Daniel 11:3 Commentary and Bible Study

There is an enormous amount of detail in what follows, all of it perfectly fulfilled. What took place in subsequent years unmistakably fulfilled the very great level of detail given to Daniel in this vision, so that even enemies of the truth are forced to acknowledge it. There are descriptions of major powers, strategies and approaches, military campaigns, who initiates these and whether or not they are successful, marital alliances and intrigues. Biblical prophecy seldom goes into such detail and rarely traces all the intricacies of events so closely. The first section of the chapter is entirely limited to political events, which have little spiritual significance. They are given simply to assure God’s people that the Lord is in control of everything to the finest level of detail. How many human decisions played their part in history! How many changes of mind and good and bad military decisions! How many sinful and fallen human motivations drove men forward. There is nothing that happens which God does not know and take account of and use in his eternal plan of the ages. However much they rebel against him and try to thwart him and escape his control, he harnesses all that they do.‘And a mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will.’ This is Alexander the Great who rules from 336-323 BC. He has already featured in an earlier vision of Daniel as the ‘notable horn’ of Daniel 8:5. He was born in Macedonia, educated by Aristotle, and replaced his assassinated father, Philip II of Macedon, as king. He vastly expanded the Greek Empire during his short life, uniting the states of Greece, and conducting military campaigns into the Balkans, Persia, Palestine, Egypt, and as far east as India. The Persian Empire under Darius III fell to Alexander, and Daniel’s earlier vision, which foretold the rise of the Greek Empire to replace Persia, was fulfilled. But following his death at the age of 32 in 323 BC, his empire was divided. ‘His kingdom shall be broken’ – not by an enemy, but by his early death. He had left no obvious successor – both his two sons (one still in the womb) were born to Asian mothers (problematic among the Greeks), and one was illegitimate. Both of them were eventually assassinated. Power fell into the hands of twelve rival generals who took a twelfth of the empire each. They fought each other, and the four strongest emerged – Cassander over Thrace, Antigonus (later Lysimachus) over Asia Minor, Ptolemy over Egypt, and Seleucus over the eastern part of the empire. The verses that follow will focus on two of these four: the king of the south (initially Ptolemy I Soter in Egypt), and the king of the north (initially Seleucus I Nicator who took Babylon and then Syria).