Daniel 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the third year of King Belshazzar, Daniel sees a vision by the Ulai canal in Shushan: a two-horned ram is trampled by a goat from the west, whose great horn breaks and is replaced by four horns. From one of them a little horn rises, attacks the host of heaven, stops the daily sacrifice, and throws down the sanctuary, until a voice says the sanctuary will be restored after 2,300 evenings and mornings. Gabriel explains that the ram is Media and Persia, the goat is Greece, and a fierce king will arise later who is finally broken without human hands. Daniel is left sick and unable to understand what he saw.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar a vision appeared to Daniel.
   • This vision came after the one that had appeared to Daniel earlier.
   • Daniel identifies himself as the one who saw it.
2. 8:2
   • Daniel saw in the vision.
   • In the vision Daniel was in the fortified city of Shushan.
   • Shushan is in the province of Elam.
   • In the vision Daniel was beside the Ulai watercourse.
3. 8:3
   • Daniel lifted up his eyes and looked.
   • A ram was standing in front of the watercourse.
   • The ram had two horns.
   • Both horns were long.
   • One horn was longer than the other.
   • The longer horn came up last.
4. 8:4
   • Daniel saw the ram butting toward the west, the north, and the south.
   • No beast could stand before the ram.
   • There was no one who could deliver out of the ram's power.
   • The ram did as it pleased.
   • The ram became great.
5. 8:5
   • Daniel was considering what he saw.
   • A male goat came from the west across the surface of the whole earth.
   • The goat did not touch the ground.
   • The goat had a conspicuous horn between its eyes.
6. 8:6
   • The goat came to the ram that had the two horns.
   • This was the ram Daniel had seen standing in front of the watercourse.
   • The goat ran at the ram in the fury of its power.
7. 8:7
   • Daniel saw the goat come close to the ram.
   • The goat was enraged against the ram.
   • The goat struck the ram.
   • The goat broke the ram's two horns.
   • The ram had no power to stand before the goat.
   • The goat threw the ram to the ground.
   • The goat trampled the ram.
   • There was no one who could deliver the ram out of the goat's power.
8. 8:8
   • The male goat became very great.
   • When the goat was strong, its great horn was broken.
   • Four conspicuous horns came up in place of the broken horn.
   • The four horns pointed toward the four winds of heaven.
9. 8:9
   • Out of one of the four horns came forth another horn, small at its start.
   • That horn grew exceedingly great toward the south.
   • That horn grew toward the east.
   • That horn grew toward the beautiful land.
10. 8:10
    • The horn grew great as far as the host of heaven.
    • The horn cast down to the ground some of the host and of the stars.
    • The horn trampled them.
11. 8:11
    • The horn magnified itself even up to the prince of the host.
    • The continual offering was taken away from him.
    • The place of his sanctuary was thrown down.
12. 8:12
    • A host was given over against the continual offering because of transgression.
    • It cast truth down to the ground.
    • It acted and prospered.
13. 8:13
    • Daniel heard one holy one speaking.
    • Another holy one spoke to the one who was speaking.
    • The second holy one asked how long the vision would last concerning the continual offering.
    • The question includes the transgression that desolates.
    • The question includes the giving over of the sanctuary and the host to be trampled.
14. 8:14
    • He said to Daniel: it will be until two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings.
    • Then the sanctuary will be set right.
15. 8:15
    • Daniel had seen the vision.
    • Daniel sought to understand it.
    • One with the appearance of a man stood before Daniel.
16. 8:16
    • Daniel heard a human voice between the banks of the Ulai.
    • The voice called out and said: Gabriel, make this man understand the vision.
17. 8:17
    • He came near to where Daniel was standing.
    • When he came, Daniel was terrified.
    • Daniel fell on his face.
    • He said to Daniel: understand, son of man.
    • He said the vision belongs to the time of the end.
18. 8:18
    • While he was speaking with Daniel, Daniel fell into a deep sleep with his face to the ground.
    • He touched Daniel.
    • He set Daniel upright on his feet.
19. 8:19
    • He said he would make known to Daniel what will happen in the latter end of the indignation.
    • He said it concerns the appointed time of the end.
20. 8:20
    • The ram with two horns that Daniel saw represents the kings of Media and Persia.
21. 8:21
    • The shaggy goat represents the king of Greece.
    • The great horn between the goat's eyes is the first king.
22. 8:22
    • The great horn was broken.
    • Four horns stood up in its place.
    • The four horns represent four kingdoms that will arise out of that nation.
    • Those four kingdoms will not have his power.
23. 8:23
    • In the latter time of their kingdom a king will arise.
    • This happens when the transgressors have reached their full measure.
    • The king will have a fierce countenance.
    • The king will understand riddles.
24. 8:24
    • His power will be mighty.
    • His power will not be by his own strength.
    • He will destroy extraordinarily.
    • He will prosper and act.
    • He will destroy mighty ones.
    • He will destroy the holy people.
25. 8:25
    • Through his cunning he will make deceit prosper in his hand.
    • He will magnify himself in his heart.
    • In a time of ease he will destroy many.
    • He will stand up against the Prince of princes.
    • He will be broken without a hand.
26. 8:26
    • The vision of the evening and the morning that was told is true.
    • Daniel is commanded to shut up the vision.
    • The vision is for many days ahead.
27. 8:27
    • Daniel was overcome and was sick for days.
    • Afterward Daniel rose up and did the king's business.
    • Daniel was appalled at the vision.
    • No one understood the vision.

