Daniel 7:3-63And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. 4The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it. 5And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh. 6After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it. (Daniel 7:3‑6)
God, in chapter 2, presenting the four successive Gentile empires in the figure of a man, gave their characters before men, in diminishing glory till at length the fifth appears, and after destroying the fourth and what remains of the first, second, and third, fills the whole earth. In chapter 7 and afterward, we have the four empires as God saw them, made known to Daniel for the edifying of His people. Here, therefore, they are beasts, i.e., creatures without intelligence of God.
Babylonia is viewed as like a lion, with eagles’ wings-combining in one figure the king of beasts and the king of birds. Majesty, power, the highest rule, was given by God to this first world empire, but it was short-lived; the wings were plucked; the beast was made to stand as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. Its dominion ceased, though it continued as a nation.
The Persian empire, which began as a union of old Media and young Persia, is seen as a bear, one side of which became greater than the other; it was savage, but had neither the energy nor the swiftness in action under Cyrus the Great, which Babylonia under Nebuchadnezzar had exhibited. Darius the Median was the first ruler of the empire (see chapters 5:31 and 6), but after him the kings were all Persians, the Median element of the conquerors of Babylonia growing weak, while the Persian gained and kept the ascendancy. Except in their treatment of the Jews, which was ordered of God, the Persians were harsh and cruel toward their subject peoples. They possessed themselves of all of the territory embraced in the Babylonian empire, and spread beyond it westward to Macedonia in Europe, and eastward to the borders of India. The Persian empire, reckoning from the taking of Babylon, lasted 207 years, and references to its rulers are found in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Haggai. Nehemiah 12:2222The Levites in the days of Eliashib, Joiada, and Johanan, and Jaddua, were recorded chief of the fathers: also the priests, to the reign of Darius the Persian. (Nehemiah 12:22) gives the latest reference in point of time to a Persian monarch (Darius II); Malachi; the last Old Testament prophet, was giving his testimony about that time, midway in the period of the Persian empire.
The Macedonian or Grecian empire, as it came to be known, formed under the leadership of Alexander the Great, appears in verse (3. Alexander died at the early age of 33, only eight years after the Persian empire came to an end in B. C. 331. Extraordinary swiftness in conquest was what characterized him, as foretold in the figure of the leopard upon whose back were four wings of a bird. Conquering the Persian empire by the time he was 25, Alexander the Great planned to unite the whole civilized world of his day, making into one the two leading peoples of Europe (Greece) and Asia (Persia), but his early death left no one in command with capacity to carry out his plans, and four generals, after squabbling over the control of the empire, divided it among themselves—an action foreshadowed in the four heads which the prophet noticed last in the description he gives of the leopard-like creature. The Grecian empire’s history, it will be seen, was entirely included in the four hundred years between the Old Testament’s close, and the birth of Christ. After it, sprang up the Roman Empire, the description of which belongs to Daniel’s second vision (verse 7).
The verses we have looked at, perhaps appear to be only history stated in advance, but the purpose of the Scriptures is never to fill the mind without reaching the conscience and heart. The recital of history here, as elsewhere in the Word of God, is purposed to show what man does, when left to himself, with blessings, privileges and responsibilities committed to him, and how God overrules, though unseen, for His glory and the preservation and help of His people.
ML 07/05/1936