Daniel 11:2 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Daniel 11:2
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: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.
properly · verb, hiphil imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
all
גָּדוֹל֙ga.dOl
H1419
great (in any sense) · adjective, masculine singular absolute
strength
וּכְחֶזְקָת֣וֹu.khe.chez.ka.To
H2393
prevailing power · conjunction + preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
riches
בְעָשְׁר֔וֹve.'a.she.Ro
H6239
wealth · preposition + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
up
יָעִ֣ירya.'Ir
H5782
to wake (literally or figuratively) · verb, hiphil imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
realm
מַלְכ֥וּתmal.Khut
H4438
a rule · noun, common feminine singular construct
Grecia
יָוָֽןya.Van
H3120
Javan · proper noun, a place name
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
Ezra 4:5-6 And hired counsellors against them, to frustrate their purpose, all the days of Cyrus king of Persia, even until the reign of Darius king of…
Daniel 8:26 And the vision of the evening and the morning which was told is true: wherefore shut thou up the vision; for it shall be for many days.
Daniel 11:25 And he shall stir up his power and his courage against the king of the south with a great army; and the king of the south shall be stirred u…
Amos 3:7 Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.
Revelation 21:5 And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.
Psalms 73:6-7 Therefore pride compasseth them about as a chain; violence covereth them as a garment.
Proverbs 22:21 That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?
Daniel 7:5 And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between th…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Daniel 11:1-4
Here, 1. The angel Gabriel lets Daniel know the good service he has done to the Jewish nation (Dan 11:1): "In the first year of Darius the Mede, who destroyed Babylon and released the Jews out of that house of bondage, I stood a strength and fortress to him, that is, I was instrumental to protect him, and give him success in his ward, and, after he had conquered Babylon, to confirm him in his resolution to release the Jews," which, it is likely, met with much opposition. Thus by the angel, and at the request of the watcher, the golden head was broken, and the axe laid to the root of the tree. Note, We must acknowledge the hand of God in the strengthening of those that are friends to the chur…
three kings in Persia--Cambyses, Pseudo-Smerdis, and Darius Hystaspes. (Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, and Darius, in Ezr 4:6-7, Ezr 4:24). The Ahasuerus of Esther (see on Dan 9:1) is identified with Xerxes, both in Greek history and in Scripture, appearing proud, self-willed, careless of contravening Persian customs, amorous, facile, and changeable (Dan 11:2).
fourth . . . riches . . . against . . . Grecia--Xerxes, whose riches were proverbial. Persia reached its climax and showed its greatest power in his invasion of Greece, 480 B.C. After his overthrow at Salamis, Persia is viewed as politically dead, though it had an existence. Therefore, Dan 11:3, without noticing Xerxes' successors, proceeds…
There shall stand up yet three kings - Gabriel had already spoken of Cyrus, who was now reigning; and after him three others should arise. These were,
1. Cambyses, the son of Cyrus.
2. Smerdis, the Magian, who was an impostor, who pretended to be another son of Cyrus. And,
3. Darius, the son of Hystaspes, who married Mandane, the daughter of Cyrus.
Cambyses reigned seven years and five months; Smerdis reigned only seven months; and Darius Hystaspes reigned thirty-six years.
The fourth shall be far richer than they all - This was Xerxes, the son of Darius, of whom Justin says. "He had so great an abundance of riches in his kingdom, that although rivers were dried up by his numerous armies, ye…
The Church Fathers
"And now," he says, "I will proclaim to you the truth." [Daniel 11:2] And so was the truth able to proclaim some other thing beyond the truth? The truth was what was seen by Daniel and he proclaimed the truth. He himself, with the truth being revealed in the world, teaches the truth. On account of which the blessed disciples are taught by Christ.
