Biblion Bible Commentary
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The King of the South and the King of the North
Daniel 11:5-13
5 “The king of the south will be strong. One of his princes will become stronger than him, and have dominion. His dominion will be a great dominion. · WEB
Two of Greece's fragments settle into a long rivalry of marriages, betrayals and campaigns — and the country between them is the road every army takes.
The king of the south will be strong. One of his princes will become stronger than him, and have dominion Daniel 11:5.
The chapter's organizing terms arrive, and they are compass points rather than names. The south is Egypt, and the vision says so outright a few verses on — captives and treasure carried into Egypt Daniel 11:8, and the land of Egypt won't escape at the chapter's end Daniel 11:42. The north is the power holding Syria and Mesopotamia, the quarter from which invaders had always descended on Judah; Scripture fixes that direction as the standard bearing of trouble — out of the north, evil will break out Jeremiah 1:14 Jeremiah 4:6 Ezekiel 26:7. The directions are reckoned from one fixed point, and the point is not neutral: they are north and south of the glorious land Daniel 11:16 Daniel 11:41. Two great powers, and God's people living on the road between them.
At the end of years they will join themselves together; and the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to make an agreement, but she will not retain the strength of her arm Daniel 11:6.
And the first thing the two powers try is a wedding. A daughter is sent north to seal an alliance, and the alliance fails — she will be given up, with those who brought her, and the father who arranged it and the husband who received her both come to nothing. This is dynastic diplomacy as the ancient world actually practiced it, and the vision's judgment on it is delivered by simple narration: the marriage that was to secure peace destroys everyone involved in it.
But out of a shoot from her roots one will stand up in his place, who will come to the army and will enter into the fortress of the king of the north, and will deal against them and will prevail Daniel 11:7.
A kinsman avenges her, invades the north, takes the fortress, and carries off their gods with their molten images, and with their goodly vessels of silver and of gold, captive into Egypt Daniel 11:8. Idols going into exile as spoil — the vision's dry comment on the gods of the great powers, and the same humiliation Babylon's vessels had inflicted on Jerusalem in the book's second verse Daniel 1:2 Isaiah 46:1–2.
The next verses run through the reprisals: sons of the north raising a multitude of great forces Daniel 11:10, the south moved with anger and winning a great victory in which the northern multitude is given into his hand Daniel 11:11, and then the sentence that turns the tide of the whole stretch — his heart will be exalted... but he won't prevail Daniel 11:12. Victory followed by arrogance followed by loss, which is this book's most consistent pattern of judgment on power Daniel 4:30–31 Daniel 5:20.
The king of the north will return, and will send out a multitude greater than the former. He will come on at the end of the times, even of years, with a great army and with abundant supplies Daniel 11:13.
The north comes back stronger, better supplied, and patient — and from here the balance tips permanently northward. Readers of this chapter broadly agree on this early stretch; it maps onto the wars of the Greek successor kingdoms closely enough that the correspondences are not seriously disputed. What follows is the stretch where the agreement ends.
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