Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/274

There is more plausibility in criticism which gives prominence to the resemblance in the description of the two violent persecutors of the people of God who arise out of the Javanic and the fourth world-kingdom, and are represented in Daniel 8 as well as in Daniel 7 under the figure of a little horn. “If” - for thus Kran. has formulated this resemblance - ”in the fourth kingdom, according to Dan 7:8, Dan 7:11, Dan 7:20-21, Dan 7:25, the heathen oppressor appears speaking insolent words against the Most High and making war with the saints, so Dan 8:10., 24, Dan 11:31, Dan 11:36, unfolds, only more fully, in his fundamental characteristics, the same enemy; and as in Dan 7:25 the severe oppression continues or three and a half times, so also that contemplated in Dan 8:14 and in Dan 12:7, in connection with Dan 12:1. and Daniel 11.” On the ground of this view of the case, Delitzsch asks, “Is it likely that the little horn which raised itself up and persecuted the church of God is in Daniel 8. Antiochus Epiphanes rising up out of the divided kingdom of Alexander, and in Daniel 7, on the contrary, is a king rising up in the Roman world-kingdom? The representation of both, in their relation to Jehovah, His people, and their religion, is the same. The symbolism in Daniel 7 and 8 coincides, in so far as the arch-enemy is a little horn which rises above three others.” We must answer this question decidedly in the affirmative, since the difference between the two enemies is not only likely, but certain. The similarity of the symbol in Daniel 7 and 8 reaches no further than that in both chapters the persecuting enemy is represented as a little horn growing gradually to greater power. But in Dan 8:9 this little horn arises from one of the four horns of the he-goat, without doing injury to the other three horns; while in Dan 7:8 the little horn rises up between the ten horns of the dreadful beast, and outroots three of these horns. The little horn in Daniel 8, as a branch which grows out of one of these, does not increase the number of the existing horns, as that in Daniel 7, which increases the number there to eleven. This distinction