Daniel Chapter 8

Daniel

chapter 8: The Persian Wars

In 330BC, Jaddua the high priest showed Alexander the Great Daniel chapter 8. Alexander was so impressed as he saw his military conquest of Persia laid out before him in a 200-year-old account that he not only spared the city but granted the Jews many concessions.

Daniel's eighth chapter is an account of how an angry Greek empire, not yet in existence when Daniel wrote his book, would attack and defeat the Persians. It also tells how the empire will break apart into four distinct pieces, then goes on to describe a ruler who will come out of that division to wreak havoc on the Jewish people.

Daniel 8:1-2

In the third year of the reign of king Belshazzar, a vision appeared to me, Daniel, after the one that appeared to me earlier.

And it happened that, when I saw, I was in the palace at Susa, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw in the vision that I was beside the Ulai Canal.

This vision was given to Daniel in the third year of the co-regency of Belshazzar, two years after the vision described in chapter 7.

Scripture is not clear about whether Daniel was physically in the palace at Susa (also called Shusan) when he saw himself beside the canal, or if he saw himself projected both into the palace and near the canal. There are valid arguments for both points of view, though some Bibles take one or the other as their view. The NIV assumes the whole thing was seen in the vision, which isn't necessarily the case.

The view that Daniel saw the entire thing as a vision is weaker than the view that he was physically there, because the passage puts him both inside the palace of Susa and beside the canal. How could he be inside and outside the palace at the same time? It makes more sense to assume that Daniel was in the palace and in the vision saw himself projected outside, beside the canal.

The reason scholars doubt his presence there is that while Susa eventually became the capital of the Persian empire, at the time of Daniel's writing it was not a significant city. They see no reason why he would be there. Indeed, the palace at Susa referred to in the book of Esther was not even built until the time of Darius, decades from the time of this vision. However, on closer inspection there may be very good reasons that he was physically present in Susa. Just a few years earlier Nabonidus had granted Cyrus assistance for his conquest of the Medes. It is certainly possible that Daniel was on some kind of political mission for Nabonidus (not his son Belshazzar, as Daniel 5 makes it obvious they had never met). The last verse of this chapter says he went back about the king's business. Cyrus was likely headquartered in Susa, and there could easily have been a palace prior to the one built by Darius. If Daniel was on a mission for Nabonidus, the whole scenario fits.

Daniel 8:3-4

Then I lifted up my eyes and saw that there stood before the canal a ram with two horns on its head. The two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher one came up last.

I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beasts could stand against him, nor were any able to rescue from his power. He did according to his will, and became great.

The ram represents the Medo-Persian Empire. The longer horn that grew up later was the Persian side. The Medes were originally the dominant force but Cyrus quickly turned things around so that the Persians overwhelmed the Medes and claimed the Empire through shrewd political maneuvering.

The ram and the Persian empire

Persia was long associated with the image of the ram. The king of Persia, when leading his army into battle, did not wear a crown but instead wore a ram's head with horns as his headpiece. The sign of the zodiac associated with Persia is Aries the Ram. While God does not deal in human metaphors, it is interesting that the image shown to Daniel representing the Persian empire was the image of a ram.

Daniel 8:5-8

And as I was thinking about this, a male goat came from the west across the face of the whole earth without touching the ground: and the goat had a prominent horn between his eyes.

And he came to the two-horned ram that I had seen standing before the canal, and charged at him in great fury and power.

And I saw him come close to the ram, and he was moved with rage against him, and battered the ram, shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless against him; the goat knocked him down to the ground and trampled him. Nobody could rescue the ram from his attack.

The male goat became very great. And when he was mighty, the great horn was broken. In its place four notable ones came up toward the four winds of heaven.

Most goats have two horns on top of their heads. This one had a single horn between its eyes.

It's not surprising that Daniel was shown the goat as moving so fast it didn't touch the ground. The goat, representing the Greek Empire (also known as the Macedonian Empire) under Alexander, moved so fast it literally flew eastward. Alexander conquered the known world in just 11 years.

The Persian king Xerxes had built a huge army numbering 2 million men whom he had trained for four years. Yet Alexander's small army decimated the powerful Persian might with ferocity and innovative military tactics. The Persians were powerless to stand against the Greeks.

Alexander died at the height of his power, of a sudden fever following a drunken party in Babylon at the age of 33. There were rumors that he was actually poisoned by Cassander, one of his generals. He was eventually succeeded by his four key generals who divided the kingdom among them after 22 years of infighting, murder, bribery and political chicanery.

A one-horned goat?

Goats have two horns, one on each side of its head. Yet Daniel is shown a goat with a single horn between its eyes, representing Alexander the Great's furious attack against the Persians who had so badly abused the Greeks during the Persian wars.

The sign of the zodiac associated with the Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great was Capricorn the Goat, though that seems to have come later and possibly as the result of Daniel's prophecy.