Daniel 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The messenger who has been speaking with Daniel lays out a long account of rulers still to come: three more kings in Persia and then a fourth, far richer than the rest, and then a mighty king whose kingdom is broken up and divided four ways, and then generation after generation of war, marriage alliances, and betrayal between the king of the south and the king of the north. The account narrows to one contemptible ruler who seizes power by scheming, turns against the holy covenant, defiles the temple, stops the daily sacrifice, and sets up the abomination that causes desolation, while those who understand teach many and are killed, captured, and robbed. It closes with that king exalting himself above every god, sweeping through many countries including Egypt, pitching his royal tents between the seas and the holy mountain, and finally coming to his end with no one to help him.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • The speaker says that in the first year of Darius the Mede he himself stood up.
   • The speaker says he stood to confirm and strengthen Darius the Mede.
2. 11:2
   • The speaker says he will now tell the truth.
   • Three more kings will arise in Persia.
   • A fourth king will become far richer than all of them.
   • By the strength gained through his riches he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece.
3. 11:3
   • A mighty king will arise.
   • He will rule with great dominion.
   • He will do according to his own will.
4. 11:4
   • When he has arisen, his kingdom will be broken.
   • His kingdom will be divided toward the four winds of heaven.
   • The kingdom will not go to his posterity.
   • The kingdom will not be according to the dominion with which he ruled.
   • His kingdom will be uprooted.
   • The kingdom will go to others besides these.
5. 11:5
   • The king of the south will grow strong.
   • One of his princes will also grow strong.
   • That prince will be stronger than the king of the south.
   • That prince will rule a dominion.
   • His dominion will be a great dominion.
6. 11:6
   • At the end of some years they will join themselves together.
   • The daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to make an agreement.
   • She will not retain the strength of her arm.
   • He will not stand, nor will his arm.
   • She will be given up.
   • Those who brought her will be given up.
   • The one who fathered her will be given up.
   • The one who strengthened her in those times will be given up.
7. 11:7
   • One from a shoot of her roots will arise in his place.
   • He will come against the army.
   • He will enter the fortress of the king of the north.
   • He will act against them.
   • He will prevail.
8. 11:8
   • He will carry their gods captive into Egypt.
   • It is unclear whether what is carried off with the gods is their cast images or their princes.
   • He will carry off their precious vessels of silver and gold.
   • For some years he will stand apart from the king of the north, which may mean he outlasts him or that he refrains from attacking him.
9. 11:9
   • Someone will come into the realm of the king of the south, and the text leaves it unclear which king this is.
   • He will return to his own land.
10. 11:10
    • His sons will stir themselves up for war.
    • They will assemble a multitude of great forces.
    • One will certainly come and sweep through like a flood and pass on.
    • He will return and wage war again as far as his fortress.
11. 11:11
    • The king of the south will be enraged.
    • The king of the south will come out and fight with the king of the north.
    • The king of the north will set forth a great multitude.
    • That multitude will be given into the hand of his enemy.
12. 11:12
    • When the multitude is taken away, his heart will be lifted up.
    • He will cast down tens of thousands.
    • He will not prevail.
13. 11:13
    • The king of the north will return.
    • He will set forth a multitude greater than the former one.
    • After some years he will certainly come with a great army and with much wealth.
14. 11:14
    • In those times many will stand up against the king of the south.
    • Violent ones among your people will exalt themselves to establish the vision.
    • They will fall.
15. 11:15
    • The king of the north will come.
    • He will cast up a siege mound.
    • He will capture a fortified city.
    • The arms of the south will not withstand him.
    • His chosen troops will not withstand him.
    • There will be no strength to stand.
16. 11:16
    • The one who comes against him will do according to his own will.
    • No one will stand before him.
    • He will take his stand in the land of beauty.
    • Destruction will be in his hand.
17. 11:17
    • He will set his face to come with the strength of his whole kingdom.
    • He will come with terms of agreement, which may also mean with upright ones alongside him.
    • He will act.
    • He will give him a daughter of women in order to ruin her or the kingdom.
    • She will not stand.
    • She will not be for him.
18. 11:18
    • He will turn his face to the coastlands.
    • He will capture many of them.
    • A commander will put an end to the reproach he offers.
    • He will turn that reproach back upon him without reproach of his own.
19. 11:19
