Daniel 11:30

30. Ships of Chittim The people of Kittim from the earliest times were regarded as descendants of Javan (Genesis 10:4), and “therefore belonging to the Greek or Graeco-Latin races of the West” (MacPherson, in Hastings’s Dictionary of the Bible, 1900). In its early and original sense Kittim meant the Isle of Cyprus, but later it broadened in scope until it included Rhodes and even the coast lands of Macedonia. The Scripture phrase “coast of Chittim” does not mean Macedonia nor Rome, “but simply the western power which for the time being is to the front” (MacPherson). There can be no doubt that the ships referred to here were those of the Romans connected with the expedition under the leadership of Caius Popilius Laenas, who was sent against Antiochus 168 B.C. and speedily pushed him back from Egypt in great humiliation ( Polybius, 29:11; Livy, 44:19; 45:11).

He shall be grieved Or, dejected (Terry); or, cowed (Bevan). When the Roman legate drew a threatening circle with his cane around him, and charged him before he stepped out of it to make his decision whether he would continue his march into Egypt or return home, he was full of anger and chagrin which he vented, on his return, upon Jerusalem and the “holy covenant.” (See Daniel 11:28.)

So shall he do Rather, and shall do ( his will).

And have intelligence with [rather, and have regard unto ] them that forsake the holy covenant That is, he begins now more than ever before to favor the apostate Jews who have turned heathen and to pour out his vials of wrath against the “pious ones.” (See notes Daniel 7:25.) Apollonius with twenty-two thousand men captured the city on a Sabbath day, when the inhabitants would not fight, burned the city, and threw down its walls, massacred almost all the male population, and sold the women into slavery. The intention was to thoroughly exterminate the Jewish people and their religion (1 Maccabees 1; 2 Maccabees 4, 5 ; Polybius, 38:18). Such Jews as would apostatize were preserved from the massacre, and afterward large bribes were offered to all influential Jews who would give up their religion and become heathen (1 Maccabees 2). The continued efforts of this king to destroy this religion points to his settled conviction that it offered to the Jewish nation a standard of righteousness and a bond of unity which would ever prove dangerous to his rule unless he could stamp it out.