Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/443

covenant land and the covenant people brought in general into a sorrowful condition, but they also were the special object of a war which typically characterizes and portrays the relation of the world-kingdom to the kingdom of God. This war arose under the Seleucidan Antiochus Epiphanes to such a height, that it formed a prelude of the war of the time of the end. The undertaking of this king to root out the worship of the living God and destroy the Jewish religion, shows in type the great war which the world-power in the last phases of its development shall undertake against the kingdom of God, by exalting itself above every god, to hasten on its own destruction and the consummation of the kingdom of God.
The description of this war as to its origin, character, and issue forms the principal subject of this prophecy. It is set forth in the revelation of the angel from Dan 11:21 to the end (Dan 12:3), while the preceding description, as well of the course of the Persian and Javanic world-kingdoms as of the wars of the kings of the north and the south (Daniel 11:2-20), prepares for it. But this preparatory description is not merely individualizing pictures of the idea of the incurable hostility of the heathen ungodly kingdom, but a prophetic delineation of the chief lines of the process which the heathen world-power shall pass through till it shall advance to the attempt to destroy the kingdom of God. These chief lines are so distinctly laid down, that they contain their concrete fulfilment in the historical development of the world-power. In like manner are so described the appearance and the wars of the enemy of God, who desolates the sanctuary of God and takes away the daily sacrifice, that we can recognise in the assault of Antiochus Epiphanes against the temple and the worship of the people of Israel a fulfilling of this prophecy. Yet here the foretelling (Weissagung) does not renounce the character of prophecy (Prophetie): it does not pass over into prediction (Praediction) of historical facts and events, but so places in the light of the divine foresight and predetermination the image of this enemy of God, and his wickedness against the sanctuary and the people of God, that it brings under contemplation, and places under the point of view of the purification of the covenant people for the time of the end (Dan 11:35), the gradual progress of his enmity against God till he exalts himself above all divine and human relations.
From the typical relation in which Antiochus, the O.T. enemy of God, stands to Antichrist, the N.T. enemy, is explained the