    • He will turn his face toward the fortresses of his own land.
    • He will stumble and fall.
    • He will not be found.
20. 11:20
    • In his place will arise one who sends an exactor of tribute through the glory of the kingdom.
    • Within a few days he will be broken.
    • He will not be broken in anger.
    • He will not be broken in battle.
21. 11:21
    • In his place will arise a despised person.
    • They will not give him the honor of the kingdom.
    • He will come in a time of ease.
    • He will seize the kingdom by flatteries.
22. 11:22
    • Overwhelming forces will be swept away from before him.
    • They will be broken.
    • The prince of the covenant will also be broken.
23. 11:23
    • After an alliance is made with him he will act deceitfully.
    • He will come up and become strong with a small people.
24. 11:24
    • He will enter in a time of ease into the richest parts of the province.
    • He will do what his fathers did not do.
    • He will do what his fathers' fathers did not do.
    • He will scatter among them plunder, spoil, and wealth.
    • He will devise his plans against strongholds.
    • This will last only for a time.
25. 11:25
    • He will stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army.
    • The king of the south will be stirred up to battle with a very great and mighty army.
    • The king of the south will not stand.
    • Plots will be devised against him.
26. 11:26
    • Those who eat his provisions will break him.
    • His army will be swept away.
    • Many will fall down slain.
27. 11:27
    • The hearts of both these kings will be set on evil.
    • They will speak lies at one table.
    • It will not succeed.
    • The end is still to come at the appointed time.
28. 11:28
    • He will return to his land with great wealth.
    • His heart will be set against the holy covenant.
    • He will act.
    • He will return to his own land.
29. 11:29
    • At the appointed time he will return and come into the south.
    • It will not be as the former time or as the latter.
30. 11:30
    • Ships of Kittim will come against him.
    • He will be disheartened.
    • He will turn back and rage against the holy covenant.
    • He will act.
    • He will return and give regard to those who forsake the holy covenant.
31. 11:31
    • Forces from him will stand up.
    • They will profane the sanctuary fortress.
    • They will take away the continual offering.
    • They will set up the abomination that makes desolate.
32. 11:32
    • He will corrupt by flatteries those who act wickedly against the covenant.
    • The people who know their God will be strong.
    • They will act.
33. 11:33
    • Those who have understanding among the people will instruct many.
    • They will fall by the sword.
    • They will fall by flame.
    • They will fall by captivity.
    • They will fall by plunder.
    • This will last many days.
34. 11:34
    • When they fall they will be helped with a little help.
    • Many will join themselves to them with flatteries.
35. 11:35
    • Some of those with understanding will fall.
    • Their falling serves to refine them.
    • Their falling serves to purge them.
    • Their falling serves to make them white.
    • This lasts until the time of the end.
    • The end is still for the appointed time.
36. 11:36
    • The king will do according to his own will.
    • He will exalt himself.
    • He will magnify himself above every god.
    • He will speak astonishing things against the God of gods.
    • He will prosper until the indignation is completed.
    • What has been determined will be done.
37. 11:37
    • He will not regard the god of his fathers.
    • He will not regard the desire of women.
    • He will not regard any god.
    • He will magnify himself above all.
38. 11:38
    • In his place he will honor a god of fortresses.
    • He will honor a god his fathers did not know.
    • He will honor that god with gold, silver, precious stones, and costly things.
39. 11:39
    • He will act against the strongest fortresses with the help of a foreign god.
    • He will greatly honor whoever acknowledges him.
    • He will make them rule over many.
    • He will divide the land for a price.
40. 11:40
    • At the time of the end the king of the south will push at him.
    • The king of the north will storm against him with chariots, horsemen, and many ships.
    • He will enter the countries.
    • He will overflow and pass through.
41. 11:41
    • He will enter the land of beauty.
    • Many countries will be overthrown.
    • Edom will escape out of his hand.
    • Moab will escape out of his hand.
    • The chief part of the children of Ammon will escape out of his hand.
42. 11:42
    • He will stretch out his hand against the countries.
    • The land of Egypt will not escape.
43. 11:43
    • He will have power over the hidden treasures of gold and silver.
    • He will have power over all the precious things of Egypt.
    • Libyans and Cushites will be in his train.
44. 11:44
    • Reports from the east and from the north will alarm him.
    • He will go out with great fury.
    • He will go out to destroy and utterly devote many to destruction.
45. 11:45
    • He will pitch the tents of his royal pavilion between the seas and the beautiful holy mountain.
    • He will come to his end.
    • No one will help him.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

