“Three Kings” and the “Fourth” of Daniel 11:2
by
Damien F. Mackey
So
he said, ‘Do you know why I have come to you? Soon I will return to fight
against the prince of Persia, and when I go, the prince of Greece will come; but first I
will tell you what is written in the Book of Truth. (No one supports me against
them except Michael, your prince)’.
Daniel
10:20-21
This text, given in the context of “… the
third year of Cyrus king of Persia” (10:1), may provide us with a crucial clue
for identifying the kings of Daniel 11:2, usually translated along the lines of:
‘Now
then, I tell you the truth: Three more
kings will arise in Persia, and then a
fourth, who will be far richer than all the others. When he has gained
power by his wealth, he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece’.
The “prince of Persia”, whom the speaker is
about to resume his “fight against”, can only be, here in “the
third year of Cyrus king of Persia”, Cyrus himself.
Daniel 11, dated to “… the first year of
Darius the Mede” (11:1), who is also Cyrus himself, informs us that it is the fourth king who ‘will stir up
everyone against the kingdom of Greece’.
So, we must already be at the time of that fourth king in Daniel 10 and 11, meaning
that the three other kings referred
to have already passed. This is contrary to all translations, which present the
four kings of Daniel 11:2 all in a future
context, ‘will arise’, ‘will be far richer’, ‘will stir up’. Hebrew (עֹמְדִים) is not by any means restricted
to “will arise”, however.
See: http://biblehub.com/hebrew/omedim_5975.htm
e.g., “were standing”, “had served”.
The predecessors of Cyrus, presumably the kings
of the Chaldean empire (Nabopolassar; Nebuchednezzar II; Belshazzar?), are here
described as ruling (לְ) (not necessarily “in”) Persia. Persia is perhaps mentioned
here because this prophecy has occurred within the Medo-Persian era.
The Medo-Persian empire was indeed considerably vaster,
and hence “far
richer than” the previous ones (“all the others”).
This has ramifications because it was Darius “the
Great” Hystaspes who would ‘stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece’. The
way that my revision of the Medo-Persian empire is developing, Darius the Mede,
who was Cyrus, may also be Darius “the Great” Hystaspes:
Darius the Mede = Cyrus the Great = Darius the Great
But
Darius would finally have to contend with “the prince of Greece [Javan]”, who
was Alexander, also known as “the Great”. I Maccabees 1:1: “After Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian, who
came from the land of Kittim, had defeated Darius, king of the Persians and the
Medes, he succeeded him as king. (He had previously become king of Greece.)”.
We
are much, much closer to the Greek era than the conventional historians have realised.
Comments