As we have mentioned, chapters 2 through 7 were written in the Aramaic language, the language spoken in Babylon, the land of Judah’s exile. God considered it appropriate to have the message of the world empires— their character and their fate—given to them in their own language. On the other hand, the Babylonians and the Persians could not have cared less about the special future in store for God’s people. And so in chapters 8 through 12 of his book, the author described this future in Hebrew, the language of ancient Israel.
The closing chapters of the book do not make for pleasant reading. A very difficult future lay in store for God’s people, and God did not want them to have to face it unprepared. Chapter 8 describes two frightening eras that were in store for God’s people. The first was a period of extreme suffering in the more immediate future. The second was a period of deception and danger in the more distant future. For us today, one of these eras lies in the past; one still lies partly in the future. To help us understand what happened to God’s people in the past, and to prepare us for the dangers facing God’s people in the future, we need to hear what this chapter has to tell us.
In the third year of King Belshazzar's reign, I, Daniel, had a vision, after the one that had already appeared to me. In my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa in the province of Elam; in the vision I was beside the Ulai Canal. 3 I looked up, and there before me was a ram with two horns, standing beside the canal, and the horns were long. One of the horns was longer than the other but grew up later. 4 I watched the ram as he charged toward the west and the north and the south. No animal could stand against him, and none could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.
These opening words record that God again sent Daniel a vision. Daniel’s words in the opening sentence almost seem to express surprise at receiving this vision. God had already honored him by giving him one vision, the one recorded in the previous chapter—and now a second one! The vision was so astounding that Daniel remembered the exact time it came to him. It was in the third year of King Belshazzar, king of Babylon. That would take us to the last years of the Babylonian Empire.
“In my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa.” Susa, located about 100 miles north of the Persian Gulf, would later become the site of the summer palace of Persian kings. Since Daniel’s vision predicted the downfall of the Persian Empire, the palace at Susa seems an appropriate background for the vision. Since at that time Susa was still not very well known, however, Daniel locates it for his readers—“in the province of Elam.” We understand the words “in my vision I saw myself in the citadel of Susa” to mean that Daniel was there only in spirit, not in body.
The first half of the chapter presents the details of Daniel’s vision; the second half presents the interpretation. Rather than treating only the details of the vision first and then discussing the interpretation separately, some of the interpretation will be included in the discussion of the details of the vision.
As in the previous chapter, here again animals are used to symbolize world empires. Instead of a bear and a leopard (as in 7:5,6), a two-horned ram represents the Medo-Persian Empire, and a one-horned goat symbolizes the Greek Empire of Alexander the Great. This vision focuses our attention on a small portion of the larger picture of the vision in chapter 7, which described the successive rise and fall of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman empires and ended with the establishment of the Messianic kingdom.
In Daniel’s vision the history of the Medo-Persian Empire is sketched briefly. “I looked up, and there before me was a ram with two horns. . . . One of the horns was longer than the other but grew up later.” Daniel was not left to guess who is symbolized by the ram in his vision. A bit later in this chapter, the angel Gabriel explained to Daniel, “The two-horned ram that you saw represents the kings of Media and Persia” (verse 20).
The empire to which our attention is directed here is one that actually consisted of two parts. Persia was located in present-day Iran; ancient Media lay to the north of Persia, toward what is now the Caspian Sea. Media had come to power earlier than Persia but never reached the political and military greatness that accompanied Persian leadership. In Daniel’s vision Persia was the horn that “was longer than the other but grew up later.” When King Cyrus came to power in Persia about the year 550 B.C., he succeeded in gaining control of Media and managed to form a combined empire, with his own country the more important of the two. For this reason historians usually refer to this empire as the Persian Empire and to the period of history of approximately 550–335 B.C. as the Persian Period.
As he watched the vision unfold, Daniel saw the ram charge toward the west and the north and the south. The Persian Empire is pictured as expanding from the east and spreading northward across what is today Iraq, westward all the way to Palestine and Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), and southward to Egypt. History records that Cyrus did this all with remarkable ease. “He did as he pleased and became great.”
Daniel gave close attention to the details of the vision God showed him. He knew there was a deeper meaning to what he was seeing, and he watched intently to learn what it was. Suddenly, a new feature of the vision attracted his attention.
As I was thinking about this, suddenly a goat with a prominent horn between his eyes came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground. 6 He came toward the twohorned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged at him in great rage. 7 I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him; the goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power. 8 The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven.
From Daniel’s vantage point in Susa, the second animal in the vision came from the west. This was a goat, later identified by the angel Gabriel as the king of Greece. The goat is here a symbol for Alexander the Great, founder of the Greek Empire.
Daniel saw the goat cross the whole earth without touching the ground. Two ideas are combined here into a single expression. The first is the idea of rapid military advance. The second emphasis is the widespread nature of Alexander’s conquest.
Daniel had seen the ram, symbolizing Persia, attack and conquer enemies far and wide. After the Persian armies had made several attempts to conquer Greece, the Greeks fought back angrily. Daniel saw the goat with the prominent horn attack the two-horned ram furiously, shattering his horns, knocking him to the ground, and trampling on him.
Alexander the Great invaded the Persian Empire with an army of 30,000 men in 334 B.C., in what is now Turkey. In two major battles he defeated the armies of Persia. From there he turned south and seized control of the eastern Mediterranean coast all the way to Egypt. His next major battle against the Persians was fought in 331 B.C., near the headwaters of the Tigris River in present-day Syria. After this victory he marched his armies to the interior of Asia, not satisfied until he had completely destroyed his enemy. In the period of a dozen years, he managed to conquer the entire Persian Empire and bring under his rule the greatest amount of territory ever controlled by one person.
“The goat became very great, but at the height of his power his large horn was broken off.” The story of Alexander the Great is a phenomenal success story unlike any other in world history. But it ended very suddenly. At the age of 33, at the very peak of his power and prestige, Alexander died of a fever. Historians have sought to place the reasons for his untimely death on his strenuous exertion, but there appears little question that he had been weakened by drunkenness and debauchery.
Alexander’s sudden death was followed by more than two decades of infighting among those who wanted to succeed him. Daniel’s vision predicted the outcome: “At the height of his power his large horn was broken off, and in its place four prominent horns grew up toward the four winds of heaven.” Alexander’s huge empire was divided up among four of his generals. Greece was given to Cassander; Asia Minor, to Lysimachus; Egypt, to Ptolemy; Syria and Babylon, to Seleucus. It’s that fourth allotment that we’ll want to watch.