Four kingdoms of Daniel


The four kingdoms of Daniel are four kingdoms which, according to the Book of Daniel, precede the "end-times" and the "Kingdom of God".

The four kingdoms

Historical background

The Book of Daniel originated from a collection of legends circulating in the Jewish community in Babylon and Mesopotamia in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods, and was later expanded by the visions of chapters 7–12 in the Maccabean era.
The "four kingdoms" theme appears explicitly in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, and is implicit in the imagery of Daniel 8. Daniel's concept of four successive world empires is drawn from Greek theories of mythological history. The symbolism of four metals in the statue in chapter 2 is drawn from Persian writings, while the four "beasts from the sea" in chapter 7 reflect Hosea 13:7–8, in which God threatens that he will be to Israel like a lion, a leopard, a bear or a wild beast. The consensus among scholars is that the four beasts of chapter 7, like the metals of chapter 2, symbolise Babylon, Media, Persia and the Seleucid Greeks, with Antiochus IV as the "small horn" that uproots three others.

Daniel 2

In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue made of four different materials, identified as four kingdoms:
  1. Head of gold. Explicitly identified as King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon.
  2. Chest and arms of silver. Identified as an "inferior" kingdom to follow Nebuchadnezzar.
  3. Belly and thighs of bronze. A third kingdom which shall rule over all the earth.
  4. Legs of iron with feet of mingled iron and clay. Interpreted as a fourth kingdom, strong as iron, but the feet and toes partly of clay and partly of iron show it shall be a divided kingdom.

    Daniel 7

In chapter 7, Daniel has a vision of four beasts coming up out of the sea, and is told that they represent four kingdoms:
  1. A beast like a lion with eagle's wings.
  2. A beast like a bear, raised up on one side, with three Curves between its teeth.
  3. A beast like a leopard with four wings of fowl and four heads.
  4. A fourth beast, with large iron teeth and ten horns.
This is explained as a fourth kingdom, different from all the other kingdoms; it "will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it". The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom. A further horn then appears and uproots three of the previous horns: this is explained as a future king.

Daniel 8

In chapter 8 Daniel sees a ram with two horns destroyed by a he-goat with a single horn; the horn breaks and four horns appear, followed once again by the "little horn". The passage says the goat is the king of Greece and its initial horn its first king.

Schools of thought

Rashi's interpretation

, a medieval rabbi, interpreted the four kingdoms as Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Alexander of Macedon, and the Roman Empire. Rashi explains that the fifth kingdom that God will establish is the kingdom of the messiah.

Christian interpretation

From the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, the "four monarchies" model became widely used by all for universal history, in parallel with eschatology, among Protestants. Some continued to defend its use in universal history in the early 18th century.
There are references in classical literature and arts that apparently predate the use of the succession of kingdoms in the Book of Daniel. One appears in Aemilius Sura, an author quoted by Velleius Paterculus. This gives Assyria, Media, Persia and Macedonia as the imperial powers. The fifth empire became identified with the Romans.
An interpretation proposed by Swain sees the "four kingdoms" theory, an import from Asia Minor, becoming the property of Greek and Roman writers in the early 2nd century BC. They built on a three-kingdom sequence, already mentioned by Herodotus and by Ctesias. Several other authors have since contested this dating and origin, placing the life-time of Sura and the Roman adaptation of the model in the 1st century BC.
Christian Reconstructionists and Full Preterists believe that Daniel is completely fulfilled, and that the believers are now working to establish the Kingdom of God on earth.
Two main schools of thought on the four kingdoms of Daniel, are:
  1. the traditionalist view, supporting the conflation of Medo-Persia and identifying the last kingdom as the Roman Empire.
  2. the Maccabean thesis, a view that supports the separation of the Medes from the Persians and identifies the last kingdom as the Seleucid Empire.

    Roman Empire schema

The following interpretation represents a traditional view of Jewish and Christian Historicists, Futurists, Dispensationalists, Partial Preterists, and other futuristic Jewish and Christian hybrids, as well as certain Messianic Jews, who typically identify the kingdoms in Daniel as:
  1. the Babylonian Empire
  2. the Medo-Persian Empire
  3. the Greek Empire
  4. the Roman Empire, with other implications to come later
Jerome described this scheme in his Commentary on Daniel. Within this framework there are numerous variations.
Use with the Book of Revelation
Christian interpreters typically read the Book of Daniel along with the New Testament's Book of Revelation. The Church Fathers interpreted the beast in Revelation 13 as the empire of Rome. The majority of modern scholarly commentators understand the "city on seven hills" in Revelation as a reference to Rome.
Second temple theory
, Idealists, certain Reconstructionists and other non-futurists likewise typically believe in the same general sequence, but teach that Daniel's prophecies ended with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem, and have few to no implications beyond that. Jewish and Christian Futurists, Dispensationalists, and, to some degree, Partial Preterists believe that the prophecies of Daniel stopped with the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem; but will resume at some point in the future after a gap in prophecy that accounts for the Church Age.

