Daniel 2:39

39. Nebuchadnezzar’s kingdom shall be followed by a silver kingdom, inferior (or, literally, lower down; that is, nearer the ground) to that of the golden head, and it, in turn, by a brazen kingdom, to be followed by one of iron and miry clay (Daniel 2:40-41). Expositors of the greatest ability and spiritual insight have differed in their interpretation of these four kingdoms. That the first world-empire is the Babylonian and that another is the Greek (Daniel 8:21) all admit; but of the other two empires no explanation can be given which is free from difficulty. The best that can be done is to choose the view which does not positively contradict either the statements of Daniel or the acknowledged certainties of history. We will now consider the three leading positions.

(1) The most attractive view to modern scholars is that the four empires are the Babylonian, Median, Persian, and Greek. In favor of this it is urged that, following the ordinary rules of historic interpretation, the description of the fourth empire of iron, which was afterward broken, divided, and weak (Daniel 2:34-35) and of the fourth beast, with the ten horns (namely, ten kings, Daniel 7:24) among which sprung up a “little horn” which made war with the saints and took away the daily sacrifice (chaps. 7, 8), is clearly a description of the Greek empire, and of the little horn Antiochus Epiphanes, whose reign of guilt is so elaborately set forth in chap. 11. It is also said that the second empire must necessarily be Median, since Daniel himself makes Darius the Mede king of an independent world-monarchy (Daniel 5:31; Daniel 6:0) and therefore whatever history may say, we must interpret these visions from the prophet’s standpoint.

Against this it may be said that, allowing the argument that the fourth monarchy cannot be Roman, and that the “little horn” in each chapter represents Antiochus Epiphanes, it still does not necessitate our making the second empire Median; it may be Medo-Persian, and the fourth empire that of the successors of Alexander. That Daniel did regard the Medes and Persians as a unit, so far as their kingdom is concerned, is clearly seen from the fact that the law of the kingdom, even under Darius the Mede, was the “law of the Medes and Persians” (Daniel 6:8; Daniel 6:12; Daniel 6:15), while, as Dr. Terry himself admits, Daniel’s statement that the two-horned ram denotes “the kings of Media and Persia” (Daniel 8:20) does show that “Daniel himself recognized Medes and Persians as constituting one monarchy” ( Hermeneutics, p. 352). It will not do to say that the standpoint here “is manifestly in the last period of the Persian rule” (Terry); for Daniel himself states that this vision occurred not, as Terry assumes, “long after the Median power in Babylon had ceased to exist,” but in the reign of King Belshazzar (Daniel 8:1) and surely, as Dr. Terry says, we should study these visions from Daniel’s point of view and “in the light of his own explanations and historical statements.” Daniel never distinguishes between the empire of Media and that of Persia, but invariably speaks of these empires as one. Neither the Book of Daniel nor the facts of history warrant us in assuming the existence of a Median empire between the Babylonian and Persian empires. Indeed, as Kamphausen says, “There never really was a Median world-kingdom, either before or after the fall of Babylon.” This is acknowledged by all. Therefore, if Daniel did declare the Median to be the second empire, he made a mistake. So Kamphausen frankly acknowledges. But such mistake ought not to be charged against him unnecessarily, especially in the face of his own declaration in the same book that the law and monarchy of the Medes and Persians were a duality in unity.

Daniel’s thought of the Medes and Persians as joint rulers of one kingdom is exactly that of the ancient writers, like Herodotus and Thucydides, who scarcely distinguished between these two peoples, and is also that of modern historians, who have before them all the facts of modern discovery. Maspero, without any thought of its bearing on a Bible statement, says: “The Median empire had fallen (549 B.C.), but it was a change of dynasty rather than a foreign conquest. Astyages and his predecessors had been kings of the Medes and Persians, Cyrus and his successors were kings of the Persians and Medes” ( Histoire Ancienne, 1893, p. 564). Therefore, we are compelled by the facts of history, in perfect harmony with the words of Daniel himself, to make the second empire not Median, but Medo-Persian.

(2) The view that the fourth empire was Roman took its rise before the Christian era (as is seen from 2 Esdras, etc.), and continued to be so universally accepted by the Christian Church that Luther could say, with only a little exaggeration, “In this interpretation and meaning all the world agree.”

