After this I saw in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and exceeding strong; and it had great iron teeth it devoured and broke in pieces, and stamped the rest with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.
Daniel has already watched three beasts rise out of the sea, and he could name each one — a lion, a bear, a leopard. The fourth breaks that pattern. No animal fits it, and it carries ten horns.
This beast has no animal to stand for it. Commentators say the vision leaves it nameless on purpose.
The fourth beast speaks mostly of events still to come. It matters so much that Daniel receives further details in a second vision. Nothing in nature can compare to this beast. It stands there on purpose as an unnatural monster, filling the one who sees it with dread and terror.
The same four empires appear twice in Daniel. In chapter 2 a king sees a great statue. Here a prophet sees wild animals. What changed is not the empires but who is looking.
When the four empires were shown in symbol to the Gentile king, they had their worldly aspect. There was the likeness of a great image, majestic in its proportions, made of the most costly, lasting, and useful of metals... Here is the world's estimate of imperial power and successful ambition, and the world bows down and worships. But the saint sees these same empires in symbol as unclean and terrifying beasts: greedy for blood, fierce, untameable. The last one went so far beyond the rest in those qualities that no animal known to man could set out its character. So a strange monster, a terror of nature, stood before the prophet's eye to picture the fourth empire. This gives us God's judgement about these empires, and shows what value His saints should put on their splendour and power.
The beast eats and it tramples. Writers apply both actions to Rome.
No doubt the Roman empire had all these awful features, bringing dread and terror to all who opposed it or attracted its greed; taking whatever served its purpose, and destroying what it could not use.
What the beast did not swallow, it stamped on. One writer spells out what that meant on the map.
It devoured and broke in pieces, and it stamped on what was left with its feet. That is to say, it took over the territories of previous empires and absorbed them into its own — not all of each empire, but its most important parts.
The verse says this beast was different from every beast before it. One writer finds that difference inside its own government.
It was an empire that kept a strong sense of the will of man — of the people. It combined certain republican elements with as iron a despotism as ever ruled in this world. These two things were brought into distinct, but seemingly harmonious, play.
Daniel sees the ten horns the moment the beast appears. One writer explains why the vision does not run in historical order.
We are not to look for the actual development of history in this vision. If we did, the ten horns would clearly not have been seen on the Roman beast when it first met the eyes of the prophet. The Spirit of God brings into the very first view the features that would be found at the close, and not at the beginning.
The verse ends with ten horns. One writer asks a plain historical question about them.
The last clause of verse 7 needs careful attention — "it had ten horns." Verse 24 tells us that these are ten kings. That raises an important question. When was anything of this kind seen in the Roman Empire of the past? For a long period it had only one head. Then for a considerable time three or four rulers held power together. But anything like what we have before us here has never yet been seen. What, then, are we to understand from the statements of our chapter? Just this: that the history of the Roman Empire is not finished, for no word of God can fall to the ground. So between the two last clauses of verse 7 there is a gap of many hundreds of years. That is not at all unusual in the prophetic Word.
What fills that gap? Writers point to the same empire in a future form.
Here it is enough to note that the ten horns clearly take us on to the future. Then the Roman Empire will be revived in a ten-kingdom form under one head (see Rev. 13:1; Rev. 17:12).
- Unnamed — no creature in nature fits the fourth beast. Daniel sees a monster instead of an animal, and it fills him with dread.
- Unmasked — the statue of Daniel 2 shows how the world admires empire. The beasts of Daniel 7 show how God sees it. His saints are to value it as He does.
- Unsparing — iron teeth take the best of earlier empires, and the feet trample the rest.
- Unlike — one government held the will of the people and an iron despotism together at once.
- Unfinished — Rome never had ten kings at once. So a gap of centuries stands inside verse 7, waiting for a revived empire of ten kingdoms under one head.
I considered the horns, and behold, there came up among them another, a little horn, before which three of the first horns were plucked up by the roots; and behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things.
Daniel watches the ten horns of the fourth beast. As he looks, an eleventh horn pushes up and tears out three of them — and this one has human eyes and a voice.
The word "little" is not decoration. It marks the starting point of a career, not its finish.
Here we have divine ground to know that the "little horn" of the west will at first be a small power among the other ten, and that he only becomes great by destroying three of his contemporary powers. He becomes at last not only the possessor of these three kingdoms but the overlord of all the rest. This is the form in which he becomes emperor of the western powers.
Uprooting three kingdoms is how he opens; the other seven follow by a different route.
This eleventh horn is Satan's agent for bringing together the broken-up parts of the ancient Empire of Rome. He will begin by conquering three of the European kingdoms. Then cunning or force will draw seven others to join with these in a general confederacy. Each kingdom will keep its own ruler, but all will acknowledge the supreme leadership of the little horn.
Horns picture force. The eyes point to something else.
The little horn is marked by immense intelligence — not by brute force. The description of it contrasts with that of the Lord, the Lamb who was slain. He has seven horns and seven eyes — that is, the perfection of intelligence and of power. In this case it is not so. The power outwardly looks much greater. It has ten horns instead of seven — a monster instead of perfection. The result is a kind of grotesque exaggeration of the power and wisdom of Christ, which wretched man, energised by Satan, will claim for himself.
This horn is more than a violent conqueror. His words have consequences.
This description is not simply that of a power driven into action by its passions, nor of a conqueror who goes about ravaging everywhere. There was something more in the ways of this little horn: extreme arrogance, intelligence, design, planning, reflection. He had eyes like the eyes of a man… He also had "a mouth speaking great things," that is, enormous boasting. This particularly marks this horn. It is because of the words this horn spoke that the beast was destroyed. He is the one who brings on the judgment of the fourth beast. The little horn is the one who morally influences the beast.
Some read the horns as systems or governments rather than real people. The verse points the other way.
But the great words of the horn bring judgment down upon the beast, and this assures us all the more of the horn's personality. A "political system" is not a responsible agent; for that you need a living being. We could not think of ten political systems where an eleventh subdued three of them, as is said of the "horn." If a real king is meant, nothing is more natural. A king is the meaning of both "horn" and "head," and that should be simple enough to need no further explanation.
Many readers have applied this horn to the pope. One commentator grants the likeness, then applies a simple test.
The pope has never gained three of the ten kingdoms… All its weight has come instead from its spiritual deception over the souls of men. Clearly, then, a power, small in its beginnings, is to rise and put down three of these greater powers, taking over all their dominion. The pope has never done any such thing. So although there has been a measure of likeness, there is enough difference to make the distinction quite plain.
He does not dismiss that older reading completely:
I gather from that, not that this has no bearing upon the papacy, but that its full fulfilment is in the future.
- Small — he begins as the least of eleven horns; smallness at the start says nothing about where a man will end.
- Seizing — he tears three kingdoms up by the roots, and the other seven then fall in behind him.
- Seeing — the human eyes mark intelligence, not brute force. It is a twisted copy of the wisdom and power that belong to the Lamb.
- Speaking — his boasting is what defines him, and what draws down judgment on the whole beast he leads.
- Someone — a system cannot answer for anything; the horn is a real king. And no past figure fits, since no pope ever subdued three kingdoms.