"Still three," he says, "kings shall arise in Persia and the fourth will be rich with greater riches than all." [Daniel 11:2] For after Cyrus, Darius arose, then Artaxerxes, next Xerxes. These three were kings. Scripture is fulfilled. "And the fourth will be rich with greater riches." [Daniel 11:2] Who is this but Darius, who after reigning and being glorious, became wealthy and rose against all the kingdoms of the Greeks?
After Cyrus, who reigned first, there were numerous kings in Persia until those three. But the angel indicates by "three kings" those who were called with the name Darius, because there were only three kings who had the same name Darius. And by revealing through whom the kingdom of the Persians would have ceased, he says, "The fourth shall be far richer than all of them," that is, Darius, who became more powerful than all his predecessors; "and when he has become strong," this Darius, he means, "in his homeland," in power and riches, "he shall stir up," that is, he will cause Alexander, of the house of the Greeks, to march against him.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Macedonian Empire, The · Called the kingdom of Grecia — Called the kingdom of Grecia
Medo-Persian Kingdom · Kings of, mentioned in scripture: Xerxes — Kings of, mentioned in scripture: Xerxes
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).
And now will I show thee the truth,.... And nothing but the truth; what will most certainly come to pass, and may be depended on, even what is written in the book of God's decrees, "the Scripture of truth", and which would appear in Providence in later times; and this he proposed to deliver to him, not in figurative, dark, and obscure expressions, but clearly and plainly, in language easy to be understood:
behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; which were Cyrus, who reigned alone after the death of Darius the Mede, his uncle; Cambyses, the son of Cyrus; and Darius Hystaspes. There was another between Cambyses and Darius, called Smerdis the magician, who reigned but seven mo…
Daniel 11:2
2. 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: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia.
2. Et nunc veritatem annuntio tibi: ecce adhuc tres reges stabunt in Perside, et quartus ditabitur opibus mignis, [150] prae omnibus et secundum fortitudinem suam, in, inquam, opibus suis, [151] excitabit omnes contra regnum Graecorum.
We must now understand God's intention in thus informing his servant Daniel of future events. He was clearly unwilling to gratify a vain curiosity, and he enlarged upon events necessary to be known, thus enabling t…
The events of the nearest future - Daniel 11:2-20
The revelation passes quickly from Persia (Dan 11:2) and the kingdom of Alexander (Dan 11:3, Dan 11:4), to the description of the wars of the kingdoms of the south and the north, arising out of the latter, in which wars the Holy Land, lying between the two, was implicated. Regarding Persia it is only said that yet three kings shall arise, and that the fourth, having reached to great power by his riches, shall stir up all against the kingdom of Javan. Since this prophecy originates in the third year of the Persian king Cyrus (Dan 10:1), then the three kings who shall yet (עוד) arise are the three successors of Cyrus, viz., Cambyses, the pseudo…
The messenger provided a grand sweep of history, from the time of Persia, through the break-up of Greece, the rise and defeat of a wicked king or series of kings (11:21-45), and the final resurrection and triumph of God’s people.
11:2 Three more Persian kings: These Persian kings who followed Cyrus II were most likely Cambyses (530–522 BC), Gaumata (522 BC, a usurper), and Darius I (521–486 BC). The fourth was probably Xerxes I (486–465 BC; see study note on Esth 1:1), whose riches were legendary, as were his army of 1,700,000 soldiers and his huge navy (see Herodotus, Histories 7.6), which he used to fight against the kingdom of Greece. He was unsuccessful, as the Persians failed to defeat…
Behold three more kings Our Sages of blessed memory in Seder Olam (ch. 28) said: “This refers to Cyrus, Ahasuerus, and Darius who rebuilt the Temple. Now what is the meaning of fourth’? The fourth, counting from Media.” In the book of Joseph Ben Gorion, however, it is written that Cyrus had a son who succeeded him before the reign of Ahasuerus, named Cambyses.
and when he becomes strong i.e., Darius.
with his wealth, he will arouse his entire kingdom to wage war against the kingdom of the heathens.