The speaker is the heavenly messenger who has been talking with Daniel since chapter 10; "him" is the angelic figure named in 10:13, 21. Darius the Mede appears in this book as the ruler who takes over Babylon after its fall (Daniel 5:31); no king of that name is known from other records of the period, and who he was meant to be is disputed.

11:2

Persia was the empire that ruled Judea in Daniel's setting, having taken over from Babylon. "Grecia" is Greece. Counting kings this way (three, then a fourth) is a standard way of marking off a stretch of history without giving names.

11:3

Ancient and modern readers alike have taken this "mighty king" to be Alexander the Great, whose empire reached from Greece to India and who died young without an heir who could hold it.

11:4

"The four winds of heaven" means the four points of the compass, the whole kingdom pulled apart in every direction. The point of "not to his posterity" is that none of his own descendants inherited it; his generals divided it among themselves.

11:5

"Prince" in the King James Version usually means a leading man (a commander, governor or nobleman), not a king's son. The two rival powers that dominate the rest of this chapter are the kingdom based in Egypt ("the south") and the kingdom based in Syria ("the north"), so named from the point of view of someone standing in Judea between them.

11:6

Marrying a daughter to a rival king was normal treaty-making between ancient kingdoms: the marriage was the signature on the agreement, and it collapsed when either court changed hands. "Arm" throughout this chapter is a Hebrew figure for strength, especially military force, "the power of the arm" means a position backed by armed support.

11:7

"A branch of her roots" means someone from the same family tree, in the Hebrew idiom, a shoot growing from the same stock.

11:8

Carrying off the statues of a defeated nation's gods was a standard act of conquest in the ancient Near East. It proved the enemy's gods could not protect them, and returning such statues later was a famous gesture of goodwill.

11:10

Armies in this chapter are described as water. They "overflow" and "pass through" like a river bursting its banks and covering the countryside. It is a picture of a force too large to be stopped, not of an actual flood.

11:11

"Choler" was an everyday word for anger in 1611. It came from the old medical theory that the body held four fluids, called humors, and that an excess of yellow bile, choler, made a person hot tempered.

11:12

"Ten thousands" is not a head count. In Hebrew it is a standard way of saying an uncountable number, much as we might say tens of thousands or countless.

11:13

"With much riches" means with heavy supplies and equipment. Feeding and paying an army on a long march was the hardest part of ancient warfare, so a well supplied force was a serious threat.

11:14

"The robbers of thy people", literally "the violent sons of your people", means a faction within the Jewish community itself, not foreign raiders. "To establish the vision" means their actions serve to bring the vision's contents about, whatever their own motives.

11:15

"Cast up a mount" describes the standard method of taking a walled city: soldiers piled a great ramp of earth and rubble against the wall so troops and siege engines could be pushed up to the top.

11:16

"The glorious land" (also "the beautiful land") is a title for the land of Israel, and here specifically Judea, lying on the road between Egypt and Syria and so fought over by both.

11:17

"The daughter of women" is simply a way of saying "a woman," here a princess handed over in a marriage alliance. "Corrupting her" means using the marriage to undermine the other kingdom from inside, the bride is meant to work for her father's interests, and does not.

11:18

"The isles" translates a word covering both islands and the coastlands around them, in practice the Mediterranean coasts of Asia Minor and Greece. "Reproach" here means public insult or humiliation, the kind a conquering king inflicts by his arrogance.

11:19

"The fort of his own land" means the fortresses of his own territory. "Not be found" is an idiom for dying and vanishing from the story, not for going missing.

11:20

Taxation in these empires largely meant tribute squeezed out of subject territories, including temple treasuries, to pay debts and fund the court. "Neither in anger, nor in battle" is a way of saying he died neither in a public uprising nor on campaign, by some quieter means.

