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king,” says Daniel to him in interpreting his dream of the world-monarchies, “thou art the head of gold” (Dan 2:37). The visions which are vouchsafed to Daniel date from the reign of Belshazzar the Chaldean, Darius the Median, and Cyrus the Persian (Dan 7:1; Dan 8:1; Dan 9:1; Dan 10:1). With this stands in harmony the circumstance that of the four world-kingdoms only the first three are historically explained, viz., besides the first of the monarchy of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 2:37), the second of the kingdom of the Medes and Persians, and the third of the kingdom of Javan, out of which, at the death of the first king, four kingdoms shall arise toward the four winds of heaven (Dan 8:20-22). Of the kings of the Medo-Persian kingdom, only Darius the Median and Cyrus the Persian, during whose reign Daniel lived, are named. Moreover the rise of yet four kings of the Persians is announced, and the warlike expedition of the fourth against the kingdom of Javan, as also the breaking up and the division toward the four winds (Dan 11:5-19) of the kingdom of the victorious king of Javan. Of the four kingdoms arising out of the monarchy of Alexander of Macedon nothing particular is said in Daniel 8, and in Dan 11:5-19 only a series of wars is predicted between the king of the south and the king of the north, and the rise of the daring king who, after the founding of his kingdom by craft, would turn his power against the people of God, lay waste the sanctuary, and put an end to the daily sacrifice, and, according to Dan 8:23, shall arise at the end of these four kingdoms.
However full and particular be the description given in Daniel 8 and Daniel 11 of this daring king, seen in Daniel 8 as the little horn, yet it nowhere passes over into the prediction of historical particularities, so as to overstep the boundaries of prophecy and become prognostication or the feigned setting forth of the empiric course of history. Now, though the opinion of Kran. p. 58, that “the prophecy of Daniel contains not a single passus which might not (leaving the fulfilment out of view) in a simple, self-evident way include the development founded in itself of a theocratic thought, or of such-like thoughts,” is not in accordance with the supernatural factor of prophecy, since neither the general prophecy of the unfolding of the world-power in four successive world-kingdoms, nor the special description of the appearance and unfolding of this world-kingdom, can be conceived of or rightly regarded as a mere explication of theocratic thoughts, yet the remark of the same theologian, that the special prophecies in Daniel 8 and 9