by
Damien F. Mackey
“But
tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him: therefore he
shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many”.
Daniel 11:44
Introduction
Some
commentators take this verse of Daniel as being a reference to the news brought
to Herod by the Magi, as recorded in Matthew 2:1-2: “After Jesus was
born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east
came to Jerusalem
and asked, ‘Where is the one who
has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to
worship him’.” Philip Mauro was adamant that this must be the case. Accordingly,
this is what Mauro wrote in his 1921 book, The Seventy
Weeks and the Great Tribulation:
TIDINGS FROM EAST AND
NORTH
We come now to the last two verses of chapter
11, which read thus:
"But tidings out of the east and out of
the north shall trouble him; therefore he shall go forth with great fury to
destroy, and utterly to make away many. And he shall plant the tabernacles of
his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to
his end and none shall help him" (#Da
11:44,45).
It is not at first
glance apparent who is the antecedent of the pronoun "he" in these
verses. But upon close attention to the text it will be seen that we have here
a return to the main subject of this part of the prophecy, "the king"
of verse 36 ….
…. [Farquharson] adds: "And the
correctness of this view of the whole passage is confirmed by the literal
manner in which the predictions in this 44th verse, and in the remaining verse
of the chapter, were fulfilled by Herod."
Indeed we do not see
how any fulfilment could be more complete and literal than that which is given
us in Matthew's Gospel of the words "But tidings out of the east shall
trouble him." For it is written that "When Jesus was born in
Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold there came wise men
FROM THE EAST to Jerusalem, saying, Where is He that is born king of the Jews?
for we have seen His star IN THE EAST, and are come to worship Him. When Herod
heard these things he was TROUBLED, and all Jerusalem with him" (#Mt
2:1-3). So here we have the exact thing prophesied, namely, "tidings
out of the east" which "troubled him."
Nothing was so well
calculated to "trouble" Herod as reports that some one was aspiring
to his throne. In this case it is among the most familiar of all facts that
Herod, being set at nought by the wise men, from whom he sought to learn the
identity of the new born babe, "was EXCEEDING WROTH, and SENT FORTH, and
slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts thereof,
from two years old and under" (#Mt
2:16). Thus we have almost verbal agreement with the words of the prophecy,
"he shall Go FORTH, with GREAT FURY, to destroy and utterly to make away
MANY." ….
[End of quote]
The bigger picture
The king Herod under
consideration here I have expanded to embrace the evil Hellenistic king of the
Maccabean age, Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’. One will find this reconstruction in
my series:
Merging Maccabean and Herodian ages. Part One: Judas the Jewish
Revolutionary
Merging Maccabean and Herodian ages. Part Two: Gamaliel's
feeble account of Judas
Compare
also the “trembled” in I Maccabees 1:28: “All our people were clothed with
shame, and our land trembled for them”[,] with Matthew 2:3: “When Herod the
king heard it, he trembled, and all Jerusalem with him”.
Merging
Maccabean and Herodian ages. Part Three: The “King” (iv) Antiochus/Herod merges
into Hadrian
Now, in my perusal of the two
accounts of king Antiochus (my Herod) in 1 and 2 Maccabees, I have not been
able to find any instance of that king’s being troubled by any news, tidings, or
reports, from either the “east” or the “north”.
The “north” is rather problematical
inasmuch as Antiochus himself is designated in Daniel 11 as “the king of the
north”. For example we read in verses 15-17 of his warfare, and then alliance,
with the king “of the South”, who was the Ptolemaïc (Hellenistic) pharaoh of
Egypt/Ethiopia:
Then the king
of the North will come and build up siege ramps and will capture a fortified
city. The forces of the South will be powerless to resist; even their best
troops will not have the strength to stand. The invader will do as he pleases; no one will
be able to stand against him. He will establish himself in the Beautiful Land
and will have the power to destroy it. He will determine to come with the might of his entire kingdom
and will make an alliance with the king of the South. And he will give him a
daughter in marriage in order to overthrow the kingdom, but his plans will not
succeed or help him.
And the only
occasion that I have found in 1 and 2 Maccabees where king Antiochus hears from
the east is when, in his last days (I Maccabees 6:1-2):
King Antiochus
was going through the upper provinces when he heard that Elymais in Persia was
a city famed for its wealth in silver and gold. Its
temple was very rich, containing golden shields, breastplates, and weapons left
there by Alexander son of Philip, the Macedonian king who first reigned over
the Greeks.
There is no
indication whatsoever anywhere in 1 and 2 Maccabees that this hearing about the
east (Persia) either (as according to Daniel 11:44) troubled him, or caused him to go forth with great fury to destroy, and
utterly to make away many.
Philip Mauro, following the
unreliable Josephus, does attempt to identify some bad news from the “north” in
the case of Herod. Mauro greatly stretches things to have Daniel’s “the north”
now refer to Rome (op. cit., ibid.):
At about the same time,
that is, in the last years of Herod's life, "tidings out of the
north" also came to "trouble" that self-tormenting monarch. For
Antipater, his oldest son (a despicable character), then at Rome (which had now
become the centre of what is indefinitely called in this prophecy "the
north") conspired to have letters written to his father giving information
that two other of his sons, whom he purposed to make his successors, had
calumniated their father to Caesar. This caused Herod again to break forth with
intense "fury" against his own sons, and their supposed abettors, as
related by Josephus at great length (Ant. XVII 4-7; Wars 1:30-33).
