Daniel 7:2 Commentary and Bible Study

We don’t know exactly when this took place. Belshazzar’s coregency with his father Nabonidus lasted fourteen years before the fall of Babylon. This vision occurred after the death of Nebuchadnezzar but before the fall of Babylon.‘And, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.’ That possibly suggests that while the beasts that arise from the earth are going to be themselves responsible for their viciousness and their murder, yet God superintends all to bring about his will. You imagine fallen human beings, only too ready to go to war, only too ready to practice territorial aggression: a seething mass of humanity, hostile in its intent. And yet there are powers that limit some nations, and permit others to do what is in their hearts. The empires arise because of human ambition, cruelty, and pride, but God won’t let any empire go too far. So the dream shows here in shadowy form the superintendency of God over the affairs of men. The great sea is humanity (Revelation 17:15), the nations. It is so used throughout the Old Testament to stand for internationalism, the nations of the world. Here then is God, restraining and permitting the activities of nations, according to his plan. ‘Four great beasts came up from the sea.’ As you go through this chapter and later chapters, you realise that these four beasts did not actually arise simultaneously. They followed one another. They are going to be precisely the same four empires that we were introduced to in Nebuchadnezzar's dream in chapter 2. ‘The first was like a lion and had eagle’s wings.’ That is Babylon, the empire that Daniel is part of at that very time. Babylon had assimilated the Assyrian Empire, taken it under itself. The location of the capital had changed over time: Ashur had given way to Nimrud, to Khorsabad, to Nineveh, and then to Babylon. Now it is the empire of the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, and depicted as a lion with eagle’s wings. That is just how that empire, which was the current empire in which Daniel served, depicted itself. It can be seen in the British Museum that the royal palaces had great lion figures with eagle’s wings at the entrance to their capital cities, and this was intended to project the character of the empire, so it is not difficult to interpret this. Babylon had the ferocity and the conquering spirit of a lion, and the mobility and the system of insight which would be suggested by a great bird of prey. ‘I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked’, and Babylon came to an end. It hadn't happened yet at the time that Daniel received the vision, but it shortly would. ‘And it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man’, which may reflect just exactly what happened to Nebuchadnezzar, and how he was rendered mad so that he behaved as a beast in order to humble him, before being restored to his throne, a changed man. That coincided with the period when the Babylonian Empire stopped being a great conquering force, left off conquest, and became rather more civilised. Nebuchadnezzar has been changed by a work of God in his life, and become more noble in his outlook, a little more human with a heart, and this affected the empire as a whole. So perhaps it reflects the fact that the empire was humanised in a sense towards the end of its period. ‘And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear’ – not as ferocious as a lion, but almost so; not as grand, not as Imperial, you might think. This is going to be the empire that followed: the Persian Empire – let’s say Median Persian Empire, but the Median part of it was the smaller part. ‘And it raised up itself on one side’, for which there are many attempted explanations, one of which is the idea that this creature, this beast, was poised to leap forward; that what is described is a posture of aggression rather than anything else. The Persians were more hostile, out for conquest. ‘And it had three ribs in the mouth of it, between the teeth of it, and they said thus unto it: Arise, devour much flesh’ – the aggressive Persian Empire, which grew bigger than the Babylonian Empire. By whom is it commanded to devour? By the will of God who is sovereign over all human affairs. The human race is capable of kindness, but also of genocide. We note that it was out of character for Cyrus to be so liberal as to allow Israel to return to its own land.‘After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard’, or some would translate panther, ‘which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl.’ This is the empire of Greece; this is Alexander the Great. Again, the leopard is slightly less fearsome than the bear, and not so splendid either. This beast has four wings of a fowl, not two. In other words this stands for its rapidity and mobility. Certainly it was so. Alexander the Great achieved all his conquests in a very short time, as a very young man. ‘The beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it’, which suggests that God permitted the rise of that empire in order to punish the nations. It was in fact fragmented and then ultimately divided into four parts with four generals, acting as ruler over each part, and in rivalry with one another, as later chapters in Daniel describe. That is just how it turned out.