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.
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Aquinas Study Bible
AD 2017
One most vile: Seleucus Philopator, who sent Heliodorus to plunder the temple: and was shortly after slain by the same Heliodorus. (Challoner)
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 espe...
