Daniel 8
The Fruit of Hard Truths
(Daniel 8)
Jason Procopio
According to an old story, the preacher John Wesley was on his way down the road to a preaching engagement, and he was stopped by a stranger who recognized him. The stranger asked him what he would do—how he would live his life—if he knew that Christ was going to come back at noon tomorrow.
It’s a good question. Most of us, if we knew Christ was coming back at noon tomorrow, would be beside ourselves with worry: “I have to clean up this area of my life, I have to speak with this person, I have to stop doing this and start doing this...” Because we don’t want Christ to come back and find us doing anything other than what we should be doing.
But that’s not how Wesley responded to the man’s question. Instead he reached into his pack, pulled out his diary, read out his appointments and engagements for the next twenty-four hours, then said, “That, dear sir, is what I would do.”
It takes an incredible amount of confidence in God’s sovereignty and God’s goodness to be that simply faithful, when faced with the idea that Christ could return tomorrow. And it takes an incredible vision of God’s sovereignty and goodness to already be doing what we should be doing, before the question is even asked.
It’s this kind of confidence in God’s sovereignty and goodness that the book of Daniel is meant to produce in us.
Last week we saw Daniel’s vision of the four beasts which represented the four kingdoms of Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, and of the little horn which seems to represent a type of Antichrist figure who pops up from time to time in the New Testament (though never by that name). We also saw this glorious picture of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, taking up his throne at his ascension, judging the fourth beast, and sharing his kingdom with his people.
Daniel 8 shows us something similar, but in a more concentrated way. Rather than deal with all of these four kingdoms again, it zooms in on two of them—Medo-Persia and Greece—and gives us many more details. So many more details, in fact, that many critics point to Daniel 8 as irrefutable proof that Daniel couldn’t have written this book, because his predictions are simply too accurate. (But, as we saw in one of our Connexion vous répond videos, Jesus himself saw Daniel’s prophecies as predictive prophecies spoken by God through Daniel, so we can certainly trust that Jesus is right.)
So we’re going to do something a little strange today. We’re going to start at the end before coming back to the beginning. I’d like to speak a little bit about the things that happened in Judah and Jerusalem after the time of Daniel, leading all the way up to about a century and a half before the birth of Christ, because when we know everything that happened after, both the vision and its interpretation makes a lot more sense.
Jerusalem After Daniel
You’ll know if you’ve followed this series from the beginning that the temple in Jerusalem was ransacked and nearly destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. He brought many exiles into Babylon, among whom were Daniel and his three friends. Daniel lived until the Jews were released by Cyrus (Darius) in 538 B.C.
The books of Ezra and Nehemiah in the Bible recount the return of the Jews from exile, and the work to rebuild the temple, which was completed in 516 B.C. Then Jerusalem’s walls were rebuilt and the city was rededicated to Yahweh (God) in 444 B.C.
But during this time, Judah and Jerusalem were still under Persian control, and would be until Alexander the Great showed up. Alexander drove the Persians out of Judah, and the Greek Empire assumed control. Alexander promptly threatened to destroy the temple, because the Jews wouldn’t honor him as a deity. But he didn’t do it, and he died at a very young age in 333 B.C.
Upon Alexander’s death, his kingdom was divided into four parts (as we saw last week). One of these parts, ruled over by the Ptolemies, took control of Judah and Jerusalem. (You’ve heard of Cleopatra? She was the last Ptolemaic ruler.) Thankfully, the Ptolemies didn’t care about Judah at all, so there was relative peace until 198 B.C., when the Seleucid king Antiochus III came to power.
Antiochus III was one of the most fervent defenders of Alexander’s legacy. And as such, he vowed to turn the Jerusalem temple into a Greek pantheon—he wants to Hellenize the Jews (that is, to force Greek culture onto them). The Jews, who refused to submit to such blasphemy, revolted against him. Their revolt failed, Antiochus III died, and soon after his death, his grandson, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, took the throne.
