The Expositor's Bible: The Book of DanielFarrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Book of Daniel
Farrar, F. W. (Frederic William)
Bible. Daniel -- Commentaries
[532] It is so understood by the Book of Enoch; the Talmud
(_Sanhedrin_, f. 98, 1); the early father Justin Martyr, _Dial. c.
Tryph._, 31, etc. Some of the Jewish commentators (_e.g._, Abn Ezra)
understood it of the people of God, and so Hofmann, Hitzig, Meinhold,
etc. See Behrmann, _Dan._, p. 48.
[533] Dan. iv. 3, 34, vi. 26. See Schürer, ii. 247; Wellhausen, _Die
Pharis. u. Sadd._, 24 ff.
[534] Dan. vii. 16, 22, 23, 27.
[535] Zech. ix. 9.
[536] See Schürer, ii. 138-187, "The Messianic Hope": he refers to
Ecclus. xxxii. 18, 19, xxxiii. 1-11, xl. 13, l. 24; Judith xvi. 12;
2 Macc. ii. 18; Baruch ii. 27-35; Tobit xiii, 11-18; Wisdom iii.
8, v. 1, etc. The Messianic King appears more distinctly in _Orac.
Sibyll._, iii.; in parts of the Book of Enoch (of which, however,
xlv.-lvii. are of unknown date); and the Psalms of Solomon. In Philo
we seem to have traces of the King as well as of the kingdom. See
Drummond, _The Jewish Messiah_, pp. 196 ff.; Stanton, _The Jewish and
Christian Messiah_, pp. 109-118.
CHAPTER II
_THE RAM AND THE HE-GOAT_
This vision is dated as having occurred in the third year of
Belshazzar; but it is not easy to see the significance of the date,
since it is almost exclusively occupied with the establishment of the
Greek Empire, its dissolution into the kingdoms of the Diadochi, and
the godless despotism of King Antiochus Epiphanes.
The seer imagines himself to be in the palace of Shushan: "As I
beheld I was in the castle of Shushan."[537] It has been supposed by
some that Daniel was really there upon some business connected with
the kingdom of Babylon. But this view creates a needless difficulty.
Shushan, which the Greeks called Susa, and the Persians Shush (now
Shushter), "the city of the lily," was "the palace" or fortress
(_bîrah_[538]) of the Achæmenid kings of Persia, and it is most
unlikely that a chief officer of the kingdom of Babylon should have
been there in the third year of the imaginary King Belshazzar, just
when Cyrus was on the eve of capturing Babylon without a blow. If
Belshazzar is some dim reflection of the son of Nabunaid (though
he never reigned), Shushan was not then subject to the King of
Babylonia. But the ideal presence of the prophet there, in vision, is
analogous to the presence of the exile Ezekiel in Jerusalem (Ezek.
xl. 1); and these transferences of the prophets to the scenes of
their operation were sometimes even regarded as bodily, as in the
legend of Habakkuk taken to the lions' den to support Daniel.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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