Then shall arise in his place a raiser of taxes in the glorious kingdom: but within a few days he shall be destroyed, but neither in anger, nor in battle.
All Commentaries on Daniel 11:20 Go To Daniel 11
Jerome
AD 420
The reference is to the Seleucus surnamed Philopator, (711) the son of Antiochus the Great, who during his reign performed no deeds worthy of Syria or of his father, but (p. 565) perished ingloriously without fighting a single battle. Porphyry, however, claims that it was not this Seleucus who is referred to, but rather Ptolemy Epiphanes, who contrived a plot against Seleucus and prepared an army to fight against him, with the result that Seleucus was poisoned by his own generals. They did this because when someone asked Seleucus where he was going to get the financial resources for the great enterprises he was planning, he answered that his financial resources consisted in his friends. When this remark was publicly noised abroad, the generals became apprehensive that he would deprive them of their property and for that reason did him to death by nefarious means. Yet how could Ptolemy be said to rise up in the place of Antiochus the Great, since he did nothing of the sort? This is especially improbable since the Septuagint translated: "And there shall stand up a plant from his root," that is, "of his issue and seed," who should deal a severe blow to the prestige of the empire; "and within a few days he shall be destroyed without wrath or battle." The Hebrews claim that it is Trypho who was intended by the man who was most |129 vile and unworthy of kingly honor, for as the boy-king's guardian he seized the throne for himself.
