Daniel's Four Kingdoms
Four Metal Kingdoms
This was a vision Nebuchadnezzar had and Daniel interpreted.
Dan 2:31 “Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. 32 The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, 33 its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. 34 While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. 35 Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were all broken to pieces and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.
This is understood to be four different kingdoms.
It is likely this is derived from Hesiod's ages of mankind; golden, silver, bronze, and iron. This can be seen in the fourth Sibylline Oracle (4.49-101), which has the empires Assyria, Media, Persia and Greece (Macedonia).
https://sacred-texts.com/cla/sib/sib.pdf
The author of Daniel has adapted that same ordering (possibly before the Sibylline Oracle, but using the same idea). However, he has modified it to fit his purpose, replacing Assyria with Babylonia.
It does not quite work, as the Medes never ruled the Israelites, but, of course, the author of Daniel has the fictious Darius the Mede between Belshazzar and Cyrus the Great, so it does fit the author's erroneous time frame.
Daniel is clear that the first, the one of gold, is Babylon.
Dan 2:38 in your hands he has placed all mankind and the beasts of the field and the birds in the sky. Wherever they live, he has made you ruler over them all. You are that head of gold.
Of the Medes we read only:
39 “After you, another kingdom will arise, inferior to yours.
Then Persia
Next, a third kingdom, one of bronze, will rule over the whole earth.
And then Macedonia.
40 Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron breaks and smashes everything—and as iron breaks things to pieces, so it will crush and break all the others. 41 Just as you saw that the feet and toes were partly of baked clay and partly of iron, so this will be a divided kingdom; yet it will have some of the strength of iron in it, even as you saw iron mixed with clay. 42 As the toes were partly iron and partly clay, so this kingdom will be partly strong and partly brittle. 43 And just as you saw the iron mixed with baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.
A divided kingdom because after Alexander the great died it was divided between his four generals.
Four Beast Kingdoms
The idea is revisited in chapter 7, but now animals are used rather than metals. This time Daniel had the dream himself.
Dan 7:4 “The first was like a lion, and it had the wings of an eagle. I watched until its wings were torn off and it was lifted from the ground so that it stood on two feet like a human being, and the mind of a human was given to it.
This is Babylon.
5 “And there before me was a second beast, which looked like a bear. It was raised up on one of its sides, and it had three ribs in its mouth between its teeth. It was told, ‘Get up and eat your fill of flesh!’
The bear is the Medes, and could be referring to:
Jeremiah 51:11 “Sharpen the arrows,
take up the shields!
The Lord has stirred up the kings of the Medes,
because his purpose is to destroy Babylon.
The Lord will take vengeance,
vengeance for his temple.
6 “After that, I looked, and there before me was another beast, one that looked like a leopard. And on its back it had four wings like those of a bird. This beast had four heads, and it was given authority to rule.
The leopard is Persia, the four heads are the four Persian kings:
Daniel 11:2 “Now then, I tell you the truth: Three more kings will arise in Persia, and then a fourth, who will be far richer than all the others. When he has gained power by his wealth, he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece.
Then Macedonia again.
7 “After that, in my vision at night I looked, and there before me was a fourth beast—terrifying and frightening and very powerful. It had large iron teeth; it crushed and devoured its victims and trampled underfoot whatever was left. It was different from all the former beasts, and it had ten horns.
8 “While I was thinking about the horns, there before me was another horn, a little one, which came up among them; and three of the first horns were uprooted before it. This horn had eyes like the eyes of a human being and a mouth that spoke boastfully.
From Wiki:
The "ten horns" that appear on the beast is a round number standing for the Seleucid kings between Seleucus I, the founder of the kingdom, and Antiochus Epiphanes, comparable to the feet of iron and clay in chapter 2 and the succession of kings described in chapter 11. The "little horn" is Antiochus himself. The "three horns" uprooted by the "little horn" reflect the fact that Antiochus was fourth in line to the throne, and became king after his brother and one of his brother's sons were murdered and the second son exiled to Rome. Antiochus was responsible only for the murder of one of his nephews, but the author of Daniel 7 holds him responsible for all. Anthiochus called himself Theos Epiphanes, "God Manifest", suiting the "arrogant" speech of the little horn.
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