Daniel 7:25

25. Antiochus Epiphanes is said (xi, 36) to “speak marvelous things against the God of gods,” and Jewish history is full of his brutal impieties and persecutions which wore out the saints (1 Macc. i and ii; 2 Macc. i and v; Josephus, Wars, I, 1:1; Antiquites, XII, 5:3; Apion, 2:1). The “times and law” (Hebrews) which he sought to change were those connected with the religious feasts and other sacred rites which must be offered in “due season” (compare Leviticus 23:4; Numbers 28:2; Numbers 28:4; Numbers 28:8; Numbers 28:11; Numbers 28:16-18; Numbers 28:26), and especially the Holy Sabbath. Antiochus sought to make Greeks of the Jews ( Tacitus, Daniel 5:8), decreeing that all his subjects should be one people in religious customs, and specifically prohibiting circumcision and the observance of the Sabbath, on penalty of death, so “that they might forget the law, and change all the ordinances” ( 1Ma 1:41 ; 1Ma 1:49 ; Polyb., 38:18). The whole temple was defiled (see notes Daniel 11:31) and the Jews were forced, under severest penalties, to give up their own worship and to take part in the orgies of the Grecian festivals ( 2Ma 6:7 ). The “time, times, and half a time” probably refers to the three and a half years during which Antiochus succeeded in interfering with the sacrificial offerings in the temple, yet it may have also been used as a symbol of persecution and evil, being the fracture of a perfect seven. (Compare Revelation 12:14, and Introduction to Ezekiel, VIII.) This symbolic meaning was probably understood not only by the Jews but by the Babylonians; for in the old Babylonian myth the horned dragon Tiamat, the enemy of the gods, who hurled one third of the stars of heaven into ruin by one whisk of her tail, was also given a period of rule somewhat resembling this (Gunkel, Shopfung und Chaos, pp. 266-278, 360, 390). See also notes Daniel 4:16-23; Daniel 5:25-28; Daniel 9:27; Daniel 12:7.