Daniel 11:2 Commentary and Bible Study

This chapter in the Book of Daniel is fairly universally described as the hardest chapter in all biblical prophecy. The subject is ‘The career of antichrist’. We may divide the chapter into three sections. The first preparatory section of the chapter is from verses 2 to 20. The second describes the rise of Antiochus IV, Antiochus Epiphanes, as he called himself, in verse 21 to 35. The third section takes Antiochus Epiphanes and uses him as a type of the final antichrist; we won't come to antichrist until the final section. We are dealing in the first section with the three hundred and sixty plus years between the time that Daniel was given this prophecy – the third year of Cyrus (536 BC) – and the arrival of Antiochus Epiphanies on the scene (175 BC). Here then is the revelation proper in this end times vision to Daniel. The Persian Empire is dealt with in a single verse. We have had it described to us and its characteristics before, but the prophet is now given a vision, a prophecy, which speeds past the events of Persia, and says very little about them, and almost at once goes to Greece and Alexander the Great in verse 3. Daniel is to be shown ‘the truth’, or ‘the scripture of truth’ as it was called in Daniel 10:21. God alone knows the future, and what he reveals will certainly come to pass – it is truth.‘Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all.’ If Cyrus himself is included then the three are Cyrus, Cambyses, and Darius I; if not then Smerdis, the magician, should be inserted after Cambyses, but he was an imposter. The verse focuses on the fourth king. This is Xerxes 486-465 BC, who married Esther. Strictly speaking there were other Persian rulers who followed Xerxes, but they were less significant and the vision focuses on what leads to the rise of the Greek Empire. This fourth king, Xerxes, will stir up Greece. He did not lose the Persian empire to Greece, but he began to stir up trouble. The accumulated riches of previous kings became his. He ‘spent four years gathering his army from all parts of his empire’ (Leupold) and amassed an army that has been estimated as over two million strong. With these he attacked Greece, failing to defeat her, but stirring up enormous resentment which later resulted in Greece launching its attack on Persia. This occurrence therefore prepares the way for verse 3 which jumps ahead to the conquests of Alexander the Great.