11:21

"He shall come in peaceably" does not mean he came in peace; it means he took power in a time when no war was expected, catching the kingdom unguarded. "Flatteries" is the King James word for smooth, deceiving talk and political intrigue.

11:22

A "covenant" is a binding agreement. "The prince of the covenant" is ambiguous in the Hebrew: it may mean a leader of the covenant people, the Jewish high priest, or a partner in a treaty with the king, and readers have argued for both.

11:23

A "league" is a treaty or alliance. "With a small people" means he built his power with only a small following behind him at first, rather than with a large army.

11:24

In the King James, fat means rich and fertile, so "the fattest places of the province" are its wealthiest districts. "Forecast his devices" means work out his schemes in advance. Handing captured plunder straight to his supporters was how a ruler with a weak claim bought loyalty, and it is exactly what earlier kings, who hoarded treasure, had not done.

11:26

Eating at a king's table was not just a meal but a formal bond: those fed from the royal provisions were his sworn dependants. The line's force is that his own inner circle turns on him.

11:27

"Mischief" in 1611 meant real harm or wickedness, not the mild naughtiness the word suggests now. Two kings lying to each other at one table is a picture of negotiation carried on in bad faith by both sides at once.

11:28

"The holy covenant" is the agreement between God and Israel, and by extension everything that went with it, the law, the temple and its worship, and the community that kept them. Acting "against" it here means attacking Jewish religious practice, not merely disliking it.

11:30

"Chittim" (Kittim) originally meant Cyprus, then came to be used loosely for lands and fleets from the far side of the Mediterranean; by the time this book circulated it was applied to Rome.

11:31

"The sanctuary of strength" is the Jerusalem temple with its fortified precinct. The "daily sacrifice" was the burnt offering made in the temple every morning and evening without fail; stopping it shut down public worship at its center. "The abomination that maketh desolate" translates a phrase for something so offensive in a holy place that worshipers abandon it, most likely a pagan altar or image set up on the temple's own altar. The Hebrew wording may also be a deliberate distortion of the name of a foreign god.

11:32

"Corrupt by flatteries" means win over with smooth promises and favors. "Do exploits" again is just the translators' phrase for act or take a stand.

11:33

"They that understand" renders a Hebrew word for those with insight who pass it on, teachers of the community. They appear again in verse 35 and in chapter 12.

11:34

"Holpen" is the old past participle of help, where we would now say helped. "Cleave to them" means attach themselves to them, and the point is that many who join do so for their own reasons.

11:35

The images are from metalworking: ore is heated so the impurities can be skimmed off and the metal comes out clean. The suffering is being described as that kind of process, not as punishment.

11:36

"The indignation" means a fixed period of divine anger whose length has already been set, a standard prophetic term for a measured span of disaster, after which it ends.

11:37

"The God of his fathers" means his ancestral, national god. "The desire of women" is genuinely unclear: it may name a particular god popular with women (the dying-and-rising Tammuz was mourned by women) or it may mean ordinary desire for women, marriage and family. The Hebrew supports either.

11:38

"The God of forces" means a god of fortresses or strongholds, a war god honored with plunder and building projects rather than an inherited family religion.

11:39

Handing out land "for gain" describes a real administrative practice: parcelling out conquered territory to loyal supporters in return for money or service, rather than by ancestral right.

11:40

Chariots were carts pulled by horses. Soldiers rode in them to fight. Horsemen were soldiers riding on horseback.

11:41

Edom, Moab and Ammon were the peoples east and south-east of Judea, across the Jordan and the Dead Sea, in what is now Jordan. They stand here for territory off the main invasion route along the coast.

11:43

"The Ethiopians" translates Cush, the region up the Nile south of Egypt, roughly modern Sudan, not the modern country of Ethiopia. "At his steps" means in his train, as subject troops or servants.

11:44

"Utterly to make away many" renders a Hebrew term for destruction as a formal act, putting a population under a ban that leaves nothing to be taken as spoil.

11:45

"The tabernacles of his palace" are the great tents a king lived in on campaign, a portable court. "Between the seas" most likely means between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea; "the glorious holy mountain" is the temple mount in Jerusalem. He camps in the land itself, and dies there.