Daniel 11:5

5. We here come to the climax for which chap. x and these introductory verses of chap. 11 have furnished the preface. We are now suddenly brought into close and startling contact with the fourth brute empire (the Syriac-Egyptian; see notes Daniel 2:39; Daniel 7:7). This particular king of the south is doubtless Ptolemy I, the famous general of Alexander and the founder of the Ptolemaic kingdom.

One of his princes Seleucus I, who had obtained Babylon as his portion of the empire, but was forced to fly for help against Antigonus (another general of Alexander) to Ptolemy, was befriended by the Egyptian Pharaoh, and afterward obtained possession of Palestine and the adjoining territories, which were held with a firm hand by himself and retained by his successors for centuries. He well deserved the name, which he adopted, of Nicator (“the conqueror”), for his dominion, as this verse states, was a great dominion excelling even that of the Ptolemies. (See notes Daniel 2:39-40; Malachi 1:10; Malachi 1:10.)