Daniel 12:11

From the time. — It appears as if at this verse the prophecy recurs to the more immediate future, and that these words point to the same subject as Daniel 11:31. The language used respecting the “abomination” is almost verbally the same as that in Daniel 8:3; Daniel 8:11; Daniel 9:27, and prevents us from arriving at any other conclusion. The great and apparently insoluble difficulty is the relation which the 1,290 or the 1,335 days occupy with regard to the 2,300 days, or the time, times, and the dividing of a time. Assuming that these four periods all commence at the same epoch (see Note on Daniel 8:14), the death of Antiochus closes the 1,290 days, and the 1,335 days point to some event which occurred forty-five days, or a month and a half, later. The principal objection to this view is that the exact date of the death of Antiochus is uncertain, and therefore all calculations based upon the precise day of his death must be untrustworthy. It is obvious that neither of the two periods mentioned in this and the following verse can be made to agree with three years and a half without setting the rules of arithmetic at defiance. Also the obscurity which rests over the greater portion of the history of Israel should guard us against assuming that we can explain all the contents of the last three Chapter s by means of what occurred in those times, and also against assuming our historical facts from Daniel, and then making use of them to illustrate his prophecies.