He shall enter peaceably even into the richest places of the province; and he shall do that which his fathers have not done, nor his fathers' fathers; he shall scatter among them the plunder, and spoil, and riches: yea, and he shall devise his plans against the strongholds, but only for a time.
All Commentaries on Daniel 11:24 Go To Daniel 11
Aquinas Study Bible
AD 2017
Those of our persuasion believe all these things are spoken prophetically of the Antichrist who is to arise in the end time. But this factor appears to others as a difficulty for our view, namely the question as to why the prophetic discourse should abruptly cease mention of these great kings and shift from Seleucus to the end of the world. The answer is that in verse 11:2 the historical account where mention was made of the Persian kings, only four kings of Persia were presented, following after Cyrus, and many who came in between were simply skipped over, so as to come quickly to Alexander, king of the Macedonians. We hold that it is the practice of Scripture not to relate all details completely, but only to set forth what seems of major importance. Those of our school insist also that since many of the details which we are subsequently to read and explain are appropriate to the person of Antiochus, he is to be regarded as a type of the Antichrist, and those things which happened to him in a preliminary way are to be completely fulfilled in the case of the Antichrist. We hold that it is the habit of Holy Scripture to set forth by means of types the reality of things to come, in conformity with what is said of our Lord and Savior in the 72nd Psalm, a psalm which is noted at the beginning as being Solomon's, and yet not all the statements which are made concerning can be applied to Solomon. For certainly he neither endured "together with the sun and before the moon from generation to generation," nor did he hold sway from sea to sea, or from the River unto the ends of the earth; neither did all the nations serve him, nor did his name endure before the sun; neither were all the tribes of earth blessed in him, nor did all races magnify him. But in a partial way these things were set forth in advance, by shadows as it were, and by a mere symbol of the reality, in the person of Solomon, in order that they might be more perfectly fulfilled in our Lord and Savior. And so, just as the Savior had Solomon and the other saints as types of His advent, so also we should believe that the Antichrist very properly had as a type of himself the utterly wicked king, Antiochus, who persecuted the saints and defiled the Temple. (St. Jerome)
