Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/292

by the little horn - the adversary in whom the enmity of the world against the kingdom of God reaches its highest manifestation. But to form a well-founded judgment regarding the appearance of this last enemy, we must compare the description given of him in Dan 7:8, Dan 7:24. with the apocalyptic description of the same enemy under the image of the beast out of the sea or out of the abyss, Rev 13:1-8 and Rev 17:7-13.
John saw a Beast Rise Up Out Of The Sea which had seven heads and ten horns, and on its horns ten crowns; it was like a leopard, but had the feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion, and the dragon gave him his throne and great power. One of its heads appears as if it had received a deadly wound, but its deadly wound was healed, Rev 13:1-3. In this beast the four beasts of Daniel, the lion, the bear, the leopard, and the nameless ten-horned beast (Dan 7:7), are united, and its heads and horns are represented, like the beasts of Daniel, as kings (Rev 17:9, Rev 17:12). The beast seen by John represents accordingly the world-power, in such a way that the four aspects of the same, which Daniel saw in the form of four beasts rising up one after another, are a whole united together into one. In this all interpreters are agreed. Hofmann is wrong (Schriftbew. ii. 2, p. 699), however, when from the circumstance that this beast has the body of a leopard, has its peculiar form like that of a leopard, he draws the conclusion “that John sees the Grecian kingdom rise again in a new form, in which it bears the lion's mouth of the Chaldean, the bear's feet of the Median or Persian, and the ten horns of the last kingdom.” For the apocalyptic beast has the body of a leopard from no other reason than because the fourth beast of Daniel was to be compared with no other beast existing in nature, whose appearance could be selected for that purpose. In these circumstances nothing else remained than to lay hold on the form of Daniel's third beast and to make choice of it for the body of the beast, and to unite with it the feet, the mouth or the jaws, and the ten horns of the other beasts.
But that the apocalyptic beast must represent not the rising again of Daniel's third world-kingdom, but the appearance of the fourth, and that specially in its last form, which Daniel had seen as the little horn, appears evidently from this, not to mention the explanation given in Rev 17, that the beast with the seven heads and ten horns, with the name of blasphemy on its heads (Rev 13:1), the marks of the little horn of Daniel, speaks great