Four kingdoms of Daniel 7 (Jamieson; Fausset; & Brown, A commentary, 1880, OT - vol. 2)
Text: "Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another. The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it. 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 the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh. After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it. After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns." Daniel 7:2-7
Quote:
Ver. 1-28. Vision of the Four Beasts. This chapter treats of the same subject as the second chapter. But there the four kingdoms, and Messiah‘s final kingdom, [...]
Jamieson, Robert; Fausset, Andrew Robert; Brown, David, A commentary: critical, practical and explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments, with a Bible dictionary, compiled from Dr. Wm. Smith's standard work, a copious index, chronological tables, maps and illustrations, Chicago; New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1880, Old Testament - vol. 2 - Proverbs-Malachi, p. 618.
[...] the Mediterranean, the centre territorially of the four kingdoms of the vision, [...] Babylon [...] Persia [...] Greece [...] Rome [...]
[...] 4. lion—the symbol of strength and courage; chief among the kingdoms as the lion among the beasts. Nebuchadnezzar is called "the lion" (Jeremiah, 4. 7.). [...]
[...] 5. bear—symbolising the austere life of the Persians in their mountains, also their cruelty (Isaiah, 13. 17, 18; Cambyses, Ochus, and other of the Persian princes were notoriously cruel: the Persian laws involved, for one man's offence, the whole kindred and neighborhood in destruction, ch. 6. 24) and rapacity. [...]
[...] 6. leopard—smaller than the lion: swift (Habakkuk, 1. 8;); cruel (Isaiah, 11. 6,), the opposite of tame; springing suddenly from its hiding place on its prey (Hosea, 13. 7:): spotted. So Alexander, a small king, of a small kingdom, Macedon, attacked Darius at the head of the vast empire reaching from the Æegan sea to the Indies. [...]
[...] four heads—explained ch. 8. 8, 22; the four kingdoms of the Diadochi or successors into which the Macedonian empire was divided at the death of Alexander, viz., Macedon and Greece under Cassander, Thrace and Bithynia under Lysimachus, Egypt under Ptolemy, and Syria under Seleucus. [...]
[...] 7. [...] Whereas the three former kingdoms were designated respectively, as a lion, bear, and leopard; no particular beast is specified as the image of the fourth; for Rome is so terrible as to be not describable by any one, but combines in itself all that we can imagine inexpressibly fierce in all beasts. [...]
[...] ten horns— [...] The ten kings (v. 24, the "horns" representing power), i.e., kingdoms, into which Rome was divided on its incorporation with the Germanic and Slavonic tribes, [...]
Online source: archive.org/details/commentarycritic18802jami
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