Daniel 10:20 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Daniel 10:20
Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
Knowest
הֲיָדַ֙עְתָּ֙ha.ya.Da'.ta
H3045
to know (properly · interrogative particle + verb, qal perfect, 2nd person masculine singular
come
בָּ֣אתִיBa.ti
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal perfect, 1st person common singular
return
אָשׁ֔וּב'a.Shuv
H7725
to turn back (hence · verb, qal imperfect, 1st person common singular
fight
לְהִלָּחֵ֖םle.hi.la.Chem
H3898
to feed on · preposition + verb, niphal infinitive construct
prince
שַׂ֣רsar
H8269
a head person (of any rank or class) · noun, common masculine singular construct
Persia
פָּרָ֑סpa.Ras
H6539
Paras (i.e. Persia) · proper noun, a place name
forth
יוֹצֵ֔אyo.Tze'
H3318
to go (causatively · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
prince
שַׂרsar-
H8269
a head person (of any rank or class) · noun, common masculine singular construct
Grecia
יָוָ֖ןya.Van
H3120
Javan · proper noun, a place name
come
בָּֽאBa'
H935
to go or come (in a wide variety of applications) · verb, qal active participle, masculine singular absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Daniel 8:21 And the rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.
Daniel 8:5-8 And as I was considering, behold, an he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had…
Daniel 11:2-4 And now will I shew thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all…
Isaiah 37:36 Then the angel of the LORD went forth, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose…
Daniel 7:6 After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and…
Daniel 10:13 But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I…
Acts 12:23 And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Daniel 10:10–end
Much ado here is to bring Daniel to be able to bear what Christ has to say to him. Still we have him in a fright, hardly and very slowly recovering himself; but he is still answered and supported with good words and comfortable words. Let us see how Daniel is by degrees brought to himself, and gather up the several passages that are to the same purport.
I. Daniel is in a great consternation and finds it very difficult to get clear of it. The hand that touched him set him at first upon his knees and the palms of his hands, Dan 10:10. Note, Strength and comfort commonly come by degrees to those that have been long cast down and disquieted; they are first helped up a little, and then more. Afte…
Knowest thou wherefore--The angel asks, after Daniel had recovered from his fright, whether he has understood what was revealed (Dan 10:13). On Daniel, by his silence, intimating that he did understand, the angel declares he will return to renew the fight with the evil angel, the prince of Persia. This points to new difficulties to the Jews' restoration which would arise in the Persian court, but which would be counteracted by God, through the ministry of angels.
prince of Grecia shall come--Alexander the Great, who conquered Persia, and favored the Jews [CALVIN]. Rather, as the prince of Persia is an angel, representing the hostile world power, so the prince of Grecia is a fresh angelic a…
Knowest thou wherefore I come - So high art thou in the favor of God, that he hath sent me unto thee to give thee farther satisfaction; though I was elsewhere employed upon a most important mission, and I must speedily return to accomplish it, viz.: -
To fight with the king of Persia - To remove all the scruples of Cyrus, and to excite him to do all that God designs him to do for the restoration of my people, and the rebuilding of the city and temple of Jerusalem. Nothing less than a supernatural agency in the mind of Cyrus can account for his decree in favor of the Jews. He had no natural, no political inclination to it; and his reluctance to obey the heavenly motions is here represented a…
The Church Fathers
Each nation has a guardian angel over them, so that they may not be harmed by the demons.… Therefore, the prince of the Greeks was also in the presence of God so that he himself heard the prophecies that were spoken concerning Alexander and those after him who would rule the world.