Traditional views

Eschatological themes

For over two thousand years readers have speculated as to the meaning of the themes running through the Book of Daniel:
  • The four kingdoms: In Daniel 2 Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a giant statue of four metals identified as symbolising kingdoms, and in Daniel 7 Daniel sees a vision of four beasts from the sea, again identified as kingdoms. In Daniel 8, in keeping with the theme by which kings and kingdoms are symbolised by "horns", Daniel sees a goat with a single horn replaced by four horns. Secondary symbols are involved with each: the statue is smashed by a mysterious stone which grows into a mountain, and the fourth beast has ten horns and an additional human-like horn, identified as a king. Further imagery includes Daniel 7's Son of Man, the "holy ones of the Most High", and the eternal Kingdom of God which will follow the four kingdoms and the "little horn".
  • Chronological predictions: Daniel predicts several times the length of time that must elapse until the coming of the Kingdom of God. A prophecy of Jeremiah is reinterpreted so that "70 years" means "70 weeks of years", and the last half of the last "week" is defined as "a time, times, and half a time", then as 2,300 "evenings and mornings", with further numbers of days at the very end of the book.
  • The "anointed one cut off": Daniel 9 makes two references to an "anointed one", which has had major implications for Christian eschatology. Daniel 9:25 says: "Until there is an anointed ruler will be seven weeks"; the next verse says: "After the sixty-two weeks the anointed one shall be cut off." Scholars take these as references to the high priest Joshua from the early Persian era and to the high priest Onias III, murdered in the 2nd century, but Christians have taken them both to refer to the death of Christ, which then provides a fixed point for calculating the time to the end of the world.
  • The "abomination of desolation": This is mentioned in Daniel 8, 9 and 11. In the New testament this was taken to refer to the eschatological future and the destruction of Jerusalem, and later still it was interpreted as the Antichrist.
  • Martydom and resurrection: Daniel 11 tells how the "wise" lay down their lives as martyrs at the end-time persecution for resurrection into the final kingdom. Daniel 3 and Daniel 6 were read in this light, providing a prototype for Christian martyrdom and salvation through the centuries.

    Seventh-day Adventists

The prophecy of 2,300 days in Daniel 8:14 plays an important role in Seventh-day Adventist eschatology. The 2,300 days are interpreted as 2,300 years using the day-year principle. According to the Adventist teaching, this period starts in unison with the Prophecy of Seventy Weeks in 457 BC and ends in 1844 AD. It was thought that the end of this period would bring the end of days as advocated by the Millerite movement at the turn of the 19th century.
Most Adventist groups in the Millerite tradition hold similar beliefs about the Great Apostasy, as do those of other Restorationist types of Christian faith. Some of these, most notably the Seventh-day Adventist Church, have traditionally held that the apostate church formed when the Bishop of Rome began to dominate and brought heathen corruption and allowed pagan idol worship and beliefs to come in, and formed the Roman Catholic Church, and to rest from their work on Sunday, instead of Sabbath, which is not in keeping with Scripture.
Seventh-day Adventists teach that the Little Horn Power which as predicted rose after the breakup of the Roman Empire is the papacy. In 533 AD Justinian, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, legally recognized the bishop of Rome as the head of all the Christian churches. Because of the Arian domination of some of the Roman Empire by the barbarian tribes, this authority could not be exercised by the bishop of Rome. Finally, in 538 AD, Belisarius, one of Justinian's generals, routed the Ostrogoths, the last of the barbarian kingdoms, from the city of Rome and the bishop of Rome could begin establishing his universal civil authority. So, by the military intervention of the Eastern Roman Empire, the bishop of Rome became all-powerful throughout the area of the old Roman Empire.
Like many reformation-era Protestant leaders, the writings of Adventist pioneer Ellen White speak against the Catholic Church as a fallen church and in preparation for a nefarious eschatological role as the antagonist against God's true church and that the pope is the Antichrist. Many Protestant reformers such as Martin Luther, John Knox, William Tyndale and others held similar beliefs about the Catholic Church and the papacy when they broke away from the Catholic Church during the Reformation.
Ellen White writes,