“Rhabarberbarbara”
“Rhabarberbarbara”
Daniel 11:2-45
by William Klock
On Wednesday a friend at the pool stopped me and asked if I’d watch a video on her phone and tell her what it was about. It was in German and she didn’t understand. So she hit “play” and two men started singing and I laughed. I said, “It’s ‘Rhabarberbarbara’ and they’ve set it to music. “Rhabarberbarbara” is a German tongue twister poem. Imagine “She sell seashells down by the seashore”, but it’s all ba…ba…ba sounds, and with each stanza the tongue twisting part gets longer. Barabara opens a bar to sell her rhubarb cake: Barbaras rhabarberbar”. But pretty soon bald, bearded barbarians in need of a barber show up. It’s a funny poem and it’s hard to say, but these two guys set it to music and sang the whole thing perfectly. My friend said she liked how catchy it was, but had no idea what it meant. I laughed, because this is how the Greeks came up with the word “barbarian” for foreigners. Their languages just sounded like “Bar…bar…bar”. If you don’t know the language, your ear hears the repetitive sounds, but you have no idea what any of it means. Imagine hearing “She sells seashells down by the sea shore” if you didn’t speak English. It’s just rhyming repetitive gibberish.
As I was walking away I started thinking how this is a metaphor for how a lot of people might hear Daniel 11, which is what we come to today. It’s the longest chapter in the book and most of it describes a long conflict between the King of the North and the King of the South. The actual kings are never named. The places involved aren’t named. It goes on and on, back and forth between north and south. In this case the language is history, not German, but if you don’t know the language it’s not that different than my friend listening to that German tongue twister that’s all bar…bar…bar. It’s just repetitive gibberish.
But if you know the history, Chapter 11 describes the historical events that were whirling around Judah from the time of Daniel in the Sixth Century up to the 160s BC. If you know the history a story emerges from the Rhubarberbarbara. That said, knowing all the historical details isn’t the important thing you need to take away. I’ll give you the big picture and skip the nitty-gritty. If you want to know all the details, the actual historical events are well documented and you can look them up in a history book or Wikipedia. If you’ve got an ESV Study Bible, it’s all there with nifty maps and genealogies and historical outlines.
But before we get into that, remember the lesson from Chapter 10. That was the first part of this vision. The lesson from that first part is that there’s more going on than what we can see. Daniel was frustrated and discouraged by earthly circumstances and—as we’ll see—things weren’t going to get any better. It’s easy to lose hope. But the angel explained to him that the battles he saw being fought by kings on earth corresponded to battles being fought in the heavenlies. The point of knowing this isn’t to burden us with some new responsibility—as if there’s something we can do to win those battles in the heavenlies. Just the opposite. Those battles in the heavenlies are not our responsibility. Apart maybe from praying, there’s nothing we can do to assist the angels. God has given us things to do and battles to wage in our sphere and he and his heavenly forces will do battle in their sphere. And the point is that we should find hope in that. The battle here may feel hopeless. But knowing that God fights a battle in the heavenlies that somehow corresponds to the one we fight here and that the outcome in the heavenlies corresponds to the outcome here—that should inspire hope to stand firm, to keep the faith, and to fight the good fight.
Knowing that, the vision now continues with a summary of historical events. Let’s start with verses 2-4.
“And now I will show you the truth. Behold, three more kings shall arise in Persia, and a fourth shall be far richer than all of them. And when he has become strong through his riches, he shall stir up all against the kingdom of Greece. Then a mighty king shall arise, who shall rule with great dominion and do as he wills. And as soon as he has arisen, his kingdom shall be broken and divided toward the four winds of heaven, but not to his posterity, nor according to the authority with which he ruled, for his kingdom shall be plucked up and go to others besides these.
There were more than four Persian kings following the time of Daniel. This “three and a fourth” is a Hebrew way of talking about all the things. We see it in Proverbs: “There are six things the Lord hates and a seventh is an abomination to him.” The Lord hates more than seven things, but these seven are representative of all the things the Lord hates. Just so with these four Persian kings. The point is that the Persian empire will get bigger and bigger, richer and richer, more power and more powerful and eventually—and this is what happened historically—it will go up against Greece and be defeated. Xerxes I invaded Greek territory. He was defeated and that started a century of conflict that ended with the defeat of Persia by Alexander the Great. And mighty Alexander, who like the beasts of earlier chapters rampaged and did what he willed—or so he thought—he fell almost as soon as he arose. Alexander conquered the known world in fifteen years and suddenly died of a fever at the age of 32. His generals fought over his empire and eventually divided it up four ways. Two of those successor kingdoms would have a profound influence on the land of Judah: the Seleucid kingdom based in Syria—the King of the North—and the Ptolemaic kingdom based in Egypt—the King of the South. That’s the setup for the rest of the chapter, which rushes through about 160 years of the history that follows. The Seleucid kings were Seleucus I-IV followed by Antiochus I-IV. The Egyptian kings are easy: They were all named Ptolemy—Ptolemy I-VI. (Actually there eventually thirteen Antiochuses and fifteen Ptolemies, the last being the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra VII.)
