Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Daniel 8:9
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The interpretation of the vision. Dan 8:9 Without following the development of the four horns further, the prophecy passes over to the little horn, which grew up out of one of the four horns, and gained great significance in relation to the history of the people of God. The masculine forms מהם and יצא (out of them came) are to be explained as a constructio ad sensum. אחת (one) after קרן (horn) is as little superfluous as is the מן in מצּעירה. אחת is a numeral, one horn, not several; מן is either comparative, less than little, i.e., very little (Ewald), or, as less than insignificance, wretchedness, i.e., in an altogether miserable way (Hv.). The one explanation is more forced than the other, and the idea of wretchedness is altogether untenable. Yet the מן serves as a circumlocution for the superlative = perpaucus (Gesen., Win., Aub.), while verbal analogies for it are wanting. מן signifies from, out of; but it is not to be united with קרן: one horn of smallness (v. Leng.), in which case מן would be superfluous, but with the verb יצא: it came up out of littleness, a parvo, i.e., a parvis initiis (Maur., Hofm., Kran., Klief.). Thus it corresponds with סלקת זעירה, Dan 7:8. In the words "it arose out of littleness" there lies the idea that it grew to great power from a small beginning; for it became very great, i.e., powerful, toward the south, toward the east, and toward the הצּבי (the splendour, glory), i.e., toward the glorious land. הצּבי = הצּבי ארץ, Dan 11:16, Dan 11:41. This designation of the land of Israel is framed after Jer 3:19 and Eze 20:6, Eze 20:15, where this land is called "a heritage of the greatest glory of nations" (a goodly heritage of the host of nations, E. V.), "a glory of all lands," i.e., the most glorious land which a people can possess. The expression is synonymous with חמדּה ארץ ("pleasant land"), Jer 3:19; Zac 7:14; Psa 106:24. Canaan was so designate don account of its great fruitfulness as a land flowing with milk and honey; cf. Eze 20:6. The one of the four horns from which the little horn grew up is the Syrian monarchy, and the horn growing up out of it is the king Antiochus Epiphanes, as Josephus (Ant. x. 11. 7) and all interpreters acknowledge, on the ground of 1 Macc. 1:10. The south, against which he became great, is Egypt (cf. Dan 11:5 and 1 Macc. 1:16ff.). The east is not Asia (Kranichfeld), but Babylon, and particularly Elymas and Armenia, 1 Macc. 1:31, 37; 3:31, 37; 6:1-4, according to which he subdued Elymas and overcame Artaxias, king of Armenia (App. Syr. c. 45, 46; Polyb. xxxi. 11). Besides the south and the east, Canaan, the holy land, as lying between, is named as the third land, as in Isa 19:23. it is named as third, between Egypt and Assyria; but הצּבי ואל ("and toward the glorious land") is not, with Kranichfeld, to be regarded as an exegetical addition to המּזרח ואל ("and toward the east"). Palestine lay neither to the east of Daniel, nor geographically to the east of the kingdom denoted by the little horn, because the text gives no support to the identifying of this kingdom with the Javanic, the horn operating from the west. Dan 8:10 As this horn became great in extent toward the south and toward the east, so also it grew up in height even unto the host of heaven, and some of them it cast down, i.e., some of the stars, to the earth. The host of heaven is here, as in Jer 33:22, the whole body of the stars of heaven, the constellations, and of the stars is epexegetical of of the host. Da…
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