When Alexander died a few years later, his four commanding generals took over and the angel’s description will now focus on the descendants of two of them. Her story is told in the Book of Esther.ġ30 years after Xerxes, Alexander the Great defeated Persian King Darius III at the Battle of Guagamela, effectively conquering the Persian Empire. The fourth was Xerxes 1 (486-465 BC) who chose the young Jewish woman Esther to be his queen. The three who would follow Cyrus as King of Persia were Cambyses (530-522 BC) Pseudo-Smerdis (522BC) and Darius 1 (522-486 BC). It will not go to his descendants, nor will it have the power he exercised, because his empire will be uprooted and given to others. After he has appeared, his empire will be broken up and parceled out toward the four winds of heaven. Then a mighty king will appear, who will rule with great power and do as he pleases. When he has gained power by his wealth, he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece. “Now then, I tell you the truth: Three more kings will appear in Persia, and then a fourth, who will be far richer than all the others. We’ll pick up the angel’s explanation at the beginning of the era of the Kings of the South and North. But the only result of this inspection has been that Daniel is now thought to be the most thoroughly validated book in the entire Bible. This unparalleled display of predictive prophecy has caused the Book of Daniel to be carefully inspected by those hoping to find flaws in the prophecies, or clues that would justify their claim that Daniel is actually a book of history, written by someone else after the events it describes took place, rather than prophecy. These details are contained in chapters 11 and 12 and have given historians enough information to document 135 historically fulfilled prophecies in the first 35 verses of chapter 11. Three weeks later an angel visited him and provided a more detailed explanation of the revelation. So he undertook a limited fast and began praying for understanding. The only way for either one to confront the other would be to march their armies through Israel. The Seleucids would be located on Israel’s northern border, and the Ptolemys would be just to their south. This vision troubled Daniel because he could see that Israel would be caught up in the ongoing battle between them. Seleucus took parts of what are now Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and later Iran and Iraq, while Ptolemy got Egypt, Israel, and Jordan. From our previous study we learned that Seleucus and Ptolemy were two of the four generals who assumed power upon the death of Alexander the Great and divided the Greek Empire among them. It was still over 200 years away and would last nearly 200 years after that, and would pit the Seleucids against the Ptolemys. Daniel’s vision concerned a great war that was coming.
Remember, Cyrus had conquered Babylon in fulfillment of a prophecy God had given to Isaiah over 100 years earlier ( Isaiah 44:24-45:7). In chapter 10, Daniel tells of a revelation he received during the third year of King Cyrus of Persia’s reign.