while with regard to the Chaldean kings there is no similar particular notice taken of their origin; and generally, instead of a statement of the personal descent of Darius and Cyrus, much rather only a direct mention of the particular people ruled by each - e.g., for these rulers the special designations 'king of the Persians,' 'king of the Medes'-was to be expected[1] (cf. Dan 8:20; Dan 10:1, Dan 10:13, Dan 10:20; Dan 11:2).” Hence, as Kranichfeld further rightly judges, it could not (Daniel 8) appear appropriate to suppose that the author had Persian in view as the third kingdom, while in the visions Daniel 2 and 7 we would regard Persian as a kingdom altogether separated from the Median kingdom. Moreover the author in Daniel 8 speaks of the one horn of the ram as growing up after the other, in order thereby to indicate the growing up of the Persian dynasty after the Median, and consequently the two dynasties together in one and the same kingdom (Dan 8:3, cf. Dan 8:20). Yet, in spite of all these testimonies to the contrary, Daniel must in Daniel 2 and 7 have had in view by the second world-kingdom the Median, and by the third the Persian, because at that time he did not think that in the relation of the Median and the Persian no other change in the future would happen than a simple change of dynasty, but because, at the time in which the Median kingdom stood in a threatening attitude toward the Chaldean (both in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar and in the first year of his son Belshazzar, i.e., Evilmerodach), he thought that a sovereign Persian kingdom would rise up victoriously opposite the Median rival of Nebuchadnezzar.
- ↑ Kranichfeld goes on to say, that Hilgenfeld goes too far if he concludes from the attribute, the Mede (Dan 6:1 Dan 5:31), that the author wished to represent thereby a separate kingdom of the Medes in opposition to a kingdom of the Persians at a later time nationally distinct from it; further, that as in the sequel the Median dynasty of the Medo-Persian kingdom passed over into a Persian dynasty, and through the government of the Persian Cyrus the Persian race naturally came forth into the foreground and assumed a prominent place, the kingdom was designated a potiori as that of the Persians (Dan 10:1, Dan 10:13, Dan 10:20; Dan 11:2), like as, in other circumstances (Isa 13:17; Jer 51:11, Jer 51:28), the Medians alone are a potiori represented as the destroyers of Babylon. “As there was, during the flourishing period of the Median dynasty, a kingdom of the Medes and Persians (cf. Dan 5:28; Dan 8:20), so there is, since the time of Cyrus the Persian, a kingdom of the Persians and Medes (cf. Est 1:3, Est 1:18, 1 Macc. 1:1; 14:2). We find in Daniel, at the time of the Median supremacy in the kingdom, the law of the Medes and Persians (Dan 6:9, Dan 6:13, Dan 6:16), and subsequently we naturally find the law of the Persians and Medes, Est 1:19.”