Verses 5 to 20 move quickly through the first five Ptolemies, the first four Seleucuses, and the first three Antiochuses. Fifteen verses sweep us through history from about 320BC to 175BC. Here’s the text:
“Then the king of the south shall be strong, but one of his princes shall be stronger than he and shall rule, and his authority shall be a great authority. After some years they shall make an alliance, and the daughter of the king of the south shall come to the king of the north to make an agreement. But she shall not retain the strength of her arm, and he and his arm shall not endure, but she shall be given up, and her attendants, he who fathered her, and he who supported her in those times.
“And from a branch from her roots one shall arise in his place. He shall come against the army and enter the fortress of the king of the north, and he shall deal with them and shall prevail. He shall also carry off to Egypt their gods with their metal images and their precious vessels of silver and gold, and for some years he shall refrain from attacking the king of the north. Then the latter shall come into the realm of the king of the south but shall return to his own land.
“His sons shall wage war and assemble a multitude of great forces, which shall keep coming and overflow and pass through, and again shall carry the war as far as his fortress. Then the king of the south, moved with rage, shall come out and fight against the king of the north. And he shall raise a great multitude, but it shall be given into his hand. And when the multitude is taken away, his heart shall be exalted, and he shall cast down tens of thousands, but he shall not prevail. For the king of the north shall again raise a multitude, greater than the first. And after some years he shall come on with a great army and abundant supplies.
“In those times many shall rise against the king of the south, and the violent among your own people shall lift themselves up in order to fulfill the vision, but they shall fail. Then the king of the north shall come and throw up siegeworks and take a well-fortified city. And the forces of the south shall not stand, or even his best troops, for there shall be no strength to stand. But he who comes against him shall do as he wills, and none shall stand before him. And he shall stand in the glorious land, with destruction in his hand. He shall set his face to come with the strength of his whole kingdom, and he shall bring terms of an agreement and perform them. He shall give him the daughter of women to destroy the kingdom, but it shall not stand or be to his advantage. Afterward he shall turn his face to the coastlands and shall capture many of them, but a commander shall put an end to his insolence. Indeed, he shall turn his insolence back upon him. Then he shall turn his face back toward the fortresses of his own land, but he shall stumble and fall, and shall not be found.
“Then shall arise in his place one who shall send an exactor of tribute for the glory of the kingdom. But within a few days he shall be broken, neither in anger nor in battle.
If that makes as much sense as “Rhabarberbarbara”, that’s okay. If you know the history this maps right on to it, but if you don’t, all you really need to know is that this describes about a century and a half of the kings of Egypt and Syria fighting with each other. And that’s important because of what’s right between Egypt and Syria. Picture a map in your head. What’s between Egypt and Syria? That’s right: Judah. Judah sat on the crossroads of the ancient world and so it went back and forth between Egypt and Syria and eventually many of the Jews themselves got caught up in the politics and the intrigue. Some of them thought that by siding with these pagan kings they were fulfilling God’s purpose. Again, when we see things happening in the world around us—the things we can see—it’s easy to get caught up in them, it’s easy to compromise our faith and our values and what’s right. But Daniel reminds us that there’s more going on than what we can see with our eyes. Things are never truly hopeless for God’s people, because God is ultimately in control and because his angels fight for us. We need to remember that as things get worse, and get worse they did for little Judah, caught in the middle of all this.
Verse 20 describes the Syrian King, Seleucus IV Philopater. He sent a “tax collector”, a man by the name of Heliodorus, to collect the money needed to pay tribute to Rome, which was now involved in the intrigue. Heliodorus tried to plunder the temple in Jerusalem, but had a nightmare that put him off the idea. Instead, Heliodorus poisoned the king, Seleucus IV. That opened the door to the real terror. Look at verses 21-35:
In his place shall arise a contemptible person to whom royal majesty has not been given. He shall come in without warning and obtain the kingdom by flatteries. Armies shall be utterly swept away before him and broken, even the prince of the covenant. And from the time that an alliance is made with him he shall act deceitfully, and he shall become strong with a small people. Without warning he shall come into the richest parts of the province, and he shall do what neither his fathers nor his fathers’ fathers have done, scattering among them plunder, spoil, and goods. He shall devise plans against strongholds, but only for a time. And he shall stir up his power and his heart against the king of the south with a great army. And the king of the south shall wage war with an exceedingly great and mighty army, but he shall not stand, for plots shall be devised against him. Even those who eat his food shall break him. His army shall be swept away, and many shall fall down slain. And as for the two kings, their hearts shall be bent on doing evil. They shall speak lies at the same table, but to no avail, for the end is yet to be at the time appointed. And he shall return to his land with great wealth, but his heart shall be set against the holy covenant. And he shall work his will and return to his own land.
