After the long introduction in chapter 10, Daniel’s heavenly visitor proceeded to draw back the curtain of the future and show Daniel what lay ahead for God’s people. It was a sobering preview for Daniel. Things would get worse for God’s people before they got better. The bitter conflict to come would be heightened by the fact that supernatural powers were involved—powers of evil on the one hand, powers of good on the other. In order to encourage Daniel, the heavenly visitor gave him an amazing body of detail about the conflict—the most detailed prophecy found on the pages of Scripture.
2 “Now then, I tell you the truth: Three more kings will appear in Persia, and then a fourth, who will be far richer than all the others. When he has gained power by his wealth, he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece. 3 Then a mighty king will appear, who will rule with great power and do as he pleases. 4 After he has appeared, his empire will be broken up and parceled out toward the four winds of heaven. It will not go to his descendants, nor will it have the power he exercised, because his empire will be uprooted and given to others.
“I tell you the truth,” the Angel began. What he was about to tell Daniel would surely happen. And the pages of history have confirmed the Angel’s prediction.
A single sentence covers centuries of history: “Three more kings will appear in Persia, and then a fourth, who will be richer than all the others.” This fourth Persian king referred to here was Xerxes, also known as Ahasuerus. He ruled over the Persian Empire from 486 to 465 B.C. and is the king in the book of Esther.
“He will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece.” “It is a matter of historical record that Xerxes spent four years gathering his army from all parts of his empire, and that the sum total of his men amounted to more than two and a half million” (Leupold, Exposition of Daniel, page 447). This Persian commander staked everything on an invasion of Greece, and lost. After this disastrous expedition, the Persian Empire went downhill. Although it continued to exist for another century and a half, it was politically dead.
Then a mighty world ruler appeared on the scene— Alexander the Great, young king of Greece. Alexander loved Greek civilization and culture, and he set out to bring all of the world under the influence of Greek customs. We call this process “Hellenization” after the word Hellas, the Greek word for “Greece.” To accomplish this, Alexander knew he had to break the power of Persia. This he did. The armies of Alexander made sure that Persia would never threaten Greece again.
This remarkable world conqueror died suddenly at the age of 32, victim of malaria, exertion, and excess. “His empire . . . will not go to his descendants.” Alexander had two young sons who would have been in line for the throne, but they were assassinated in the power struggle that followed his untimely death. The result of this struggle for power was that the empire Alexander built was “broken up and parceled out.” It was divided among four of his generals. Cassander received the Greek homeland; Lysimachus received Asia Minor (present-day Turkey); Seleucus received Syria and Babylon; Ptolemy received Egypt and Arabia. Two of these divisions are ignored in this chapter; Daniel’s messenger spoke to him only of the Syrian and the Egyptian divisions.
Thus began the era known as the Hellenistic Age. What follows here is a summary of about 150 years of the history of the two countries Syria and Egypt. These years witnessed an ongoing struggle between the two nations. What is of special interest to us here is that Palestine lay between the two and therefore was automatically involved in the conflict between these two world powers. Daniel realized that the period ahead would be a difficult one for God’s ancient people, the Jews.
5 “The king of the South will become strong, but one of his commanders will become even stronger than he and will rule his own kingdom with great power. 6 After some years, they will become allies. The daughter of the king of the South will go to the king of the North to make an alliance, but she will not retain her power, and he and his power will not last. In those days she will be handed over, together with her royal escort and her father and the one who supported her.
As the Angel reveals a century and a half of Syrian and Egyptian history, we notice that he again condenses and summarizes, as he did in the case of the Persian Empire. The Syrian rulers descended from Seleucus were known as Seleucids; in this summary they are referred to as “king[s] of the North.” The Egyptian rulers descended from Ptolemy are known as Ptolemies; the Angel refers to them as “king[s] of the South.” Let it be emphasized once again that the list of rulers given here is not intended to be complete. Only those of Alexander’s successors are named who played a significant role in determining the future of God’s people.
Ptolemy I, “the king of the South,” was the first of Alexander’s generals to be established in the land he was to rule.
With him for the moment was Seleucus, who had gone to Babylon to claim his allotment but subsequently lost out to another of Alexander’s generals. Seleucus fled to Egypt and temporarily cast in his lot with Ptolemy until he was able to regain control of his territory.
About 60 years later, Egyptian king Ptolemy Philadelphus resolved to unite the Egyptian and Syrian divisions by arranging a political marriage between his daughter Berenice and the Syrian king Antiochus II, also called Theos, “the king of the North.” A condition of the marriage was that Antiochus would divorce his first wife and permit only the children of this second marriage to be heirs to the throne.
“She will not retain her power.” The truth of this statement about Berenice was spelled out in blood. Antiochus II divorced Berenice and returned to his first wife, Laodice. Officers of the court subsequently murdered Berenice and her children. Her father, King Ptolemy, died several years later. To complicate matters further, Laodice took revenge on her husband by having him poisoned and installed her own son, Seleucus Callinius, on the Syrian throne. The net result was that the father who planned the political marriage was dead, as was his daughter, her husband, and their children.