Daniel Chapter 8 - Transcription of Video Seven

Part Two of the Vision (cont.)

The second chiasm takes up the remainder of this part of the vision. It is structured as follows:

1. And she grew exceedingly unto the negev and unto the east, and unto the gazelle. And she grew until the host of the heavens, and she cast down earthward from the host and from the stars, and she trampled them underfoot.		1. ותגדל-יתר אל-הנגב ואל-המזרח ואל-הצבי ותגדל עד-צבא השמים ותפל ארצה מן-הצבא ומן-הכוכבים ותרמסם
	2. And until the prince of the host he expanded. And from him, he lifted away the continual. And the place of preparation of his holy place will be cast down. And a host she will be given upon the continual by transgression.	2. ועד שר-הצבא הגדיל וממנו הרים התמיד והשלך מכון מקדשו וצבא תנתן על-התמיד בפשע
3. And she cast truth earthward. And she will do. And she will succeed.		3. ותשלך אמת ארצה ועשתה והצליחה

Like the first chiasm, this chiasm has three parts. The subject of each of the parts follows the pattern set by the first chiasm, namely horn, man, horn. Since in Hebrew a horn is feminine and a man masculine, the parts of this chiasm are easy to spot. In the first part all the verbs are feminine which means the subject of this part is the horn. In the second part the verbs are masculine which means the subject is the man that came out of the horn. And the third part returns to the subject of the horn again.

“And she grew exceedingly unto the negev and unto the east, and unto the gazelle.” To understand what this means, contrast it with what Daniel said of the ram and the kid. He said of the ram, which represents Media and Persia, that he saw him butting toward the sea, toward the tsafon, and toward the negev, and that “he will expand”. Of the kid, which represents Greece that, “he expanded until much”. Both Persia and Greece established their empires in the same way. First by conquering lands adjacent to their homelands, and then lands adjacent to those lands, and so on and so on, until they had established sizeable empires over a continuous land area. This is what it means to expand toward certain areas.

So what does it mean to grow unto certain areas? The horn, rather than starting out from her own homeland and going toward a certain area, by invading other lands that lie between her homeland and the area of destination, the horn goes directly unto the desired area without invading other lands that lie on her path. That this is the correct understanding is given weight by the fact that the animal to which the horn belongs does not move or change in anyway. This animal represents the kingdom, the homeland of the horn, and while the horn is growing her homeland does not increase in size.

The horn grew exceedingly. As discussed before, Media and Persia merely expanded, whereas Greece expanded until much, meaning that Media and Persia had a central location in the world as known in Daniel’s time, but Greece was located on the margins. So if the horn has to grow exceedingly to reach various places, this means that the horn’s homeland must be situated in place far far away from the world that Daniel knew, the Middle East of today.

We are told that this horn grew to the negev which in the context of this vision has been identified as the land of Babylon, to the east, the lands that border the Indus, and finally to the gazelle. Daniel never elaborated on the symbolism of the gazelle, nor was he told anything in the interpretation given him at the end of the vision. This means that either Daniel believed the symbolism to be obvious, hence he felt no further explanation was required, or there is sufficient information within Daniel’s account of this vision to identify this land, or finally, this land is simply not meant to be identified by the reader before these events come to pass.

I doubt very much that Daniel believed the symbolism to be obvious. Whilst watching the vision, Daniel indicated he understood the symbolism of the ram, but not of the kid. That had to be given to him in the interpretation. This is not surprising, after all the ram symbolized a kingdom that existed in his own lifetime, but the kid did not. Therefore if the gazelle symbolizes a land of a kingdom not from Daniel’s lifetime, why should the symbolism be obvious?

If the answer is to be found from the information given in this account, then there is only one possible answer that I can think of. First consider the three places that the horn grew to, the negev, the east and the gazelle. The first two places are easily identifiable within the world as known to Daniel, the last, the gazelle, is not. This suggests that the gazelle represents a land located outside of the world known to Daniel, the Middle East of today. In this vision, Daniel made reference to only one such land, the homeland of the horn. In the first chiasm of this part of the vision, when introducing us to this horn, Daniel never specified to which animal it belonged, but here possibly he does. The gazelle could represent the homeland of the horn.

True there are problems in suggesting this. First, the unidentified animal of the first chiasm is a young female, whereas this gazelle is a male. However, as I suggested in my discussion of the first chiasm, the then unidentified animal could well have been a male, but was identified as female simply as a means of distancing it from the kid of the goats from part one of the vision. Second, when Daniel said the horn grew unto these three places, what exactly did he see? If he saw the horn growing from her homeland unto the negev, and from the negev unto the east, and from the east unto the gazelle, then the gazelle could possibly symbolize the homeland of the horn. On the other hand, if he saw the horn starting out from her own homeland each time she grew, then it is likely that the gazelle symbolizes another land, a land that cannot be identified with any certainty at this stage.

After this the horn kept growing, this time until host of the heavens, or space, as we would say today. Note that before the horn grew unto certain places, now she is growing until the heavens. The growth of the horn is no longer horizontal it is now vertical. This is the first indication as to which time period this part of the vision belongs. I said previously that in this part of the vision, unlike the first part of the vision, there is no indication that Daniel saw himself in it, showing that these two parts of the vision belong to different time periods. Now since when has man had the ability to travel in space? Answer only since the second half of the twentieth century. The events of this part of the vision have nothing to do with events from the ancient world.

The basic meaning of the Hebrew word tsava is a host, or a large congregation. Therefore the host of the heavens, are all that are we see in the heavens, the sun, the moon, the distant stars, the planets, comets, asteroids, and man-made satellites since we are now dealing with the space age. Daniel said that once in space, the horn cast down earthward “from the host and from the stars and trampled them underfoot”. Note how Daniel now differentiates between host and star. The word host in this sentence must now have a more specific meaning. If from the host of the heavens, the stars are taken away, stars in Hebrew include the distant stars, planets, comets and asteroids, then all that is left that constitutes a host are the man made satellites.

So does this mean that from space the horns knocks satellites and stars out of their orbits and down to the earth? I dare say that is possible. Man-made satellites certainly can be brought back down to earth, and comets and asteroids can be destroyed with missiles. However there is also another way to understand what the horn is doing. From her vantage point in space, that is amongst the stars, she uses her host, her man-made satellites, to cast down space based weapons, to destroy targets already on the earth.