Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Welcome back to our study of Daniel here at afaithtalk. Today we’re on Daniel 8, another vision. And I’m in the NIV so if you need to see one because you don’t have one, you can go here. Otherwise, grab yours because I’m not including the whole story here.
Read Daniel 8:1
Daniel’s Vision of a Ram and a Goat
So you can place this one: Daniel is unknown to the king until the very end of Belshazzar’s life. In other words, this vision comes after the one in chapter seven but before the story in chapter six.
Read Daniel 8:2
Most likely Daniel was at a castle that was near the river of Ulai (Hebrew name for the river) in the city of ancient Susa, which today is Shush, Iran. [Shush is a city and capital of Shush County, Khuzestan Province, Iran. At the 2006 census, its population was 53,897, in 10,689 families. Shush is located beside ancient Susa.]
No real good reason to know this, I just mention it so you can get your bearings about where this story takes place. This is where Nehemiah lived and where Esther was crowned queen. This is where Darius had his castle. It’s a very old city.
Read Daniel 8:3-4
The whole vision will be explained later in the chapter so here I will just say These are the Medes and Persian kings.
Read Daniel 8:5-9
The very great goat? Alexander the Great. He died at the height of his power in 323BC. Then the kingdom was split into four parts: the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt, the Seleucid Empire in the east, the Kingdom of Pergamon in Asia Minor, and Macedon.
In this map you can see the expansion of the Seleucid empire, yet it’s the Ptolemaic that is over “The Beautiful land” still here.
Read Daniel 8:10-12
This is one of the worst kings we’ve ever heard of. “Antiochus IV erected an altar to Zeus over the existing altar in the temple.”*
* John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Da 8:13.
Read Daniel 8:13-14
2300 days – 6 years + 110 days. This is considered how long Antiochus IV ruled. The abomination of desecration is brought by him. I mentioned the main one above. The best news in these verses “then the sanctuary will be reconsecrated.” Hope will return.
Read Daniel 8:15-17
The Interpretation of the Vision
Not the end of time, just the time of the end of the Greek rule. I can say this because we know time has continued after the reconsecration of the temple, for the desecration even was before Jesus came to earth.
Read Daniel 8:18-26
“Yet he will be destroyed, but not by human power.”
More will be said in later chapters about this so while we know God will rescue us eventually, a whole lot of awful takes place before He will.
Read Daniel 8:27
Daniel was human, just like us. So our faith can be as strong as his was. You can learn a lot about how to pray and how to live from Daniel.
Until next week then. Enjoy the study and keep working on growing your faith.