Words Worth Explaining

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

8:1

Belshazzar ruled in Babylon, the empire that had captured Jerusalem and deported Daniel and other Judeans; Daniel is writing as an exile living at the foreign court. "The one that had appeared to me earlier" points back to the vision recorded in chapter 7.

8:2

Shushan (also spelled Susa) lay east of Babylon in the region of Elam, in what is now southwestern Iran; it later became one of the chief royal cities of the Persian empire. The KJV's "palace" translates a word meaning a fortified citadel or walled upper city, not a single building. The Ulai was a large watercourse beside the city.

8:3

In the ancient Near East a horn was the standard image for strength and for a ruler. Horns growing tall, rising higher than others, or being snapped off pictured powers rising and falling. The vision explains its own animals and horns later in the chapter.

8:5

"Without touching the ground" is a picture of speed: the goat moves so fast it seems not to make contact with the earth. From Babylon and Elam, "the west" means the lands across toward the Mediterranean.

8:7

The King James "moved with choler" means filled with rage. Choler was one of the four bodily fluids that older medicine believed governed temperament, and an excess of it was thought to make a person hot tempered.

8:8

"The four winds of heaven" was the ordinary Hebrew phrase for the four points of the compass: that is, every direction at once.

8:9

"The pleasant land" (Hebrew: "the beauty" or "the glory") is a set phrase used elsewhere in Hebrew scripture for the land of Israel.

8:10

"The host of heaven" is a phrase with two ordinary senses: the stars, and heavenly beings pictured as an army. This verse uses both together, "the host" and "the stars", and the wordplay is in the Hebrew.

8:11

The "daily sacrifice" (Hebrew tamid, "the continual") was the burnt offering made every morning and every evening at the temple in Jerusalem; it was the fixed, unbroken rhythm of the temple's worship, so stopping it meant shutting the whole system down. The "sanctuary" or "holy house" is the temple building itself.

8:12

The Hebrew of this verse is unusually broken and obscure, and translators differ over who is handed over to whom and what "rebellion" refers to. The general sense, that wrongdoing lets the horn take control of the sacrifice, is clear, but the details are genuinely uncertain.

8:13

The KJV's "saint" here does not mean an especially good person; it translates a word meaning simply "a holy one," used for a heavenly being. "Desolation" describes a sanctuary left empty, abandoned and unused.

8:14

"2,300 evenings and mornings" is what the Hebrew literally says, and it can be counted two ways: as 2,300 whole days (each made of an evening and a morning), or as 2,300 individual sacrifices, one each evening and one each morning, which would be 1,150 days. The text does not settle which. The word rendered "cleansed" or "put right" means restored to its proper condition or given back its rights.

8:16

Gabriel is a personal name meaning roughly "man of God" or "God is my strength." He is one of only two heavenly messengers given names in the Hebrew scriptures; the other is Michael.

8:17

"Son of man" is a Hebrew idiom meaning simply "human being." It is used here as a form of address marking Daniel out as a mortal, in contrast to the being speaking to him.

8:18

The word translated "deep sleep" describes a heavy, trance-like unconsciousness rather than ordinary tiredness; it is the same word used when such a sleep falls on someone in the presence of God.

8:19

"The indignation" or "the time of anger" is used as a fixed term for a marked-out period of divine wrath, not for a passing mood.

8:20

The Medes and the Persians were two related peoples of the Iranian highlands, east and north of Babylon. They ruled as one combined empire, with the Persians joining the alliance later and eventually dominating it.

8:21

"Greece" translates the Hebrew name Yavan, originally the Ionian Greeks of the Aegean coast and then the Greek world generally, the lands lying west across the sea. "Shaggy" or "rough" is literally "hairy," describing a he-goat.

8:22

After Alexander's death his generals fought over the empire for decades, and it settled into four main blocks centered on Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt. "Not in his power" means none of them held the strength the first king had held.

8:23

"Understanding dark sentences" is literally "understanding riddles." The phrase covers both skill at solving hard sayings and skill at double-edged, deliberately ambiguous speech; in Hebrew it can read as praise for a clever man or as a charge of deviousness, and this verse leaves both open.

8:24

"The holy people" is a standing term for Israel as a nation set apart, not a description of individual character.

8:25

"By peace" translates a Hebrew word meaning security or ease; it can mean either that he strikes during a period of peace, or that he strikes while people are off their guard. "Broken, and not by any human hand" is an idiom for being destroyed by something other than human agency.

8:26

Sealing a document meant tying it shut and pressing a clay or wax seal over the fastening, so that it could not be read or altered until the person entitled to open it broke the seal. The instruction is to close and preserve the vision, not to hide it permanently.

8:27

"The king's business" refers to Daniel's post as an official in the royal administration. The last clause is ambiguous in Hebrew: it can mean that no one else could explain the vision, or that Daniel himself could not make sense of it.