Daniel 8:9

9. Out of one of these grand divisions of the empire (Syria) the little horn arose. This horn has previously been identified as Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the “eleventh” horn or king of the fourth empire (Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:20; Daniel 7:24). That he was the “eleventh” would indicate in symbolical language that he was “one too many,” since “ten” is the symbolic number of completeness. Antiochus, who was the second son of Antiochus the Great, after expelling Heliodorus, who was a claimant to the throne, grasped the Syrian kingdom from his brother, Seleucus Philopator, B.C. 175. He immediately planned and executed several successful campaigns into Egypt on the south (compare Daniel 11:5; Daniel 11:25; 1Ma 1:18 ), and toward Persia on the east ( 1Ma 3:31 ); but was especially brutal in his conquests of the pleasant, or, rather, glorious country of Palestine. (Compare Jeremiah 3:13; Zechariah 7:14; Ezekiel 20:6.) Again and again he visited Jerusalem with terrible punishments, despoiling the city, defiling the temple, and massacring many thousands of its inhabitants, being seemingly determined, if possible, to exterminate the Jewish nation (1 Macc. i-iii; 2 Macc. v, vi; Antiquities of the Jews, XII, Daniel 5:3; XII, Daniel 7:2; Apion, Daniel 2:7).