In regard to these
extraordinary events, Farquharson quotes a passage (which we give below) from
the Universal Ancient History, saying he does so the more readily because the
authors of the passage had no thought at all of recording a fulfilment of
prophecy. They say:
"The reader may remember that we left
Herod in the most distracted state that can well be imagined; his conscience
stung with the most lively grief for the murder of his beloved and virtuous
Mariamne and of her two worthy sons; his life and crown in imminent danger from
the rebellious Antipater, and ungrateful Pheroras; his reign stained with
rivers of innocent blood; his latter days embittered by the treacherous
intrigues of a sister; his person and family hated by the whole Jewish nation;
and last of all, his crown and all his glories on the eve of being obscured by
the birth of a miraculous Child, who is proclaimed by heaven and earth to be
the promised and long expected Messiah and Saviour of the world. To all these
plagues we must add some fresh intelligences which came tumbling in upon that
wretched monarch; and which by assuring him still more, not only of the
treasonable designs of the unnatural Antipater, but also of the bitter
complaints which his other two sons, then at the Roman court, vented against
them both, rendered him more than ever completely miserable" (Universal
History, Vol. X. pp. 492, 493).
Herod's "great
fury" (to use the words of the prophecy) was not confined to the babes of
Bethlehem, and to members of his own family. For, says Josephus, "it was
also during paroxysms of fury, that, nearly about the same time, he burned
alive Matthias and forty young men with him, who had pulled down the golden
image of the Roman eagle, which he had placed over the gate of the temple"
(Ant. XVII 7). Furthermore Josephus relates the following characteristic action
of Herod:
"He came again to Jericho, where he became so choleric, that it brought
him to do all things like a madman; and though he was near death, yet he contrived
the following wicked designs: He commanded that all the principal men of the
entire Jewish nation be called to him. Accordingly there were a great number
that came, because * * * death was the penalty of such that should despise the
epistles that were sent to call them. And now the king was in a wild rage
against them all; * * * and when they were come, he ordered them all to be shut
up in the hippodrome, and sent for his sister Salome and her husband Alexas,
and spake thus to them: 'I shall die in a little time, so great are my pains; *
* * but what principally troubles me is this, that I shall die without being
lamented, and without such a mourning as men usually expect at a king's
death.'" Therefore, in order to insure that the nation should be plunged
into mourning, he left an order that, immediately upon his own death, all those
leaders of the Jews, whom he had confined in the hippodrome, should be slain.
That order, however, was not carried out.
[End of quote]
Daniel’s
prophecy about “the east” does appear to fit rather well with the Magian
scenario.
As to “the
north”, it is possible that this just may give us a further clue to the place
of origin of the Magi. They may have come collectively from lands ‘east and
north’, and met up - just as Job’s friends, all hailing from different places, “set
out from their homes and met together by agreement” (Job 2:11).
Extra note: Philip Mauro thought that he had
found another reference to the baby Jesus in Daniel 11:37’s phrase (which some
commentators take to refer to the god Tammuz):
THE DESIRE OF WOMEN
Verse 37 reads:
"Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the desire of women,
nor regard any god; for he shall magnify himself above all."
These words call for
special comment. The first clause manifestly could not apply to any heathen
king like Antiochus. For whether or not a heathen king should change his
national gods is a matter of no importance whatever. But with a king of Israel
it is a matter of supreme importance. Now Herod, though supposedly of Idumean
(i.e. Edomite) origin, was virtually a Jew; for all the remaining Idumeans, who
had come into Judea several centuries previous, had been amalgamated with the
Jews. In addressing the people Herod habitually used the expression "our
fathers" (Ant. Bk. XV Ch. 11, See. 1). So fully was Herod regarded as a
Jew, that the Herodians even held him to be the Messiah. Therefore, in
introducing the worship of Caesar, Herod conspicuously failed to "regard
the God of his fathers." Moreover, in this connection, it should not be
forgotten that Esau was Jacob's twin brother, and hence that the God of the
fathers of the Edomites was the same as the God of the fathers of the Jews.
The words, "nor the desire of women," are very significant. There can
scarcely be any doubt that they refer to Christ, and that Daniel would so
understand them. For, of course, the "women" must be understood to be
women of Israel; and the ardent "desire" of every one of them was
that she might be the mother of Christ. The same word is found in (#Hag
2:7): "And the Desire of all nations shall come." Evidently then
it is Christ who is referred to as "the desire of women"; and if so,
then we have a striking fulfilment of these words in Herod's attempt to murder
the infant Messiah. For the record given in (#Mt
2:1-16) makes it quite clear that Herod's deliberate purpose was to put to
death the promised Messiah of Israel. It was for the accomplishment of that
purpose that he inquired of the chief priests and scribes as to where Christ
should be born. The slaughter of the babes of Bethlehem was an act of atrocity
almost without parallel in history. It was, moreover, an event that had been
foretold by Jeremiah in the words, "A voice was heard in Ramah,
lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children," etc. (#Jer
31:51, quoted in #Mt 2:17,18).
Each one of those murdered infants was "the desire" of his own
mother; and thus Herod fulfilled Daniel
11:37 in another sense.
As
already explained, I have rejected the traditional picture of Herod as an
Idumean (and half-Jew), and have identified him instead as Antiochus IV ‘Epiphanes’,
a Macedonian (Hellenistic) Greek of the Maccabean era.
And I
have also completely rejected the chaotic chronology traditionally associated
with Herod ‘the Great’.
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