Antiochus IV immediately took up the project of Hellenizing the Jews. And he did it with unparalleled intensity. He demanded the Jews give up Jewish culture and worship in favor of Greek culture and worship. And the fallout of his demands were disastrous for the Jews.
Antiochus banned Sabbath observance and circumcision (the heart of Jewish worship). He ordered that a statue of Zeus be erected in the courtyard of the temple of Jerusalem. He ordered his priests to sacrifice pigs (an animal the Law of Moses considered unclean) on the same altar the Jews had made sacrifices to Yahweh.
It was a catastrophe. So what happened next isn’t that surprising.
One of the high priests, Mattathias, was ordered to sacrifice a pig on the altar. Mattathias refused, and actually killed the Seleucid priest who had given him the order.
The Jews took his action as a rallying cry: they assembled behind Mattathias and his five sons, which led to the second revolt, which is usually called the Maccabean Wars.
One of these five sons was named Judas Maccabeus (who had the coolest nickname ever—“The Hammer”). He led the Jews to drive the Seleucids out of Jerusalem. After this, he oversaw the purification of the temple, and by 164 the altar is rebuilt and rededicated to Yahweh.
And it is this massive victory that the Jews celebrate today with the festival of Hanukkah.
These events are what Daniel sees in his vision in chapter 8, some 350 years before these events ever took place.
So with that backdrop in mind, there are two things we see particularly well in this chapter. Firstly, that God is sovereign over human history. (Remember what James Boice said: “[God] is able to foretell what will happen because he has determined what will happen and because he has the power to make it happen.”). And secondly, that God reveals his Word to us in order that we might live faithfully for him in human history.
The Ram and the Goat (v. 1-14)
Let’s see what Daniel saw in his vision, beginning at v. 1.
1 In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after that which appeared to me at the first. 2 And I saw in the vision; and when I saw, I was in Susa the citadel, which is in the province of Elam. And I saw in the vision, and I was at the Ulai canal. 3 I raised my eyes and saw, and behold, a ram standing on the bank of the canal. It had two horns, and both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last. 4 I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great.
So Daniel’s vision centers around two central animals. Rather than the four beasts of chapter 7, he zooms in on two of them, and the symbols change. In this case, it is a ram and a goat instead of a bear and a leopard; but they nevertheless represent the two kingdoms those two animals represented: Medo-Persia and Greece.
The Medo-Persian Empire (which would come to power a few years after Daniel saw this vision) is represented by a ram. This ram has two horns—Media and Persia—and one is longer than the other: Persia was stronger and more dominant. In addition to that, history makes it easy for us to know that this ram represents this empire: the Persians marched with rams at their forefront as they marched into battle. For a long while, the Medo-Persian Empire was the dominant empire in this part of the world.
That is, until Greece showed up. V. 5-8:
5 As I was considering, behold, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth, without touching the ground. And the goat had a conspicuous horn between his eyes.
(I always feel the need to mention this, because it’s just too funny to miss: Greece is represented here by a unicorn. Yes, a unicorn: except the animal with “a conspicuous horn between his eyes” is a goat and not a horse, which makes it a lot funnier.)
6 He came to the ram with the two horns, which I had seen standing on the bank of the canal, and he ran at him in his powerful wrath. 7 I saw him come close to the ram, and he was enraged against him and struck the ram and broke his two horns. And the ram had no power to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground and trampled on him. And there was no one who could rescue the ram from his power. 8 Then the goat became exceedingly great, but when he was strong, the great horn was broken, and instead of it there came up four conspicuous horns toward the four winds of heaven.
So no one thought Medo-Persia could be defeated until Greece showed up, and when Greece showed up, it came in like a tidal wave through the armies of Alexander the Great. Remember: Alexander died young (the great horn of v. 8 was broken), and upon his death Greece was divided into four kingdoms which would all continue to maintain Greek culture until Rome came on the scene—the four conspicuous horns which went toward the four winds of heaven, or “the four corners of the globe,” as they say.