“At the time appointed he shall return and come into the south, but it shall not be this time as it was before. For ships of Kittim shall come against him, and he shall be afraid and withdraw, and shall turn back and be enraged and take action against the holy covenant. He shall turn back and pay attention to those who forsake the holy covenant. Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the regular burnt offering. And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate. He shall seduce with flattery those who violate the covenant, but the people who know their God shall stand firm and take action. And the wise among the people shall make many understand, though for some days they shall stumble by sword and flame, by captivity and plunder. When they stumble, they shall receive a little help. And many shall join themselves to them with flattery, and some of the wise shall stumble, so that they may be refined, purified, and made white, until the time of the end, for it still awaits the appointed time.
The other kings were bad, but this new king who arises is truly contemptible. The heir of Seleucus IV was imprisoned in Rome and Antiochus IV bought and manipulated his way to the throne in his place. He took the name “Epiphanes” meaning “Manifest One”. In short, he thought he was God. And Antiochus Epiphanes did his best to turn Jerusalem into a pagan Greek city. The passage here refers to him deposing the high priest, Onias III. His action against the holy covenant refers to his making it illegal to live by torah, his manipulation of Jewish collaborators, and to his defilement of the altar in the temple. But Antiochus Epiphanes pushed too hard. It’s not that the earlier Greek kings weren’t bad or that they, too, hadn’t imposed pagan culture on Judah, but none had ever made the effort that this king did. For the most part, they’d left Judah alone, under the rule of the high priest, as long as he coughed up tribute money every year. Under the earlier kings, most people didn’t feel compelled to make a choice between the Lord and the pagan gods, but under Antiochus Epiphanes, that’s just what happened. No one could sit on the fence anymore. No one could say that this didn’t affect them. And so the vision tells of the wise in the community standing up and encouraging the people—not all (there were many who collaborated with Antiochus), but still a good many of them—these wise ones encourage them to stand firm. They prepared the faithful to pay with their lives for doing so. Those days tested the faith of the people and, in the end, revealed who was seriously committed to the Lord and who was not. Again, in all this we’re reminded that God was at work in the days of Antiochus just like he had been in the exile back in Daniel’s day.
And this brings the vision up to what was the present day for the author of Daniel, about 167BC. So far the vision has been relating the history that led up to this point as if it were a prophecy given by Daniel back in the Sixth Century. With verse 36 the vision transitions. Now it looks into the future. But the style changes, too. Everything becomes more grandiose, but more importantly, the description of how this crisis will reach its climax uses imagery and language from the Prophets, especially Isaiah 10, Ezekiel 38-39, and Psalms 2, 46, 48, and 76. The Prophets spoke of the “End” and Daniel’s vision describes the present crisis as another embodiment of that great “End”.
This is the point where evangelical interpreters disagree with each other. Some see the change in style, the language of the End, and the fact that Antiochus didn’t exactly meet his death the way it’s described here, some see all this as reason to think that the vision is now turning from the events of the Second Century to events much further in the future. It’s no longer talking about Antiochus IV Epiphanes, but about a future “Antichrist”. Other evangelical scholars see nothing in the text that justifies that kind of change in subject and timeframe and believe this is still talking about events in the Second Century.
Either way, there are difficult problems and anyone who says otherwise simply isn’t being honest. I’ll say that Daniel 11:36-12:13 is the most difficult Bible text I’ve ever wrestled with and every time you think you’ve made progress untangling the ball of yarn, you discover that you’ve just turned one big knot into half a dozen smaller ones that are just as tenacious. If you know me, you know I think it’s best to let the text speak for itself even if that makes things difficult. I can’t see anything within the text itself that justifies projecting this part of Daniel into the far future. The text itself is pretty clear that it’s looking to the immediate future—to the three or three-and-a-half years to come, to the death of Antiochus, and to the vindication of the Jews who were faithful in that crisis. I might be wrong, but either way you end up with some problems that are hard to resolve—I just prefer going the route that lets the biblical text speak most naturally for itself. So, verses 36-45:
“And the king shall do as he wills. He shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every god, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of gods. He shall prosper till the indignation is accomplished; for what is decreed shall be done. He shall pay no attention to the gods of his fathers, or to the one beloved by women. He shall not pay attention to any other god, for he shall magnify himself above all. He shall honor the god of fortresses instead of these. A god whom his fathers did not know he shall honor with gold and silver, with precious stones and costly gifts. He shall deal with the strongest fortresses with the help of a foreign god. Those who acknowledge him he shall load with honor. He shall make them rulers over many and shall divide the land for a price.
