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coming, and the thought would be this, that he should perish in it. But this agrees neither with the following clause, that war should be to the end, nor with Dan 7:21, Dan 7:26, according to which the enemy of God holds the superiority till he is destroyed by the judgment of God. Accordingly, we agree with Wieseler, Hofmann, Kranichfeld, and Kliefoth in adopting the other interpretation of שׁטף, flood, as the figure of the desolating judgment of God, and explain the article as an allusion to the flood which overwhelmed Pharaoh and his host. Besides, the whole passage is, with Maurer and Klief., to be regarded as a relative clause, and to be connected with הבּא: the people of a prince who shall come and find his destruction in the flood.
This verse (Dan 9:26) contains a third statement, which adds a new element to the preceding. Rosenmüller, Ewald, Hofm., and others connect these into one passage, thus: and to the end of the war a decree of desolations continues. But although קץ, grammatically considered, is the stat. constr., and might be connected with מלחמה (war), yet this is opposed by the circumstance, that in the preceding sentence no mention is expressly made of war; and that if the war which consisted in the destruction of the city should be meant, then מלחמה ought to have the article. From these reasons we agree with the majority of interpreters in regarding מלחמה as the predicate of the passage: “and to the end is war;” but we cannot refer קץ, with Wieseler, to the end of the prince, or, with Häv. and Aub., to the end of the city, because קץ has neither a suffix nor an article. According to the just remark of Hitzig, קץ without any limitation is the end generally, the end of the period in progress, the seventy שׁבעים, and corresponds to סופא עד in Dan 7:26, to the end of all things, Dan 12:13 (Klief.). To the end war shall be = war shall continue during the whole of the last שׁבוּע.
The remaining words, שׁממות נחרצת, form an apposition to מלחמה, notwithstanding the objection by Kliefoth, that since desolations are a consequence of the war, the words cannot be regarded as in apposition. For we do not understand why in abbreviated statements the effect cannot be placed in the form of an apposition to the cause. The objection also overlooks the word נחרצת. If desolations are the effect of the war, yet not the decree of the desolations, which can go before the war or can be formed during the war. שׁממות denotes desolation not in an active, but in a passive sense: laid waste, desolated. נחרצת, that which is