Daniel spoke and said, I saw in my vision by night, and behold, the four winds of the heavens broke forth upon the great sea.
Daniel's night vision opens with a storm: four winds tearing at a great sea. Before a single empire appears, two questions press — what is this sea, and who stirs it?
In prophecy, water stands for people, not geography. One writer contrasts the sea with a second image — the earth:
In prophetic language the great sea always means masses of people. So Babylon sits "on many waters" (Revelation 17:1, 15; Jeremiah 51:13). These are people who at the time of the vision were not yet formed into kingdoms and empires, and so were not yet acknowledged by God as objects of prophecy. Those settled powers are rather called the earth.
Commentators differ on where the disturbance comes from. Some read the winds as God's agents in providence:
The winds are different disturbing influences. God orders them in providence, and in judgment, to carry out His purposes in governing the earth. So in Revelation 7 angels hold back the four winds of the earth from their work of judgment. They wait until God has sealed His servants on their foreheads. There they are the winds of earth, because the earth was what they were sent to strike. In Daniel they are the winds of heaven, showing the source they were sent from.
Others read the wind as Satan's power at work:
"Wind" often represents the power of Satan, for he is "the prince of the power of the air" (Ephesians 2:2). What Daniel saw was a picture of the forces of darkness working on the masses of mankind. As we shall see, this produced the four world-empires that fill up the times of the Gentiles. Israel is the only nation God has raised up to a place of supremacy. But while Israel is set aside, four world powers arise. They come from the striving of satanic forces, and not from the working of God's power.
Commentators differ. Some take it as a real body of water:
"The great sea" is the name given to the Mediterranean. That sea is completely surrounded by the countries that make up the prophetic earth. The four beasts rising out of the sea answer to the four parts of the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. Nebuchadnezzar had the outward course of the great world-empires unfolded to him, while Daniel had their inner character revealed to him.
Others answer from the Hebrew wording:
The words used in Daniel for the great sea are not at all the same as "the Great Sea" when the Mediterranean is meant. I do not believe the expression is ever used of the Mediterranean. Daniel uses a Hebrew word meaning, I think, a multitude of waters. In this general sense it stands without the article — the four winds of heaven striving upon great waters. "The Great Sea" is used with the article.
One writer takes up an apparent clash inside the chapter:
The four kings of verse 17 arise out of the earth. There is no contradiction at all between that and verse 2, where they came up from the sea. They are said to rise from the sea because the sea represents a mass of men in a state of political anarchy. It is out of this troubled state of peoples that empires arise. Take the French Empire, for example. A revolution broke up the old system of government. Then followed a state of confusion, like the sea torn by the winds, and out of it all an empire emerged... The force of the sea was simply to show that they grew out of a previously troubled state of society. Such was their providential origin. But their moral origin is looked at as purely earthly, in contrast with the Son of man, who comes in the clouds of heaven.
Another prophet saw four chariots. One writer explains them:
The chariots are presented as "the four spirits of the heavens, which go out from standing before the Lord of all the earth" (compare Daniel 7:2). God is showing us that His providence directed the course of these warring powers from the very beginning. To all appearances each power did whatever it wanted, following its own ways without taking account of God. In reality He stood behind the scenes. The four spirits of the heavens stood before His face, to lead the empires along the paths He wanted them to take.
- Sea — In prophecy, water is people: crowds not yet organised into kingdoms. Prophecy calls settled, governed nations "the earth."
- Wind — The stirring force. Some writers read it as God's providence in judgment. Others read it as satanic power at work on the crowds.
- Storm — Empires are not born in calm. Revolution and confusion come first, and out of the churning a world power rises.
- Wording — Writers differ over whether "the great sea" is the Mediterranean. One argument from the Hebrew: Daniel's phrase means a multitude of waters.
- Steering — The powers looked like they were following their own will. Behind the scenes God directed every one of them where He meant them to go.
And four great beasts came up from the sea, different one from another.
