Today, I am reading and commenting on Daniel 11-12.

This is a difficult passage to read and understand.  It begins by describing the rise of Alexander the Great and the division of the empire he built into four parts.  Part of what makes it hard to follow is that it glosses over historical events in ways which make it hard to know where in the historical timeline the parts of this vision are.  For example: at the beginning it talks about a king arising in Persia who will “stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece.”  Now there are two issues here.  The Persian king who first invaded Greece was Darius, but the passage appears to be referencing his son Xerxes.  The second issue is that Greece was not a single kingdom at that time, but rather an amalgam of city-states.  I will discuss why that is not the problem some would make it out to be in a moment.  It follows talking about the Persian king who stirred people up against Greece by mentioning a king who will arise and do as he pleases.  The fact that it then tells us that after the death of this king his kingdom would be split among four kings suggests that it is referring to Alexander the Great.  Now if you read this passage and did not know history, you might think that king was instead a Persian king.  I use the above as an example of how the writer glosses over details of history in a way which those who know the history in detail will find problematic, but which convey the flow of that history.  As we read this passage we get a feel for the way in which the land of Israel, and the people who lived there, got caught in the battles between the Seleucid Dynasty in Persia and the Ptolemaic Dynasty in Egypt.  This vision was not intended to give a detailed account of the future.  It was intended to remind those who lived through those troubling times that God had a plan for that future and that events would turn out according to what He had ordained.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.