And so he says to him, "Do you know why I came to you? And now I will return to fight with the chief of the Persians, but I will proclaim to you what is written in the Scripture of truth, and there is no one who endures with me concerning these things except Michael your chief, and I left him there, for from the day you gave your face to be afflicted before your Lord God your petition was heard, and I myself was sent to fight with the chief of the Persians. For some plot happened to prevent me from coming to the people so that therefore in haste your request may be answered, I myself stood against him and I left Michael your chief there." [Daniel 10:12-14, 20-21]
Verse 20. "'Dost thou know why I have come to thee? And now I will return to fight against the prince of the Persians.'" What he means is this: I have indeed come to teach thee of the things thou hast received in answer to prayer; but I am going to return once more to contend against the prince of the Persians in the sight of God, for he is unwilling that thy people be released from captivity. "For (Vulgate: Therefore) as I was coming away, the prince of the Greeks appeared and entered in (Vulgate: and came up)." He means, "I myself was departing from God's presence in order to announce to thee the events which are to befall thy people in the last days; and yet I am still not secure, since the prince of the Persians stands to plead against the granting of thy petitions and the acceptance of my advocacy on thy behalf. And behold, the prince of the Greeks, or Macedonians, had just come, and he entered in before God's presence to lodge accusation against the prince of the Medes and Persians, in order that the kingdom of the Macedonians might succeed in their place." Truly marvelous are the secret counsels of God, for it indeed came to pass that after the Jewish people had been freed from captivity, Alexander, king of the Macedonians, slew Darius and overthrew the kingdom of the Persians and Medes, so that the prince of the Greeks did overcome the prince of the Persians.
Dictionary and topics
Governor — (1.) Heb. nagid, a prominent, conspicuous person, whatever his capacity: as, chief of the royal palace (2 Chr. 28:7; comp. 1 Kings 4:6), chief of the temple (1 Chr. 9:11; Jer. 20:1), the leader of…
Javan — (1.) The fourth “son” of Japheth (Gen. 10:2), whose descendants settled in Greece, i.e., Ionia, which bears the name of Javan in Hebrew. Alexander the Great is called the “king of Javan” (rendered…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Then said he, knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee?.... He had told him before, Daniel 10:12, that it was on account of his prayers, and to bring an answer to them; and particularly to inform him what would befall his people in the latter day; and now, lest, through the hurry of his spirits, he had not observed it, or had forgot it, he reminds him of it, to stir up his desire the more after the knowledge of particulars, which he was now about to relate unto him: and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia; the evil spirit, in the court of Persia, he had been contesting with before, and had got the better of by the help of Michael; but since this good angel had been with Danie…
Daniel 10:20
20. Then said he, Knowest thou wherefore I come unto thee? and now will I return to fight with the prince of Persia: and when I am gone forth, lo, the prince of Grecia shall come.
20. Et dixit, An cognoscia, scisne, quare venerim ad te, et nunc revertar ad pugnandum cum principe Persarum; et ego egrediens, hoc est ubi egressus fuero, tunc ecce princeps Javan, hoc est, Graecorum, veniet.
The angel appears here to lead the Prophet in vain through a winding course; for he might directly and simply have told him why he had come. It was necessary to recall the Prophet to his senses, as he was at one time scarcely master of his actions. He was not indeed permanently injured in his…
But before he communicated to Daniel what would befall his people in the "latter days" (Dan 10:14), he gives to him yet further disclosures regarding the proceedings in the spirit-kingdom which determine the fate of nations, and contain for Israel, in the times of persecution awaiting them, the comforting certainty that they had in the Angel of the Lord and in the guardian angel Michael a strong protection against the enmities of the heathen world. Kliefoth supposes that the angel who speaks in v. 20 - Daniel 11:1 gives a brief resum of the contents of his previous statement (Dan 10:12-14). But it is not so. These verses, 10:20-11:1, contain new disclosures not yet made known in Dan 11:12-19…
The messenger described empires in terms of the spirit prince representing each of them. The Persian Empire had just begun and would later be replaced by the Greek Empire (cp. 8:3-7, 19-21).
Rashi on Daniel 10:20
And now I shall return to battle with the prince of Persia and I know that I will be victorious, but when the time of the kingdom of the heathens [Greece Malbim ed., Antiochus Vilna ed.] arrives, I know that I will leave, and he will enter after thirty-four years of the existence of the Temple. Alexander of Macedon will rise, for although Israel was subjugated by the kings of Persia in those days, they exacted a light tribute from them, and they did not burden them heavily because the Holy One, blessed be He, caused them to have mercy on them. But the kings of the heathens [Greece, Antiochus] laid a heavy yoke upon them.