The most powerful argument in favor of this view is that from the days of Nebuchadnezzar until now there have been only four universal world-empires the Babylonian, the Medo-Persian, the Greek, and the Roman. Many mighty emperors like Charlemagne and Napoleon have “hoped and plotted and warred and shed oceans of blood to form a fifth, but they have not succeeded; the fragments of the Roman empire still hold the field.” And this fourth empire corresponded exactly to the description of Daniel; for it was an Iron Empire, a beast with iron teeth, diverse from all which had preceded it, devouring and treading down the whole earth (Daniel 7:7; Daniel 7:27). Besides, it was “in the days of these kings” (Daniel 2:44), during the Roman dominion, that the prophesied Messiah came, and St. John, in his Apocalypse, means Rome when he speaks of the beast with the seven heads and ten horns.

However, in answer to this it may be said that the Bible writers are not concerned to lay out a map of the world’s history in which all future world-monarchies are mentioned, but (certainly in all other prophecies) confine themselves, so far as details are concerned, to the history which is near their own times and to the kings which have vital relations to Israel. It is entirely in accordance with this prophetic analogy that St. John, writing in the Roman period, should make very specific reference to the beastly Roman empire, but even if the seven-headed beast with ten horns which he describes (Revelation 13:0) be Rome, which is very doubtful (Milligan, Book of Revelation, 1895), that would by no means prove that the one-headed beast with ten horns which Daniel spoke of (Daniel 7:7; Daniel 7:19) referred to the same world-power. The same symbol is often used in Scripture of very different historic events (Terry, Biblical Hermeneutics, 1891). Indeed there are several other considerations which indicate that Daniel’s fourth empire could not be Rome. It was not the immediate successor of Alexander’s empire; it arose and had its chief field of operations in a different country from that of the other empires of Daniel; it was not Rome, but Syria, which touched most closely the life and fate of the Jewish people at the close of the Greek domination; it is not Roman kings whose life and acts Daniel describes most minutely, but Syrian kings; while the description of this fourth empire of Daniel as iron and miry clay, that is, as “mixed, composite, brittle, inadhesive, not unified and consolidated into one firm power,” does not properly describe the Roman empire at the beginning of the Christian era. Daniel prophesied that the kingdom of heaven should appear on the earth at a time when a kingdom, once strong, had become weak and divided, and when its unkingly kings, like the clay toes of the great image, could easily be smitten (Daniel 2:42). This is not a picture of Augustus and the Roman empire which was at the apex of its glory when Christ was born. “It was three hundred years later than Christ’s coming when the Roman empire was divided, and much later still when broken in pieces and made to pass away. But the stone smote not the legs of iron, but the feet, which were partly of iron and partly of clay” (Terry). Daniel’s fourth empire was to be destroyed, broken to pieces, and swept away upon the rise of the Messianic kingdom (Daniel 2:35); but historically this was not true of Rome. If it be said in reply to this that the deathblow was really given to the Roman empire when the Messiah came, but that it took two thousand years for it to die, and that while the fragments of this empire still remain in the earth, and the “little horn” yet rages, all these enemies of the kingdom will be destroyed in the future, when the Son of man comes the second time in the clouds of heaven; we would answer, with Bruston, that it is incredible, and contrary to all prophetic analogy, that, without saying a word of the first coming of Christ, Daniel should describe here the struggles of the Christian Church through long ages, ending with this thrilling picture of our Lord’s second advent. Nowhere else in the Old Testament is the second advent referred to, and it ought not to be read into this passage if it can be consistently interpreted, as it can, of his first coming.

(3) The third position to which we are forced by the unsurmountable objections to other views is that Daniel’s four kingdoms are Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Syrian.

While objections can be made to this, for example, that the Medo-Persian empire was not “inferior” to the Babylonian (Daniel 2:39); the Syriac kingdom did not break in pieces and subdue all things (Daniel 2:40); the kingdom of God did not strike and crush this Syrian kingdom (Daniel 2:34) which had disappeared before Christ was born the Messianic kingdom appearing not “in” but “after” the days of those kings (Daniel 2:44) yet, instead of being vital and fundamental objections, these are mostly verbal criticisms, such as lie against all rival views. These seeming contradictions to our position are mostly due to the fact that a symbol cannot go on all fours, and a picture cannot apply to every minute section of the reality. (See note Daniel 2:40.)

Gutschmidt and other historians well see that “the fall of Perdiccas (321 B.C.) was really the end of the Perso-Macedonian empire founded by Alexander,” and that following this came the great empires of the Seleucidae and Ptolemies. The empire founded by Seleucus (who at least for a time became “arbiter of the world,” Mahaffy), was, together with the allied kingdom of Egypt (chap. xi), the fourth empire of Daniel. Not only was Seleucus a great king, and a terrible scourge upon the nations of the East, his very name meaning “conqueror,” but he was especially great and terrible to the Jews, and ruled over those very countries “which for nearly three hundred years had been the seat of empire for the three great prophetic dynasties before him” (Cowles).