V. 9-12:
9 Out of one of them came a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land. 10 It grew great, even to the host of heaven. And some of the host and some of the stars it threw down to the ground and trampled on them. 11 It became great, even as great as the Prince of the host. And the regular burnt offering was taken away from him, and the place of his sanctuary was overthrown. 12 And a host will be given over to it together with the regular burnt offering because of transgression, and it will throw truth to the ground, and it will act and prosper.
Everyone agrees that one of these horns was the Seleucids, out of whom came the “little horn”, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who set his sights not only on the people of Judah, but on the deity of Judah—the “Prince of the host” of v. 11.
Antiochus had coins made upon which you can see his face and an inscription reading, “King Antiochus, God Manifest.” He erected a statue of Zeus in the courtyard of the temple, whose face was made to look like—you guessed it—Antiochus. He defiled the temple removing the sacrifices to Yahweh and by setting up the sacrifices of pigs to Zeus.
In other words, he had challenged the God of the Jews, and it seemed—at least for a time—that he had succeeded.
V. 13-14:
13 Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke, “For how long is the vision concerning the regular burnt offering, the transgression that makes desolate, and the giving over of the sanctuary and host to be trampled underfoot?” 14 And he said to me, “For 2,300 evenings and mornings. Then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state.”
Now usually in apocalyptic literature numbers are symbolic; but in this case, the numbers fit the reality of what actually happened. Daniel hears a discussion between what seems to be two angels. One of them asks how long this will be allowed to continue—how long will the worship of Yahweh be desecrated like this? The response: 2,300 evenings and mornings.
Please allow me to nerd out for a minute, because this is incredible.
There has been some debate about what these 2,300 evenings and mornings refer to. At first glance, you might think that it’s a literal 2,300 days—almost seven years. And some have hypothesized that the nearly seven years here are the time between the death of the last Jewish high priest in 170 B.C. and the day when Judas Maccabeus restores sacrifices to Yahweh in the temple, in 164 B.C. It’s possible.
There’s another possibility I prefer. The angel asks how long the sanctuary will be given over, and the “host” (the court of heaven) be “trampled underfoot.” In other words, “How long will the glory of the heavenly God be mocked by pagan sacrifices offered in his temple?”
If that is indeed the context of the question, then the numbers come out differently, because there were two sacrifices offered for sin every day—one in the morning and one in the evening. In that case, the 2,300 evenings and mornings would refer to 2,300 sacrifices NOT offered to God—which would make up for a period half that long: 1,150 days, or three years and fifty-five days.
As it turns out, Antiochus defiled the temple in 167 B.C. And Judas Maccabeus restored sacrifices to YHWH in the temple in 164 B.C.: just over three years later.
Either way, the precision we see here is astonishing.
But we shouldn’t get so caught up in the details that we miss the point: God has set a limit to the horn’s actions.
Again, he is sovereign—even over something as seemingly horrible as this. The little horn will be allowed to do this, but only for as long as God allows.
God Reveals the Interpretation (v. 15-27)
We can talk about this now because we are on this side of history—we know what happened after the time of Daniel. But Daniel himself had no idea what all this was about. He saw the vision like we do when we read it for the first time: a ram and a goat-unicorn and horns coming out and falling off and being broken.
So obviously, he wants to know what all this is about.
And God, in his mercy, grants his desire for understanding.
V. 15:
15 When I, Daniel, had seen the vision, I sought to understand it. And behold, there stood before me one having the appearance of a man. 16 And I heard a man’s voice between the banks of the Ulai, and it called, “Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.” 17 So he came near where I stood. And when he came, I was frightened and fell on my face. But he said to me, “Understand, O son of man, that the vision is for the time of the end.”
Two things to see here.
Firstly, the angel God sends to explain his vision is none other than the angel Gabriel himself (whom many people, even outside the church, know about).
