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respect the two first world-kingdoms, seen in their rulers, are like gold and silver, the two latter like copper and iron.
The relation of the world-kingdoms to the kingdom and people of God, represented by this gradation of the metals, corresponds only to the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman world-kingdoms, but not to the Babylonian, Median, and Persian. This appears more manifest in the representation of them by four ravenous beasts, the lion, the ear, the leopard, and another beast to which no likeness can be found, Daniel 7. Its eagle's wings were torn from the lion, and it had given to it, by God, a man's heart; the bear shows only wild voracity-holding its prey between its teeth, it raises its one side for new prey; the leopard with four heads and four wings springs forward as in flight over the whole earth, to seize it and to exercise dominion over it; the fourth nameless beast devours and breaks in pieces with its iron teeth all that remains, and stamps upon it with its iron feet, and thus represents godless barbarity in its fullest development. But for the historical interpretation there comes yet particularly into view the circumstance that the fourth beast is represented by no animal existing in nature, and is designated by no historical name, as in the case of the first (Dan 2:38) and the second and third (Dan 8:20-21); for the two first had already come into existence in Daniel's time, and of the third, the people at least out of whom it was to arise had then already come into relation to the people of Israel (Joe 3:6, Joe 3:8). The fourth kingdom, on the contrary, is represented by a nameless beast, because in Daniel's time Rome had not come into contact with Israel, and as yet lay beyond the circle of vision of Old Testament prophecy. Although Daniel receives much more special revelations regarding this world-kingdom (Daniel 7) than Nebuchadnezzar does in his dream (Daniel 2), yet all the separate lines of the representation of the beast and its horn are given with so much want of precision that every reference to a historical people is at fault, and from the vision and its interpretation it was not to be known where this kingdom would arise, whether in Asia or elsewhere. The strength of the monster, devouring and trampling mercilessly on all things, is in harmony with its iron nature, and in its ten horns its powerful armour is depicted. The very concrete expressions regarding the little or eleventh horn contain only ideal traces respecting the position of the king or kingdom represented by it, which distinctly show, indeed, the elevation of the same above all human and divine