Daniel's night vision covers the same ground as Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the great statue, but from another angle. Four beasts rise out of a stormy sea, and that raises two questions: what the sea stands for, and why the empires look like animals instead of a man.
The sea is not water but people — crowds with no settled government. One writer points to modern history:
The sea represents a mass of men in a state of political anarchy. It is out of this troubled state of peoples that empires arise. Take the French Empire for example. A revolution broke up the old system of government. Then followed a state of confusion, like the sea torn with the winds, and out of it all emerged an empire. From such a state of things in the world the four great empires arose.
None of it is literal, and the same picture appears elsewhere in Scripture:
These are not actual beasts nor an actual sea, but four great world empires that have their origin in the nations. Also we have a similar thought expressed in Revelation 13:1, where we read of a beast rising up out of the sea.
Later in the chapter the interpretation says these four kings "arise out of the earth" (v. 17), not out of the sea. The two statements answer different questions:
In the vision they rise out of the sea; in the interpretation they rise from the earth. The vision shows their providential or political origin; the interpretation shows their moral origin. In God's providence they rise in a time of political upheaval. Morally they are earthly, unlike the kingdom of the Son of Man, who comes from heaven.
The empires that looked like a splendid human figure to a pagan king look like animals to a prophet. The chapters in between explain the change:
The four beasts of Daniel's vision match, as everyone knows, the one human figure that the king of Babylon saw. In his eyes it at least looks like a man, though it has no breath and no life. To the prophet later, on the other hand, the world empires are full of life — but the life is that of an animal. One of the chapters in between links the two. In the fourth chapter Nebuchadnezzar is himself driven out among the beasts, as a corrective punishment, until he knows "that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men." In a pride that has forgotten God, he has become nothing but a beast, which knows no God.
Calling a government a beast is a verdict on its character, not an insult:
Why does God picture these powers as wild beasts? He does it to show us their moral character as He sees it. A beast lives by force, and to satisfy its appetites, with no sense of responsibility to God. In the same way the Gentile powers have been marked by greed for conquest and a craving for power and glory. God has not been in all their thoughts. It is striking that these powers have willingly taken the character of a wild beast, perhaps without knowing they were fulfilling God's Word. Is it not a fact that many have chosen wild beasts or birds of prey as their national symbols? Look at the lion of England and the eagle of the United States.
The four are not interchangeable. Writers identify them as the same succession pictured in the statue:
Nebuchadnezzar's vision unfolded the outward course of the great world empires, while Daniel's vision revealed their inner character. Lion — the Babylonian Empire. Bear — the Medo-Persian Empire. Leopard — the Greek Empire. Fourth beast — the Roman Empire.
Their differences trace a direction of travel:
Here these same empires appear in a form that shows how each one sinks lower morally in the sight of God. Cruelty, selfishness and greed, with no recognition or knowledge of God, mark the beast. These are the solemn features of the world empires through the times of the Gentiles, until the dominion of Christ is established.
Commentators differ over "the great sea." Some take it as the Mediterranean. One writer disagrees:
I do not believe the expression is ever used of the Mediterranean. Daniel uses a Hebrew word (Rab) meaning a multitude of waters, and he uses it with no article; "the Great Sea" is used with the article. It is quite clear that the passage in Daniel speaks of the origin of these empires from a sea of peoples with no settled shape.
- Sea — the restless, ungoverned mass of peoples. Empires come out of political chaos, as one came out of revolution in France.
- Rise — the vision gives their providential origin, out of the sea; the interpretation gives their moral origin, out of the earth. The Son of Man, by contrast, comes from heaven.
- Beast — what looked like a splendid man to Nebuchadnezzar looks like an animal to God. The king who forgot God was himself driven out among the beasts.
- Character — a beast lives by force and appetite, with no sense of responsibility to God. Nations have taken lions and eagles as their own emblems.
- Different — lion, bear, leopard and the fourth beast trace a moral slide downward in the times of the Gentiles. It ends when Christ's dominion is established.