[524] On the death of Antiochus see 1 Macc. vi. 8; 2 Macc. ix.; Polybius, xxxi. 11; Jos., _Antt._, XII. ix. 1, 2.
[525] Polybius, _De Virt. et Vit._, Exc. Vales, p. 144; Q. Curtius, v. 13; Strabo, xi. 522; Appian, _Syriaca_, xlvi. 80; 1 Macc. vi.; 2 Macc. ix.; Jos., _Antt._, XII. ix. 1; Prideaux, ii. 217; Jahn, _Hebr. Commonwealth_ § xcvi.
[527] Dan. vii. 12. This is only explicable at all--and then not clearly--on the supposition that the fourth beast represents Alexander and the Diadochi. See even Pusey, p. 78.
[528] Ezek. i. 26; Psalm l. 3. Comp. the adaptation of this vision in Enoch xlvi. 1-3.
[529] Isa. l. 11, lx. 10-12, lxvi. 24, Joel iii. 1, 2. See Rev. i. 13. In the Gospels it is not "a son of man," but generally ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου. Comp. Matt. xvi. 13, xxiv. 30; John xii. 34; Acts vii. 56; Justin, _Dial. c. Tryph._, 31.
[530] Comp. Mark xiv. 62; Rev. i. 7; Hom., _Il._, v. 867, ὁμοῦ νεφέεσσιν.
[532] It is so understood by the Book of Enoch; the Talmud (_Sanhedrin_, f. 98, 1); the early father Justin Martyr, _Dial. c. Tryph._, 31, etc. Some of the Jewish commentators (_e.g._, Abn Ezra) understood it of the people of God, and so Hofmann, Hitzig, Meinhold, etc. See Behrmann, _Dan._, p. 48.
[533] Dan. iv. 3, 34, vi. 26. See Schürer, ii. 247; Wellhausen, _Die Pharis. u. Sadd._, 24 ff.
[536] See Schürer, ii. 138-187, "The Messianic Hope": he refers to Ecclus. xxxii. 18, 19, xxxiii. 1-11, xl. 13, l. 24; Judith xvi. 12; 2 Macc. ii. 18; Baruch ii. 27-35; Tobit xiii, 11-18; Wisdom iii. 8, v. 1, etc. The Messianic King appears more distinctly in _Orac. Sibyll._, iii.; in parts of the Book of Enoch (of which, however, xlv.-lvii. are of unknown date); and the Psalms of Solomon. In Philo we seem to have traces of the King as well as of the kingdom. See Drummond, _The Jewish Messiah_, pp. 196 ff.; Stanton, _The Jewish and Christian Messiah_, pp. 109-118.
This vision is dated as having occurred in the third year of Belshazzar; but it is not easy to see the significance of the date, since it is almost exclusively occupied with the establishment of the Greek Empire, its dissolution into the kingdoms of the Diadochi, and the godless despotism of King Antiochus Epiphanes.
The seer imagines himself to be in the palace of Shushan: "As I beheld I was in the castle of Shushan."[537] It has been supposed by some that Daniel was really there upon some business connected with the kingdom of Babylon. But this view creates a needless difficulty. Shushan, which the Greeks called Susa, and the Persians Shush (now Shushter), "the city of the lily," was "the palace" or fortress (_bîrah_[538]) of the Achæmenid kings of Persia, and it is most unlikely that a chief officer of the kingdom of Babylon should have been there in the third year of the imaginary King Belshazzar, just when Cyrus was on the eve of capturing Babylon without a blow. If Belshazzar is some dim reflection of the son of Nabunaid (though he never reigned), Shushan was not then subject to the King of Babylonia. But the ideal presence of the prophet there, in vision, is analogous to the presence of the exile Ezekiel in Jerusalem (Ezek. xl. 1); and these transferences of the prophets to the scenes of their operation were sometimes even regarded as bodily, as in the legend of Habakkuk taken to the lions' den to support Daniel.