Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Daniel · About this commentary
Four Animals and a Little Horn
Daniel 7:4-8
4 “The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings. I watched until its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet as a man. A man’s heart was given to it. · WEB
Lion, bear, leopard, and a nameless fourth with iron teeth — and out of the fourth's ten horns rises a small one with a man's eyes and an arrogant mouth.
The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings Daniel 7:4.
Babylon, and the emblems are its own — the winged lions of its gates, the lion and the eagle that the prophets had already used for Nebuchadnezzar's speed and appetite Jeremiah 4:7 Jeremiah 4:13 Ezekiel 17:3 Habakkuk 1:8. Then the strangest detail in the four: its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth and made to stand on two feet as a man. A man's heart was given to it. An animal's heart had been taken from a man in the fourth chapter and a man's understanding returned to him when he looked up Daniel 4:16 Daniel 4:34. The beast that stands upright and receives a human heart is the empire whose king was taught, in a field, what he was — the imperial biography written in one image, and the only tenderness anywhere in the vision.
Behold, there was another animal, a second, like a bear. It was raised up on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth Daniel 7:5.
Media and Persia, named as such later in the book Daniel 8:20. Raised up on one side is the dual power's asymmetry — the same lopsidedness the ram's unequal horns will show, the higher coming up last Daniel 8:3 — and the bear is a heavier, slower, less elegant animal than a winged lion, exactly as the silver is inferior to the gold Daniel 2:39. Devour much flesh is the command over it; this empire expanded by mass and endurance, and the three ribs in its teeth are conquests it had swallowed and not let go.
Another, like a leopard, which had on its back four wings of a bird. The animal also had four heads; and dominion was given to it Daniel 7:6.
Greece, named in the next vision Daniel 8:21. A leopard is fast; a leopard with four wings is the speed of a conquest that crossed the known world in a decade. The four heads answer to the goat's four horns replacing the great one that broke — the empire divided among four after its first king fell Daniel 8:8 Daniel 8:22. And once more the verb the book insists on: dominion was given to it Daniel 2:21 Daniel 4:17.
Behold, there was a fourth animal, awesome, powerful, and exceedingly strong. It had great iron teeth. It devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet. It was different from all the animals that were before it. It had ten horns Daniel 7:7.
The fourth is given no animal name — nothing in creation matched it. What it gets instead is iron teeth, tying it to the iron legs of the statue Daniel 2:40, and three verbs of destruction, and the note that it is different from all the rest. Rome, and the difference is real: the earlier three were conquering monarchies that rose and fell whole, and this one dissolved into its own successors. The ten horns are the fragmentation the statue showed as iron mixed with clay Daniel 2:41–43, and the interpretation will say so plainly: ten kings arising out of this kingdom Daniel 7:24.
There came up among them another horn, a little one, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots; and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking arrogantly Daniel 7:8.
And the vision's real subject arrives. It comes up among the ten — from inside the divided fourth empire, not from outside it — begins little, and grows by displacing three. Its two features are not military: eyes like the eyes of a man, intelligence and vision of a human kind rather than brute force, and a mouth speaking arrogantly, a power whose characteristic weapon is what it says. The interpreting angel will spell out what the mouth does: it speaks words against the Most High Daniel 7:25. Of the four beasts and eleven horns in this chapter, this small late one gets more attention than all the empires combined.
held with reason What this mark means