The Ram and the He-Goat (Daniel 8)

William Kelly

Daniel 7 sets before us a bear and a leopard as the symbols of the Persian and the Macedonian empires, which Daniel 8 represents under a ram and a he-goat. The reason for this change we take to be the close bearing of the latter chapter on Israel, and the kindness shown by those empires in their early days. Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes stand out prominently as their benefactors; and Alexander the Great paid them marked honour, as is known, whether or not we receive the account Josephus gives of the high priest meeting Alexander and the reverence paid him by the conqueror.

Although viewed before God the Medo-Persian and the Macedonian empires were but ‘beasts’, and no better than the Babylonian before and the Roman after, still God did not fail to appreciate kindness done to His chastened people. Hence the change of the symbols in Daniel 8 compared with chapter 7. In this special aspect they are presented as clean animals. First, Medo-Persia is now viewed as a ram, and, secondly, Greece as a he-goat. Whatever might be their consideration of the afflicted Jew, there was no mercy, nor lack of ambitious will one toward another. We have the ram as remarkably described now as the bear had been in the preceding vision. It was necessary to intimate a composite power. In Daniel 7 the bear raised itself on one side. In Daniel 8 the ram had two horns, both high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. Nothing like this was the case with the eagle-winged lion of Babylon. Notably distinct was the Greek he-goat, first with one conspicuous horn between his eyes, and later, when it was broken, four of mark (answering to the four heads of the leopard) toward the four winds of the heavens. Still more different was the Roman beast, with its ten horns, and a little one that subsequently overthrew three of the first horns. [1]

[1] Extracted from ‘The Eastern Little Horn’, The Bible Treasury (1896) vol. 1 (NS) p. 86.

_________________

From: Truth and Testimony, 2022