It was natural to make one of the holy ones, who are supposed to witness this horrible iniquity,[575] inquire how long it was to be permitted. The enigmatic answer is, "Until an evening-morning two thousand three hundred." In the further explanation given to Daniel by Gabriel a few more touches are added. Antiochus Epiphanes is described as a king "bold of visage, and skilled in enigmas." His boldness is sufficiently illustrated by his many campaigns and battles, and his braggart insolence has been already alluded to in vii. 8. His skill in enigmas is illustrated by his dark and tortuous diplomacy, which was exhibited in all his proceedings,[576] and especially in the whole of his dealings with Egypt, in which country he desired to usurp the throne from his young nephew Ptolemy Philometor. The statement that "he will have mighty strength, but not by his own strength," may either mean that his transient prosperity was due only to the permission of God, or that his successes were won rather by cunning than by prowess. After an allusion to his cruel persecution of the holy people, Gabriel adds that "without a hand shall he be broken in pieces"; in other words, his retribution and destruction shall be due to no human intervention, but will come from God Himself.[577] Daniel is bidden to hide the vision for many days--a sentence which is due to the literary plan of the Book; and he is assured that the vision concerning the "evening-morning" was true. He adds that the vision exhausted and almost annihilated him; but, afterwards, he arose and did the king's business. He was silent about the vision, for neither he nor any one else understood it.[578] Of course, had the real date of the chapter been in the reign of Belshazzar, it was wholly impossible that either the seer or any one else should have been able to attach any significance to it.[579] Emphasis is evidently attached to the "two thousand three hundred evening-morning" during which the desolation of the sanctuary is to continue. What does the phrase "evening-morning" (_'erebh-bôqer_) mean? In ver. 26 it is called "the vision concerning the evening and the morning." Does "evening-morning" mean a _whole_ day, like the Greek νυχθήμερον, or _half_ a day? The expression is doubly perplexing. If the writer meant "days," why does he not say "_days_," as in xii. 11, 12?[580] And why, in any case, does he here use the solecism _'erebh-bôqer_ (_Abendmorgen_), and not, as in ver. 26, "evening _and_ morning"? Does the expression mean two thousand three hundred days? or eleven hundred and fifty days? It is a natural supposition that the time is meant to correspond with the three years and a half ("a time, two times, and half a time") of vii. 25. But here again all certainty of detail is precluded by our ignorance as to the exact length of years by which the writer reckoned; and how he treated the month _Ve-adar_, a month of thirty days, which was intercalated once in every six years.