Daniel Chapter 8 - Transcription of Video Six

Part Two of the Vision

In the introduction, I stated that the key to understanding Daniel’s account of his vision was to identify how he structured the text by use of chiasms. Once these chiasms are identified, then the way Daniel divided up his account of the vision into different parts then becomes apparent.

Having completed his description of the vision of the ram and the kid, Daniel moved on to describe a completely different episode of the vision. This part of the vision is in no way a continuation of the previous part. Two things evidence this. First in part one of the vision, Daniel indicated that he saw himself appearing in the vision, whereas in this part he gives no such indication. Undoubtedly the first part of the vision is dealing with events that began in Daniel's own lifetime, events from the ancient world from our point of view. That he doesn't see himself appearing in this part of the vision indicates that it is dealing with events that are not from the ancient world, rather from a completely different period of time. Second there are what could be best described as gender mismatches between the characters of this part of the vision and the remaining characters from part one. I will discuss this in more detail shortly.

In the introduction to his account of the vision, Daniel made use of two chiasms, the second being patterned after the first. Likewise in part one of the vision, he also used two chiasms, but rather than one following the other, a small chiasm was nestled inside a much larger chiasm. In this part of the vision, Part Two, Daniel used a total of three chiasms. This part opens with a small chiasm and is followed by a much larger one, and like the chiasms of the introduction, the second larger chiasm is patterned after the first. The third chiasm is a smaller chiasm, and like part one of the vision, is nestled inside the second larger chiasm.

The first chiasm is structured as follows:

1. And from the one of them,		1. ומן-האחת מהם
	2. he came out,	2. יצא
3. one horn of a young.		3. קרן-אחת מצעירה

It is a very small chiasm consisting of only once sentence, meaning there is only one verb in the entire chiasm, and this sentence is broken down into three parts. The first part pairs with the third and the second is the turning point.

Daniel left two clues that indicate that this is the intended structure. The first is the preposition min, which can be translated as either “from” or “of”. Up until this point in the chapter, Daniel did not make much use of this preposition. However in this short sentence, it occurs a total of three times. With the last two occurrences, Daniel used the shortened form of the preposition. However with the first occurrence, he used the longer form. This indicates that he intended this word to be the start of a new chiasm.

The second clue as to the chiasm’s structure is gender. In the Hebrew language almost every word is either masculine or feminine. The subject of the first part of the chiasm is “the one” and this word in Hebrew is feminine. The subject of the second part of the chiasm, “he came out”, is presumably a man and is obviously masculine. The subject of the third part of the chiasm, “one horn”, like the subject of the first part, is feminine. Therefore this gender pattern, feminine-masculine-feminine, determines the structure of the chiasm.

I should point out that a very popular English bible, mistranslates this sentence that forms the chiasm. The King James Version translates it as follows:

And out of one of them came forth a little horn

Those translators must have been assuming that Daniel wrote some grammatically incorrect Hebrew at this point. If Daniel had meant to write this, he should have written:

ומן אחת מהן יצאה קרן קטנה

But he did not, he wrote:

ומן האחת מהם יצא קרן אחת מצעירה

The translation of the King James Version is simply wrong.

The purpose of this small chiasm is to introduce three characters and also to introduce an action of one of those characters. This action of this particular character is what this whole part of the vision centers around.

The characters of this chiasm are new characters and have no connection whatsoever with the remaining characters from part one of the vision, that is the kid of the goats who at the end had four horns. In Hebrew the word kid is masculine, therefore the kid of the goats is a male animal. The word horn is feminine, therefore the kid's four horns form a group which is also feminine.

In the first part of the chiasm we are introduced to a character called “the one”. This character is feminine since the Hebrew word is feminine. This character belongs to a group, since Daniel wrote “the one of them”. The word “them” is in its masculine form, which means this group is a masculine group, and therefore cannot be the group of the four horns belonging to the kid of the goats. This is one of the gender mismatches that Daniel used to show that parts one and two of the vision are not connected.

As for the position of this character within its group, we can conclude that it is the dominant or supreme member, since Daniel calls this character “the one”. We have come across this phrase “the one” before, in Daniel’s description of the ram standing by the canal of Ulai, in the part one of the vision. There he called the higher of the ram’s two horns “the one”, meaning it was dominant or supreme. Therefore this character’s name shows her position within her group.

The third part of the chiasm, the pair of the first part, provides the identity of this character “the one”, and introduces us to another character. This character “the one” is in fact a horn, and this horn belongs to what Daniel called “a young”, that is a young animal, since by definition a horn belongs to an animal. The young animal here is identified as being feminine since the feminine form of the word "young" is used. Therefore this animal is not the kid of the goats from part one of the vision. This is the second gender mismatch that Daniel used to show that parts one and two of the vision are not connected.

We are not told exactly how many horns this animal has, though it certainly has more than one, since the first part of the chiasm identifies the horn called “the one” as belonging to a group. This brings up an interesting point. The horns of this animal form a group whose members are all feminine, yet in the first part of the chiasm, this group is referred to with a masculine word. However that reference to the group was made before the identity of the group was known, and served to distance the group from the four horns of the kid from part one of the vision. This being the case, since the exact identity of the animal is also not known, it must be accepted that this animal could in fact be a male, even though Daniel referred to it here as a female.

In the interpretation given him at the end of the vision, Daniel was never told what this animal and its horns symbolize, meaning no explanation was necessary. Therefore the symbolism of the animals and their horns established in part one of the vision must also apply to this animal. The body of this animal represents a kingdom, and it horns represent kingships, meaning this kingdom has more than one kingship, but one of these kingships is dominant over the others.

The second part of the chiasm introduces us to the last character. Unlike the other characters, this character is introduced through an action that it performs, namely coming out of the horn. Daniel never said exactly what he saw coming out. Nothing is said of this character’s identity. All that is indicated is that this character is masculine. However given that the horn symbolizes the dominant kingship of a kingdom, then in all likelihood this character is a man who somehow becomes king of the kingdom.

I stated before that one of the clues that Daniel left in the text as to this chiasm’s structure is the gender of the subject of each part. Having met the characters introduced in this chiasm it is now possible to redefine this pattern. The subject of the first part of the chiasm is the horn, which is feminine, the subject of the second, the man, who comes out of the horn, and the subject of the third part is again the horn. So the gender pattern feminine-masculine-feminine, leads to the subject pattern of horn-man-horn. This pattern gives the basis for interpreting the next chiasm in this part of the vision.