Daniel 11:31 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Daniel 11:31
And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.
the arm (as stretched out) · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural absolute
stand
יַעֲמֹ֑דוּya.'a.Mo.du
H5975
to stand · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
pollute
וְחִלְּל֞וּve.chi.le.Lu
H2490
properly · conjunction + verb, piel sequential perfect, 3rd person common plural
sanctuary
הַמִּקְדָּ֤שׁha.mik.Dash
H4720
a consecrated thing or place · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
strength
הַמָּעוֹז֙ha.ma.'Oz
H4581
a fortified place · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
away
וְהֵסִ֣ירוּve.he.Si.ru
H5493
to turn off (literal or figurative) · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential perfect, 3rd person common plural
daily
הַתָּמִ֔ידha.ta.Mid
H8548
properly · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
place
וְנָתְנ֖וּve.na.te.Nu
H5414
to give · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 3rd person common plural
abomination
הַשִּׁקּ֥וּץha.shi.Kutz
H8251
disgusting · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
desolate
מְשׁוֹמֵֽםme.sho.Mem
H8074
to stun (or intransitively · verb, piel 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 12:11 And from the time that the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall be a thousand t…
Daniel 9:27 And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to ceas…
Matthew 24:15 When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him…
Daniel 8:11-13 Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was…
Mark 13:14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth und…
Ezekiel 24:21-22 Speak unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will profane my sanctuary, the excellency of your strength, the desire of…
Luke 21:20 And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.
Acts 13:40-41 Beware therefore, lest that come upon you, which is spoken of in the prophets;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Daniel 11:21–end
All this is a prophecy of the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the little horn spoken of before (Dan 8:9) a sworn enemy to the Jewish religion, and a bitter persecutor of those that adhered to it. What troubles the Jews met with in the reigns of the Persian kings were not so particularly foretold to Daniel as these, because then they had living prophets with them, Haggai and Zechariah, to encourage them; but these troubles in the days of Antiochus were foretold, because, before that time, prophecy would cease, and they would find it necessary to have recourse to the written word. Some things in this prediction concerning Antiochus are alluded to in the New Testament predictions of the antichris…
arms--namely, of the human body; not weapons; human forces.
they--Antiochus' hosts confederate with the apostate Israelites; these latter attain the climax of guilt, when they not only, as before, "forsake the covenant" (Dan 11:30), but "do wickedly against" it (Dan 11:32), turning complete heathens. Here Antiochus' actings are described in language which reach beyond him the type to Antichrist the antitype [JEROME] (just as in Psa. 72:1-20 many things are said of Solomon the type, which are only applicable to Christ the Antitype); including perhaps Rome, Mohammed, and the final personal Antichrist. SIR ISAAC NEWTON refers the rest of the chapter from this verse to the Romans, translating,…
And arms shall stand on his part - After Antiochus, arms, that is, the Romans, shall stand up: for arms in this prophecy every where denote military potter, and standing up, the power in activity and conquering. Both Sir Isaac Newton and Bp. Newton agree, that what follows is spoken of the Romans. Hitherto Daniel has described the actions of the kings of the north and of the south, that of the kings of Syria and Egypt; but, upon the conquest of Macedon by the Romans, he has left off describing the actions of the Greeks, and begun to describe those of the Romans in Greece, who conquered Macedon, Illyricum, and Epirus, in the year of the era of Nabonassar, 580. Thirty-five years after, by the…
The Church Fathers
Daniel then went on to show that Antiochus destroyed the Jewish commonwealth and way of life when he said, And through him the sacrifice was disordered by transgression.
"[Jesus] breathed on the disciples and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' " As soon as these things were done, everything was finished. The altar was broken, and the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom. And although the city was not yet sacked and destroyed, the abomination of desolation was soon to rest on the temple and the city. The consummation of the ancient ceremonies was at hand.
He calls the generals who assist him his "arms," since after the manner of arms they fulfill the commands of the king. Therefore, he will send some to profane the sanctuary of the kingdom, that is, the temple dedicated to almighty God. He will erect an altar to an idol inside of it; he refers to it as the "desolating abomination." The second book of the Maccabees teaches us this when it says, "And about this time Antiochus sent a second expedition to Egypt." … Then he relates how the slaughter proceeded against all his comrades. The dead were numbered at eighty thousand. Shortly thereafter he says again, "Since Antiochus had a hostile disposition against the Jews, he sent the most loathsome Apollonius with an army of twenty thousand against two thousand and ordered them to slaughter everyone in every company they met." And a little later he says again, "Soon thereafter the king sent an Athenian senator to compel the Jews to depart from their ancestral laws and not to conduct themselves any longer by the laws of God but to defile the temple in Jerusalem and to swear by Olympian Zeus."
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
Abomination Of Desolation — Mentioned by our Saviour, (Matthew 24:15) as a sign of the approaching destruction of Jerusalem, with reference to (Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11) The prophecy referred ultimately to the destruction of…
Daily sacrifice — (Dan. 8:12; 11:31; 12:11), a burnt offering of two lambs of a year old, which were daily sacrificed in the name of the whole Israelitish people upon the great altar, the first at dawn of day, and the…
Daily Offering · Sacrificial — Sacrificial
Daily Sacrifice, The · The abolition of, foretold — The abolition of, foretold
Feast Of Dedication, The · To commemorate the cleansing of the temple after its defilement by Antiochus — To commemorate the cleansing of the temple after its defilement by Antiochus
Syria · Prophecies respecting: Its history in connection with the Macedonia empire — Prophecies respecting: Its history in connection with the Macedonia empire
Temple, The Second · Desecration of, foretold — Desecration of, foretold
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 arms shall stand on his part,.... Powerful armies sent by him into Judea; garrisons of soldiers placed in Jerusalem; mighty generals and commanders who fought for him, as Lysias, Philip the Phrygian, Andronicus, Apollonius, Bacchides, and others:
and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength; the temple, which stood in Jerusalem, a fortified city, and was itself a building strong and stable; and especially it was so called, because here the mighty God had his residence, the symbol of which was the ark of his strength, and here he gave strength unto his people: this holy place, sacred to his worship and service, the commanders and soldiers of Antiochus defiled by entering into it, who…
Daniel 11:31-32
31. And arms shall stand on his part, and they shall pollute the sanctuary of strength, and shall take away the daily sacrifice, and they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate.
31. Et brachia ab ispso stabunt, et profanabunt sanctuarium roboris, aut virtutis, et abolebunt juge, sacrificium scilicet, et ponent abominationem quae obstupefaciet. [177]
32. And such as do wickedly against the covenant shall he corrupt by flatteries: but the people that do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.
32. Et impie agentes contra foedus abducet in errorem blanditiis, [178] et populus intelligentes [179] Deum suum roborabuntur et facient.
Here the angel describes t…
Here is stated what he accomplished by the help of the apostate Jews. זרעים, arms, figuratively for help (Dan 11:5), are warlike forces, as Dan 11:15, Dan 11:22. That the plur. has here the masculine form, while in those verses it has the fem. form, furnishes no reason for a difference of meaning, since זרוע in its proper sense of arm occurs promiscue with both endings in the plur.; cf. for זרעים Gen 49:24; Isa 51:5; Kg2 9:24. מן in ממּנּוּ is not partitive, a part of him, i.e., the host as a part of the king (Hitzig), but out from him, or by his command. יעמדוּ, to stand up, not to stand still, as Hitzig, on the ground of the supposition that Antiochus on his return from Egypt placed a stan…
