Page:06.CBOT.KD.PropheticalBooks.B.vol.6.LesserProphets.djvu/319

that maketh desolate (i.e., the altar of idol-worship); but in this verse (Dan 8:14), on the contrary, the continuance not only of the taking away of the תּמיד, but also of the delivering up of the saints and the people to be trodden under foot, is fixed to 2300 evening-mornings. This oppression continued longer than the removal of the appointed daily sacrifice. According to 1 Macc. 1:10ff., the violent assaults of Antiochus against the temple and the Jews who remained faithful to the law began in the 143rd year of the era of the Seleucidae, but the abomination that maketh desolate, i.e., the idol-altar, was first erected on Jehovah's altar of burnt-offering, according to 1 Macc. 1:54, in the 145th year of the Seleucidae, and the purification of the temple from this abomination, and its re-consecration, took place on the 25th day of Kisleu (9th month) of the year of the Seleucidae 148. According to this, from the beginning of the desecration of the temple by the plundering of its vessels and its golden ornaments (1 Macc. 1:20ff.) to its restoration to its right condition, more than five years passed. The fulfilment, or the historical reference, of this prophecy accordingly affords, as is sufficiently manifest, no proper means of ascertaining the import of the “evening-morning.” This must rather be exegetically decided. It occurs only here, and corresponds to νυχθήμερον, 2Co 11:25. But the choice of so unusual a measure of time, derived from the two chief parts of the day, instead of the simple measure of time by days, probably originates with reference to the morning and evening sacrifice, by which the day was to be consecrated to the Lord, after Gen 1:5, Gen 1:8,Gen 1:13, etc., where the days of the creation week are named and reckoned according to the succession of evening and morning. This separation of the expression into evening and morning, so that to number them separately and add them together would make 2300 evening-mornings = 1150 days, is shown to be inadmissible, both by the asyndeton evening-morning and the usages of the Hebrew language. That in Dan 8:26 והבּקר הערב (the evening and the morning) stands for it, does not prove that the evening ad morning are reckoned separately, but only that evening-morning is a period of time consisting of evening and morning. When the Hebrews wish to express separately day and night, the component parts of a day of a week, then the number of both is expressed. They say, e.g., forty days and forty nights (Gen 7:4, Gen 7:12; Exo 24:18; 1Ki 19:8), and three days and three nights (Jon 2:1; Mat 12:40), but not eighty or six days-and-nights, when they wish to speak of forty or three