Secondly, many people read the end of v. 17—when Gabriel says that the vision is for the time of the end—and think that he’s necessarily talking about the end of the world, the world as we know it, before the return of Christ. But given the context it is more likely that he’s talking about the end of the people and events prophesied in the vision.
I’m generally very suspicious of people who read apocalyptic prophecy in the Bible and easily match symbols with actual, living people. Even in the face of good evidence, it often seems like a big leap.
But in this case, we don’t even need to make the leap ourselves, because the Bible comes right out and tells us that the ram is a symbol for the kings of Media and Persia, and the goat is a symbol for the king of Greece. V. 18:
18 And when he had spoken to me, I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground. But he touched me and made me stand up. 19 He said, “Behold, I will make known to you what shall be at the latter end of the indignation, for it refers to the appointed time of the end. 20 As for the ram that you saw with the two horns, these are the kings of Media and Persia. 21 And the goat is the king of Greece. And the great horn between his eyes is the first king.
(That’s Alexander the Great.)
22 As for the horn that was broken, in place of which four others arose, four kingdoms shall arise from his nation, but not with his power.
(Remember: at Alexander’s death the kingdom was split into four separate and weaker kingdoms.)
23 And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise.
(That would be Antiochus IV Epiphanes.)
24 His power shall be great—but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does, and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints. 25 By his cunning he shall make deceit prosper under his hand, and in his own mind he shall become great.
(Desiring to be a god, he tricks himself into thinking he actually is a god.)
Without warning he shall destroy many. And he shall even rise up against the Prince of princes, and he shall be broken—but by no human hand.
This is really interesting. Antiochus didn’t die in the Maccabean revolt. He didn’t die in war at all. He died unexpectedly of natural causes.
26 The vision of the evenings and the mornings that has been told is true, but seal up the vision, for it refers to many days from now.”
That’s an understatement. Daniel received this vision (v. 1) in the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, which would have been around 550 B.C. Antiochus IV Epiphanes died in 164 B.C., the same year the Maccabean War ended. That’s almost four hundred years later.
God knows exactly what will happen in history because he is sovereign over history. He knows what will happen because he will bring it about.
God Reveals His Plans to His People
Now it would be so easy to look at a passage like this and say, “OK, Daniel gets a weird vision, God interprets that vision, and it comes true. Great...”, and then move on to other things. That’s what a lot of people do. Still others are actively put off by the strangeness they see here. They get frustrated that these kinds of things are in the Bible.
And that reaction is far milder than the reaction Daniel himself had to his vision. V. 27:
27 And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.
If you have a hard time with texts like this, Daniel feels your pain.
But we have to remember that God was never obliged to communicate with us. He could very well have created human beings, then left us to our own devices and said, “Good luck.”
But he didn’t do that. He spoke. Our God is a God who speaks to us. He spoke to the people of Israel through the law and the prophets; he spoke to the church through Jesus Christ and the apostles; and he still speaks to his church, through his Spirit applying his Word to our hearts.
And in everything he says to us, he is honest with us.
This text, and other texts like it, tell us three things about the truth God communicates in his Word.
Firstly, because God is honest, the truth he communicates in his Word isn’t always what we want to hear. Difficult texts like this prove that God is honest with us. If he was dishonest he would simply tell us what we want to hear. He would give us easy-to-understand, easy-to-digest facts that we can easily integrate and apply to our vision of the world.
But God doesn’t do that. He tells us what is true, not what we want to be true.
Daniel surely didn’t want to hear these things. This prophecy told him that a persecutor would come who would overthrow the temple, throw truth to the ground, and steal worship away from Yahweh. Hearing these things—especially without the historical context we have today—left Daniel sick for days, appalled by what he had seen.
How many times have we felt this way? How many times have we read the Bible and seen in its pages the worst of what is inside of ourselves? How many times has God told us in his Word that we are far worse—far more broken, far more sinful—than we think we are?
God loves us, and so he is honest with us: he doesn’t tell us what we want to hear, but rather what is true.
