Biblion Bible Commentary
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Against the Holy Covenant
Daniel 11:29-35
29 “He will return at the appointed time and come into the south; but it won’t be in the latter time as it was in the former. · WEB
The sanctuary is profaned, the continual taken away, and the abomination set up — and the people who know their God are strong, instruct many, and fall.
For ships of Kittim will come against him. Therefore he will be grieved, and will return, and have indignation against the holy covenant, and will take action Daniel 11:30.
Checked from the west by ships of Kittim — the Mediterranean coastlands and islands Numbers 24:24 Isaiah 23:1 — the power turns its frustration inland and religious. The sequence is worth noting: blocked abroad, it takes it out on the covenant. And it finds collaborators, those who forsake the holy covenant, which means the assault has an inside as well as an outside.
Forces from him will profane the sanctuary, even the fortress, and will take away the continual burnt offering. Then they will set up the abomination that makes desolate Daniel 11:31.
Three acts, and every one of them has appeared before in this book. The sanctuary profaned — its place cast down Daniel 8:11. The continual taken away — the standing ministry removed, in the same words Daniel 8:11 Daniel 12:11. And the abomination that makes desolate set up in its place, the phrase the heavenly questioner used of the horn's work Daniel 8:13 and the phrase the Lord quoted as still future in his own generation, naming this prophet as its source Matthew 24:15.
The pattern is substitution rather than mere destruction. Something is removed and something is erected where it stood; the continual mediation of the Prince gives way to an abomination occupying its place. That is the charge this book brings against the power it never names, and it is a religious charge, not a military one.
He will corrupt those who do wickedly against the covenant by flatteries; but the people who know their God will be strong and take action Daniel 11:32.
And against the flatteries stands the finest sentence in the chapter. Two groups are set side by side: those corrupted by persuasion, and the people who know their God, who will be strong and take action. Knowledge of God is what makes the difference — not cleverness, not numbers, not political leverage. The three friends who refused an image had it Daniel 3:17–18; the man who kept his windows open had it Daniel 6:10.
Those who are wise among the people will instruct many; yet they will fall by the sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder, many days Daniel 11:33.
The wise — the book's own word for its intended readers Daniel 12:3 Daniel 12:10 — and their work is teaching: they instruct many. Then the cost, in four kinds and over many days: sword, flame, captivity, plunder. The strength promised in verse 32 is not strength to escape. It is strength to teach while these things are happening.
Now when they fall, they will be helped with a little help; but many will join themselves to them with flatteries Daniel 11:34.
Relief comes, and it is honestly described as a little — some easing, not deliverance. And with the easing comes a new danger: people attaching themselves to a cause that has become safer to join, with flatteries. Persecution thins a movement; partial success fills it with the insincere, which is the harder problem.
Some of those who are wise will fall — to refine them, and to purify, and to make them white, even to the time of the end, because it is yet for the time appointed Daniel 11:35.
The hardest verse, and the most consoling. The falling of the wise is given a purpose — refining, purifying, whitening, the vocabulary of metalwork and laundering that Scripture uses for the treatment of God's own people Malachi 3:3 Zechariah 13:9 1 Peter 1:7. Not punishment, not abandonment: process. And it runs even to the time of the end, which is where the chapter's horizon has been fixed from the start, because it is yet for the time appointed. The suffering is bounded by a calendar that was set before it began.
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