Biblion Bible Commentary
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At the Time of the End
Daniel 11:40-45
40 “At the time of the end the king of the south will contend with him; and the king of the north will come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships. He will enter into the countries, and will overflow and pass through. · WEB
The chapter's last campaign is explicitly dated to the time of the end, and it closes with a power camped between the sea and the holy mountain, unhelped.
At the time of the end the king of the south will contend with him; and the king of the north will come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, with horsemen, and with many ships Daniel 11:40.
The chapter dates its own final movement. At the time of the end is the phrase Gabriel had used three times to fix the horizon of the earlier vision Daniel 8:17 Daniel 8:19 Daniel 8:26 and which frames the book's last chapter Daniel 12:4 Daniel 12:9; whatever this closing campaign describes, the text places it at the end and not in the middle of the succession.
Here the honest thing is to say plainly what the state of the question is. Readers who accept everything this book teaches about the four kingdoms, the little horn, the time periods and the judgment have divided, for a long time and in good faith, over the detailed identification of the kings in this last stretch — which powers the north and the south are at the end, whether the campaign is territorial or religious, and how literally the geography should be taken. The division is old and it is not a division between believers and skeptics. It is a disagreement among people reading the same text with the same convictions, and a reader is better served by knowing that than by being handed one scheme as though it were settled.
What the passage does fix is not in dispute, and it is a great deal.
The imagery keeps its bearings from the same fixed point as the rest of the chapter. He will enter also into the glorious land Daniel 11:41 — the covenant land is still the ground the conflict crosses, as it has been since the two powers first appeared Daniel 11:16. Three peoples will be delivered out of his hand: Edom, Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon — the nations east of the Jordan, and the vision notes that this power's reach has exceptions.
The conquest is extensive and it is material: power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt Daniel 11:43, with Libyans and Ethiopians following. The god of fortresses is still being paid Daniel 11:38.
Then the turn: news out of the east and out of the north will trouble him; and he will go out with great fury to destroy and utterly to sweep away many Daniel 11:44. Something reported, from a direction he does not control, unsettles him — and his response is fury and slaughter. A power at the height of success, disturbed by information.
He will plant the tents of his palace between the sea and the glorious holy mountain; yet he will come to his end, and no one will help him Daniel 11:45.
The final position is a camp — tents, however palatial — pitched between the sea and God's own mountain. The last thing this power does is establish itself on the ground that belongs to the sanctuary, which is precisely what the whole prophecy has said its ambition was Daniel 8:11 Daniel 11:31.
And the last clause is the one every vision in this book has arrived at. He will come to his end, and no one will help him — not defeated by a rival power, not succeeded by a fifth kingdom: ended, with no ally, the horn broken without human hands Daniel 8:25, the dominion taken away by a court Daniel 7:26, the image ground to chaff by a stone no one quarried Daniel 2:34–35. The chapter's confidence is not in a scheme of identifications. It is in that sentence.
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