), rapid communications and good roads. They also put coinage on an international basis. In the sphere of politics Persia was the first world government to attempt to bring different races and nationalities under a central government which assured to all the rights and privileges of government as well as its burdens. They allowed the various subject races and existing civilizations to go on side by side with their own. They even permitted the Jews to coin their own money! Furthermore Persia interfered as little as possible in local government matters. Alexander himself found the Persian system of government so excellent that he took over almost bodily the Persian policy of world empire and simply grafted on to it his own Hellenistic policies.

The Persians-' respect for truth and honor and their humane and chivalrous character was the secret of their nation's success. Their kings might lack these qualities, but the subject states of the empire seldom suffered seriously as most of the Persian subordinates were true to Persian ideals. The Persian's diplomatic and commercial language was Aramaic, not Persian! Thus Aramaic became one of the world's influential languages. Its inscriptions are found as far east as India. In Roman times the Levant had a renaissance of this language, which was then called Syriac, and it replaced Greek. The Persians were the founders of religious freedom on a world basis. Note that the Jews speak well only of the Persian empire. Rome returned to many of the Persian practices.
Many of the features of good government which these Persians introduced are those which we have often thought of as America's unique contribution to world history. We should be doing far more than we are in the light of over two thousand years of international history and especially in 1900 years of the teachings of Jesus Christ. The Persians deserve far more credit in world history than they have received. Unfortunately, too often the Greeks have been their historians, and your bitter enemy seldom speaks well of you.

The Ram and the He-Goat

The Death of Alexander the Great

Now let us return to the days of Cyrus. In antiquity the nations who were successful in war brought home to their capital city the chief idols of the conquered peoples as the major prize of victory. Thus mighty Babylon held the world's largest collection of gods in antiquity. When Cyrus conquered that empire he completely reversed this policy. He told all the conquered peoples to come to Babylon and take home their national gods. With Israel there was no idol, but the temple vessels taken away by Nebuchadnezzar were returned to Jerusalem in the care of Shesh-bazzar, fourth son of Jehoiachin. Under Darius, the Persian government even helped bear the expense of erecting Israel's new temple.

Daniel 8:5-8. BEHOLD, A HE-GOAT. SMOTE THE RAM. THE GREAT HORN WAS BROKEN. THERE CAME UP FOUR NOTABLE HORNS. The buck-goat is a fitting symbol for the empire of Greece (cf. Daniel 8:21) for it represents ruggedness and power (cf. Zechariah 10:3). It represents sure-footedness and quickness. In 1MMalachi 1:3 Alexander's conquests are thus described: He went through to the ends of the earth and took spoils of a multitude of nations; and the earth was quite before him, His conquests were so rapid the he-goat is represented as not touching the ground, or literally, skimming over the earth. He came from ma-arabh (where the sun setsthe west). This he-goat had a horn of conspicuousness-' (a prominent horn) between its eyes. This prominent horn represents Alexander the Great.

The river is significant for it symbolizes the historic clash of the Greeks and the Persians at the Granicus river where they met in their first Asiatic war. The great anger points to the cry for vengeance from the Greek city states after years of assaults across the Aegean sea by the Persian hordes in 490-480 B.C. and battle at Marathon, Salamis, Plataea and Athens. When Darius landed near the plain of Marathon in 490 B.C. the city of Athens dispatched a runner, Pheidippides, to Sparta to summon long-pledged aid. He covered 140 miles in two days, but he raced in vain. For the famed fighters of Sparta, celebrating a festival of Apollo, could not go to war during that holy time. Athens hastily mobilized militia, and her general Miltiades gave the order: Take food and march. Miltiades, by shrewdly outwitting and outflanking his foe (the Persian army) and by courageously charging into the ranks of the Persians (Merodotus wrote, They were the first Greeks. who charged their enemies at a run.) defeated Darius at Marathon. Most Greeks hailed Marathon as glorious proof of their invincibility. But Themistocles, an Athenian statesman, warned that the Persians would return. Like Churchill in Britain between world wars, Themistocles went unheeded by the masses and was mocked by political opponents. The rich fought his plan for a tax-financed navy, preferring the self-supported citizen army. Across the Aegean, meanwhile, the Persian empire was conscripting men, ships, and arms for a land-and-sea invasion of Greece. In 481, Xerxes, successor to his father's throne, massed three forces on the Asian shore of the Hellespont. Athens Sparta, Corinth, and Aegina responded by forming a defensive league that would eventually include 31 city-states. But most Greeks, awed by Persian might, favored neutrality or even alliance with the invaders.
Xerxes bridged the channel with boats. His Egyptian subjects, renowned as the world's best ropemakers, produced the great bridge cables (a sample of their craft has been excavated in an Egyptian quarry: rope 18 inches in diameter attached to a 70-ton block of stone). Sod covered the mile-long plank roadway and high screens lined it so that animals crossing on it would not shy at the seething current. Across the Hellespont in 480 tramped an army that ancients numbered in the millions. Some 1000 ships paralleled the army's march, landing men and supplies as the invaders headed westward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Thessaly. The fleet traversed a canal Xerxes had ordered cut through the Mount Athos peninsula. He must have paid for the work in gold darics (named for Darius). A 300-coin cache has been found there. The Persians lived off the land. But unlike the Greeks, they were great meat eaters, so their fleet maintained food dumps holding beasts for slaughter and stores of salt meat of every kind. The depots also had piles of papyri for paper-worka military feature alien to Greeks.
This massive army consisted of Persian warriors in leather jerkins and fish-scale armor, high-booted Phrygians; Mysians bearing sharpened stakes, wooden-helmeted men of the Caucasus, Scythians in pointed caps, Iranians behind tall wicker shields, an Arabian camel corps, ass-drawn chariots from Indiaand Ethopians in lionskins who brandished stone-headed clubs and spears tipped with gazelle horn. The exotic horde marched on toward Athens, drinking rivers dry, ravaging the land. But this slave army, said Herodotus, marched under the lash. And ahead lay a pass called Thermopylae, defended by a band of freemen.
Xerxes, enthroned near the pass to watch his men pour through, laughed at a scout's report of vain Greek warriors bathing and preening on the eve of battle. But a Greek, serving Xerxes, heard the report and understood: the troops were Spartans, ritualistically preparing to die. O king! he exclaimed, now you are face to face with the most valiant men in Hellas. Aeschylus, veteran of the battle in the Salamis Strait, re-created it in his play The Persians. He told how the Greeks-' bronze-sheathed rams smashed into the Persians till hulls rolled over, and the sea itself was hidden, strewn with their wreckage, dyed with blood of men. The dead lay thick on all the reefs and beaches, and flight broke out.

