Daniel Chapter 11
Annotated Commentary with Links
| 1“As for me, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood up to confirm and strengthen him. | There is no current historical record of Darius the Mede, but from the text of Daniel, he appears to have ruled Babylon for a very short time until Cyrus, the king of Persia, took over personal rule of Babylon. |
| 2“Now will I show you the truth. Behold, three more kings will stand up in Persia; and the fourth will be far richer than all of them. When he has grown strong through his riches, he will stir up all against the realm of Greece. | Cyrus was succeeded by his son Cambyses, who was succeeded by a ruler known as Pseudo-Smerdis. Pseudo-Smerdis was, in turn, killed and replaced by Darius I, a court official not related to Cyrus. The fourth king after Cyrus was Xerxes I, the son of Darius, Xerxes the first invaded Greece in 481 BC but was ultimately defeated. |
| 3A mighty king will stand up, who will rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. | Alexander the Great, the king of Macedonia, invaded Persia and conquered it in 331 BC. |
| 4When he stands up, his kingdom will be broken, and will be divided toward the four winds of the sky, but not to his posteriety, nor according to his dominion with which he ruled; for his kingdom will be plucked up, even for others besides these. | Alexander died in 323 BC at the age of 32. After a period of armed conflict, his empire was eventually divided amongst four of his generals. |
| 5“The king of the south will be strong. One of his princes will become stronger than him, and have dominion. His dominion will be a great dominion. | Two of his chief successors were Ptolemy I who ruled Egypt (the king of the south) and Seleucus I who ruled Syria (the king of the north). Initially Seleucus and Ptolemy were allies, but came into conflict over the territory between their two kingdoms, this area included Israel. The prince who became strong is a reference to Seleucus I who was a prince, or general or Alexander, and came to rule a large territory. |
| 6At the end of years they will join themselves together; and the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to make an agreement; but she will not retain the strength of her arm; neither will he stand, nor his arm; but she will be given up, with those who brought her, and he who became the father of her, and he who strengthened her in those times. | After the First Syrian War fought for control of the Levant (the land including Israel), the son of Ptolemy I, Ptolemy II, and the son of Seleucid I, Antiochus I, agreed on a peace settlement. As part of the peace agreement, the daughter of Ptolemy II, Berenice, was married to the son of Antiochus I, Antiochus II. However, Antiochus II died suddenly and Berenice and her son was assassinated. |
| 7“But out of a shoot from her roots one will stand up in her place, who will enter into the fortress of the king of the north, and will deal against them, and will prevail. | The brother of Berenice, Ptolemy III, responded to the murder of his sister by invading the Seleucid kingdom. He occupied the city of Antiochus and successfully campaigned throughout Syria. |
| 8Also their gods, with their molten images, and with their goodly vessels of silver and of gold, will he carry captive into Egypt; and he will refrain some years from the king of the north. | Ptolemy III had to return to Egypt in 245 BC to put down an uprising. He took with him the idols and temple good of the Seleucids as a sign of their defeat. |
| 9He will come into the realm of the king of the south, but he will return into his own land. | With the retreat of Ptolemy III back to Egypt, Antiochus III, the son of Antiochus II by a former marriage, was able to regain control of the Seleucid kingdom. He briefly attacked the Ptolemies near Egypt before agreeing to peace. |
| 10His sons will wage war, and will assemble a multitude of great forces, which will come on, and overflow, and pass through; and they will return and wage war, even to his fortress. |
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