Secondly, because God is honest, the truth he communicates in his Word doesn’t always take the form we want it to.
We’ve grown into a very efficiency-oriented culture. Give me something practical, something I can use. We have little patience these days for abstractions and symbols. But God isn’t in the business of simple efficiency. Every different book of the Bible, every different type of writing within those books, have different goals. And as we said last week, one of the goals of apocalyptic writing isn’t merely to communicate information, but to awaken the imagination to the greatness of what God is doing in the heavenly places.
He could simply made Daniel see the facts of Medo-Persia and Greece, of Antiochus IV and his desecration of the temple, of the Maccabean War. But instead he peels back the curtain, to show Daniel that behind the ordinary facts of human history, massive elements are at play, trying to aid or thwart God’s plan, and an even bigger God is working, to accomplish his plan. Daniel’s reaction to these things is exactly right: it shows that he has grasped the immensity of the things he has seen.
Thirdly, because God is honest, the way he communicates truth in his Word is better than whatever we would have preferred.
Or to put it another way, God always communicates the right way to produce the effect he desires.
Daniel sees this vision; he is sick for several days; and he continues to be appalled. But what does he do, after he has begun to get over his vision?
V. 27 again:
27 And I, Daniel, was overcome and lay sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business, but I was appalled by the vision and did not understand it.
Sinclair Ferguson writes of this verse that after Daniel’s recovery, “He returned to the duties to which God had called him. He did not retire from the world in view of the evil days that were coming. Nor did he go to the opposite extreme and live on a ‘high’ visionary excitement. Instead he did his duty.”
The immensity of God’s revelations to Daniel, as much as they bothered him, also produced trust in him, trust that his God was greater than any foe. Daniel had been living with this trust for some time, and his adverse reaction to the visions of chapters 7 and 8 didn’t weaken his trust in God, but strengthened it.
Remember this was before the events we saw in chapter 6. Daniel received both of these visions before he was thrown into the den of lions. A couple of weeks ago, we asked what could have produced this kind of courage in Daniel. How likely is it that when he learned of the edict Darius had signed (which said anyone who worships another god than Darius would be thrown into the den of lions), Daniel considered the den of lions, and then remembered his vision of the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man, his vision of the goat rising against the Prince of princes and being broken? How threatening would a lion really be, when he remembered that this God was on his side?
This is why God reveals his plans to us through his Word—sometimes in straight fact, sometimes in mystery, sometimes in parables, sometimes in poetry. He reveals himself that we might live in the full confidence of his sovereignty and his grace at work for his people.
We are so privileged to be living at this point in history! We have the revelation of God’s plan, not for any one nation or people (like Daniel did), but for all of human history. God had long spoken to his people through the law and the prophets, through types and shadows, but at the right time God gave the ultimate revelation of himself and his plan in his Son. For the first time in history, he didn’t tell his people what he is like, or what he was doing; he showed them.
Through his Son, he was establishing right worship: no longer was sacrifice for sin to be offered twice a day in a temple; in Christ, sacrifice was made for sin once and for all.
Through his Son, he was building a new temple: not a building made of brick or wood but a people, saved by grace and united with one another.
Through his Son, he was bringing his presence and reign to this new temple: he sent his Spirit to dwell in the hearts of his people, to open our eyes to see the beauty of his grace, and to enable us to live in keeping with his reign.
Seeing God’s revelation has always required divine help—even Daniel had to ask for God to help him understand what he had seen.
But God, in his grace, through his Spirit, gives us eyes to see, that we may live in light of that final victory, going about our King’s business, living faithfully as he calls us.
If we truly saw how powerful our God is, and had faith in God’s plan, and trusted him to carry it out, we’d want to do nothing else but live in that plan. If we truly saw God for who he is, as he reveals himself in his Word, then should anyone ask us what we would do if we knew Christ was returning tomorrow, we would pull out our smartphones, open the calendar app, look at the tasks we have scheduled, and say, “That, dear sir, is what I would do.”
