Eze 22:24, etc., and here the sufferings of punishment and discipline which the little horn shall bring over Israel. The time of this revelation of divine wrath is called אחרית because it belongs to the הימים אחרית, prepares the Messianic future, and with its conclusion begins the last age of the world, of which, however, nothing more particular is here said, for the prophecy breaks off with the destruction of the little horn. The vision of the eleventh chapter first supplies more particular disclosures on this point. In that chapter the great enemy of the saints of God, arising out of the third world-kingdom, is set forth and represented as the prefiguration or type of their last enemy at the end of the days. Under the words יהיה אשׁר (which shall be) the angel understands all that the vision of this chapter contains, from the rising up of the Medo-Persian world-kingdom to the time of the destruction of Antiochus Epiphanes, as Dan 8:20-25 show. But when he adds הזּעם אחרית, he immediately makes prominent that which is the most important matter in the whole vision, the severe oppression which awaits the people of Israel in the future for their purification, and repeats, in justification of that which is said, the conclusion from Dan 8:17, in which he only exchanges עת for מועד is the definite time in its duration; קץ מועד thus denotes the end-time as to its duration. This expression is here chosen with regard to the circumstance that in Dan 8:14 the end of the oppression was accurately defined by the declaration of its continuance. The object of these words also is variously viewed by interpreters. The meaning is not that the angel wished to console Daniel with the thought that the judgment of the vision was not yet so near at hand (Zündel); for, according to Dan 8:17, Daniel was not terrified by the contents of the vision, but by the approach of the heavenly being; and if, according to Dan 8:18, the words of the angel so increased his terror that he fell down confounded to the earth, and the angel had to raise him by touching him, yet it is not at the same time said that the words of the angel of the end-time had so confounded him, and that the subsequent fuller explanation was somewhat less overwhelming than the words, Dan 8:17, something lighter or more comforting. Even though the statement about the time of the end contributed to the increase of the terror, yet the contents of Dan 8:19 were not fitted to raise up the prophet, but the whole discourse of the angel was for Daniel so oppressive that after hearing it, he was for some days sick, Dan 8:27. From Daniel's