Bearing news of the Salamis disaster, messengers sped across the Aegean, rode the Royal Road from Sardis to Susa, and galloped along the highways that linked the satrapies of the Persian empire. Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, wrote Herodotus, which centuries later became the official motto of the U.S. Post Office. The following summer the Persian messengers had more bad news to spread: An army of some 100,000 Greeks had wiped out the last of the invaders in a battle at Plataea in the hills of Thebes.
And the rest belongs to the history of Alexander the Great, the he-goat whose armies went about their task of conquest as though it were being done to avenge a great wrong: His anger grew to the point where it was nothing less than rageAlexander was bent upon obliterating every vestige of Persian control in the earth.

Alexander and his men spent the winter of 331 B.C. luxuriating in the splendor of Persepolis. One evening, encouraged by his drunken colleagues, Alexander burned the palaces of Xerxes in revenge against that king, who had put Athens to the torch 150 years before. Avenge Greece, cried Alexander, hurling the first firebrand. As soon as sleep had restored his senses, wrote Curtius, Alexander regretted what he had done.
Half the peoples were already subjugated. But to win all Persia, Alexander would have to conquer the rest. His greatest efforts were still to come. In the spring of 330 B.C. Alexander marched north to Ecbatana, Persia's summer capital, now Hamadan. His object: the capture of Darius himself. But the Persian fled through the Caspian Gates, a pass over the Elburz Mountains. The Macedonian pursued him, averaging an extraordinary 36 miles a day. When he caught the straggling baggage train, he found Darius dead, murdered by his own disillusioned generals. King of Persia at last, Alexander marched to Zadracarta, modern Gorgan, to assume not only the title but the pomp of an oriental monarch.
At the Beas River, just inside present India, Alexander faced a real mutiny for the first time. His homesick men, unnerved by the fierce fight against Porus, concerned by reports of even greater armies ahead, refused to go on. Alexander summoned his officers and tried to rally them. Silence greeted him. Then Coenus, a faithful general, rose, removed his helmet, and addressed Alexander: O king, I speak not for those officers present, but for the men. Those that survive yearn to return to their families, to enjoy while they yet live the riches you have won for them. A noble thing, O king, is to know when to stop. Angered and disappointed by the speech, Alexander sulked in his tent for three days. When as last he bowed to the will of his men, they rejoiced. Alexander, they said, has allowed us, but no other, to defeat him. He led his men back to the Jhelum to begin the journey home.
As Arrian wrote, Alexander had no small or mean conceptions, nor would ever have remained contented with any of his possessions. but would always have searched far beyond. being always the rival, if of no other, yet of himself. As he turned from further conquests in India it is reported that he wept because there were no more worlds to conquer. He died in Persepolis at the age of 32.
Idolized by his men, hailed as divine in lands he won, Alexander passed into the legends of three continents. Central Asia worshipped him as Iskander, founder of cities (one, Bucephala, honored his horse). Chiefs in Turkistan claim descent from him; Afghan mothers frighten naughty children with tales of Iskander. Persians called him son of Darius; Egyptians, son of the last Pharaoh, Nectanebo. Ethiopia made him a saint, and Islam enrolled him as a prophet. Mogul art shows him in a diving bell seeking the sea's secrets. Medieval Europe depicted him as a knight of chivalry. Romans, first to call Alexander the Great, held themselves heirs to his empire and ambitions. Augustus wore Alexander's head on a signet ring, emulated his deeds and divinity. Even Buddha owes his image to Alexander's march into the Orient. Inspired by statues Greeks brought to Bandhara, sculptors created Buddha in the image of Apollo, but added to his forehead the Oriental third eye, which emits spiritual light.
He won an empire covering more than one and one half million square miles. He had mapped unknown territory, built cities, opened trade routes, stimulated the exchange of ideas. From the Mediterranean to the Hindu Kush, Greek became the lingua franca of court and commerce.

His vast realm survived for only a few years as the Diadochihis successorsfought each other for power. Daniel 8:8 and its four notable horns coming up in the place of the great horn (Alexander) are parallel to the four heads of the leopard of chapter 7 and represent the four-way division of Alexander's empire between Ptolemy, Antigonus, Cassander and Lysimachus (see our comments on Daniel 7:4-6).

QUIZ

1.

Why did Daniel mention all the geographical locations in Daniel 8:2?

2.

Whom does the ram symbolize and how extensive was his empire?

3.

What is the significance of the ram doing as he pleased?

4.

Who is represented by the he-goat?

5.

Why is the he-goat represented as moving with anger against the ram?

6.

How extensive was the empire of the he-goat?

7.

What is represented by the four notable horns?