Antiochus Epiphanes wasn’t unique in making claims of divinity and the description here about his idolatry is grandiose, but there’s nothing in the text that suggests at all that this is suddenly about some other king, let alone an Antichrist figure in the distant future. I think what’s going on here is that the vision captures how it felt for the faithful Jews to live under Antiochus, because he was the first of these rulers to deliberately undermine their laws, their faith, their worship and to defile their temple. We do the same thing in our political discourse all the time, turning bad politicians into over-the-top monsters, and our politicians aren’t half the monster that Antiochus was. It goes on:
“At the time of the end, the king of the south shall attack him, but the king of the north shall rush upon him like a whirlwind, with chariots and horsemen, and with many ships. And he shall come into countries and shall overflow and pass through. He shall come into the glorious land. And tens of thousands shall fall, but these shall be delivered out of his hand: Edom and Moab and the main part of the Ammonites. He shall stretch out his hand against the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. He shall become ruler of the treasures of gold and of silver, and all the precious things of Egypt, and the Libyans and the Cushites shall follow in his train. But news from the east and the north shall alarm him, and he shall go out with great fury to destroy and devote many to destruction. And he shall pitch his palatial tents between the sea and the glorious holy mountain. Yet he shall come to his end, with none to help him.
We don’t really know how Antiochus Epiphanes died. The Greek historian Polybius and the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees give varying accounts of his being driven mad after an attempt to plunder a temple in Persia. He seems to have died not long after. 1 and 2 Maccabees suggest that there was an element of divine wrath in his affliction and death. The description here, again, seems grandiose and we know nothing of him pitching his tents between the sea and Mt. Zion. Whatever we make of the specifics, what the author saw in the Prophets—and I think, too, that he was an astute observer of how the hubris of these Greek kings and their internal intrigues worked out in history—the author understood these things and could say with certainty that the wicked Antiochus Epiphanes would get his divine comeuppance.
Whether this vision was actual prophecy or whether it was the author’s attempt to exhort the faithful in Judah by working out a sort of pseudo-prophecy based on the visions of Daniel and the writings of Israel’s prophets, the Spirit stands behind the text. I’ve been wrestling with the difficulties here for months. Is it prophecy? Is it pseudo-prophecy? Was it written in the Sixth Century or the Second? Did the people who received it think it was written by Daniel hundreds of years before or did they know it was written by one of their own who was suffering under Antiochus just as they were? These are hard questions and there’s no easy solution. But what I do know and what I keep coming back to is that the Holy Spirit stands behind these words and we know that, because Jesus drew on them as scripture and so did the writers of the New Testament. I expect I’ll get into this idea more next week, Lord willing, but I think Jesus’ use of Daniel points us in the right direction, because Jesus used this last vision of Daniel to point to the future vindication and resurrection of his people. In doing that I think Jesus was doing with Daniel what Daniel had done with the earlier prophets. As I said a few minutes ago, the Prophets often pointed forward to the “End”—the End with a capital “E”—and it was usually associated with whatever historical events of judgement and vindication they were prophesying. And those prophecies were fulfilled in history, those times of judgement and vindication came as they had said, but always that great End was still out there, always pointing to a time when there would be a great and final day, at the end of history, on which the wicked will be judged and the faithful will be vindicated and I think that’s what’s going on in this final vision of Daniel. Through the judgement of the wicked and vindication of the just in his own day, the author of Daniel points even more emphatically than the prophets of old had, towards that final Day of the Lord. And this, then, is what Jesus picks up from Daniel and makes his own. In his death and resurrection, in his ascension and his judgement of faithless Jerusalem and the temple, Jesus is saying that that great eschatological End with a capital “E” is finally here. The end of history has begun. And in that he’s much like the old Prophets and he’s much like Daniel. There’s still time to go. There are still things to be done on both earth and in the heavenlies before every last enemy has been put under his feet. And in the meantime God’s people—even now empowered by the gospel and the Spirit—God’s people, like they always have, need this encouragement to stand firm, to keep the faith, and to fight he good fight—even if it means our death. Our acclamation as we come to the Lord’s Table gives us just this kind of exhortation and if you aren’t accustomed to thinking of it that way, try to think of it that way from now on: Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again. Jesus has fulfilled what the Prophets spoke. He has inaugurated the End. And now we live in that in between time—between the beginning of the End and the end of the End. And that, Brothers and Sisters, is good news. It is the exhortation we need to stand firm, to keep the faith, and to fight the good fight knowing that our Lord sits enthroned in the heavenlies and has already won the battle and decisively turned the tide of this war.
Let’s pray: Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the many and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.