Daniel 11:18

After this he shall turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many,.... Finding himself disappointed in his design on the kingdom of Egypt, he turned his face, and steered his course another way,

After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause it to turn upon him.

After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many, i.e. the isles and sea-coasts of that part of the Mediterranean and Ægean Sea, as Cyprus, Rhodes, &c.; also Asia the Less with the Grecian coasts, for the Hebrews call countries bordering on the sea isles; particularly Greece and Italy. The meaning is, that this Antiochus craftily desisted for a time from his enterprise against Egypt, for fear of the Romans. and, dissembling with them both, presumed he should outwit them all, and therefore persuaded as many of the Greeks as he could to take part with him against the Romans, slighting and reviling them. But a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease, i.e. a brave Roman ambassador, and commanders sent by the Roman senate, viz. Atilius, and chiefly Scipio, beat Antiochus at his own weapons of power and policy, and turned the reproach upon his own head; for they fell upon him, because Ptolemy required help of them, who was besieged by Antiochus; they raised the siege, and recovered all that he had gotten from them; for the Romans were dexterous in protecting their allies, and in retorting indignities and affronts offered them by encroachers and oppressors.

Daniel 11:18 After this shall he turn his face unto the isles, and shall take many: but a prince for his own behalf shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease; without his own reproach he shall cause [it] to turn upon him.Ver. 18. After this he shall turn his face unto the isles.] Missing of his design for Egypt, and losing also much in Asia Minor, which Epiphanes got of him by means of his Queen Cleopatra, Antiochus, as an enraged lion, falleth upon foreign countries, as Hellespont, Chersonesus, Euboea, Rhodes, Cyprus, Samos, Colophon, &c. He marcheth also with his army into Greece, being stirred up thereunto by Hannibal, who, being vanquished in Africa by Scipio, had fled to Antiochus into Asia, and there hatched what mischief he could against the Romans. But a prince for his own behalf,] i.e., Scipio, the Roman consul; or, as some will, Marcus Acilius, their general. Shall cause the reproach offered by him to cease,] i.e., Shall recover the countries that he had taken from the Roman State, and shall also drive back again, down his throat, those contumelies and opprobious speeches that he had thrown out against the Romans; who afterwards overcame him thrice by sea and land, forced him to accept very hard conditions, shred him of a great part of his kingdom, and called him, in contempt, Antiochus, sometime the Great. Liv., dec. 4, lib. xviii., Appian. in Syriac.

(18) Shall he turn.—He goes northward, this being the direction indicated by “the isles.” This has been explained of the victories gained by Antiochus the Great in Asia Minor. He is stated to have reduced various towns and islands, and finally to have taken Ephesus. He was in this way brought into contact with the Romans, and was defeated by L. Scipio, who is identified with “the prince” mentioned in this verse. The Greek versions exhibit considerable variations. A prince.—It is doubtful whether this is to be taken as nominative or as accusative. The English Version treats it as nominative, St. Jerome and Theodotion as accusative. In accordance with the latter rendering, the meaning is, “The king of the north will cause to cease the princes who have been his reproach. But the princes shall return him his reproach.” The word “prince” is used collectively to mean the rulers of the islands mentioned in the first part of the verse. It is stated that in the first instance the northern king will be successful, but in the end the princes will repay him the reproach which he inflicted upon them, as appears more fully in the next verse.

Verse 18. Shall he turn his face unto the isles] Antiochus had fitted out a great fleet of one hundred large ships and two hundred smaller, and with this fleet subdued most of the maritime places on the coast of the Mediterranean, and took many of the isles, Rhodes, Samos, Euboea, Colophon, and others. But a prince for his own behalf] Or, a captain. The consul Acilius Glabrio caused the reproach to cease; beat and routed his army at the straits of Thermopylae, and expelled him from Greece. So he obliged him to pay the tribute which he hoped to impose on others; for he would grant him peace only on condition of paying the expense of the war, fifteen thousand talents; five hundred on the spot, - two thousand five hundred when the peace should be ratified by the senate, - and the remaining twelve thousand in twelve years, each year one thousand. See Polybius in his Legations, and Appian in the Wars of Syria. And thus, - Without his own reproach] Without losing a battle, or taking a false step, Acilius caused the reproach which he was bringing upon the Romans to turn upon himself.

18. And he shall turn his face to the isles (or coast-lands), and shall take many; but a commander shall cause his reproach to cease to him; nay, he shall even return his reproach unto him] Antiochus cherished ambitious designs towards the West. In 196 most of the cities in Asia Minor submitted to him; in the same year he even crossed the Hellespont and seized the Thracian Chersonese, and in 195 set about organizing it as a satrapy for his son Seleucus. In 192 he landed in Greece, and occupied various places to the N. of the Isthmus of Corinth, but was defeated by the Romans in 191 at Thermopylae, and compelled to retire to Ephesus. The Romans next determined to expel Antiochus from Asia. Immense preparations were made on both sides: in the end, the decisive battle was fought in the autumn of 190, at Magnesia, near Smyrna, and Antiochus’s huge army of 80,000 men was defeated, with enormous loss, by Lucius Cornelius Scipio (Livy xxxvii. 39–44). Antiochus was now obliged to renounce formally all claims to any part of Europe, or of Asia Minor, west of the Taurus, and to submit to other humiliating conditions of peace[367]. His ruin was complete: “never, perhaps,” remarks Mommsen, “did a great power fall so rapidly, so thoroughly, so ignominiously, as the kingdom of the Seleucidae under this Antiochus the Great.” These are the events alluded to in the present verse of Daniel. [367] See fuller particulars in Livy xxxvii. 39–45, 55; or in Mommsen’s Hist. of Rome, Bk. iii., chap. ix.turn his face] implying a change of purpose and direction: so Daniel 11:19. isles (or coast-lands)] Heb. ’iyyξm],—the word used regularly (e.g. Genesis 10:5; Isaiah 11:11) of the islands and jutting promontories (for it includes both) of the Mediterranean Sea. Here it denotes in particular the coasts and islands of Asia Minor and Greece. a commander] Lucius Cornelius Scipio, at the battle of Magnesia. The Heb. word (ḳ ?βẓ ?ξn) means properly a decider (Arab. ḳ ?βḍ ?i), and is used of one who interposes, or acts, with authority: in Joshua 10:24, Judges 11:6; Judges 11:11, of a military commander, as here; Isaiah 3:6-7, of a dictator, taking the lead in a civic emergency; of other authorities, civil or military, in Isaiah 1:10; Isaiah 22:3; Micah 3:1; Micah 3:9; Proverbs 6:7; Proverbs 25:15 (all). his reproach] implied in the defiant attitude adopted by him towards the Romans: not only had he, for instance, attacked many of their allies, but he told their legates at Lysimacheia that they had no more right to inquire what he was doing in Asia, than he had to inquire what they were doing in Italy (Liv. xxxiii. 40). to him] a dative of reference,—though certainly redundant, after the pron. his; cf. (without a pron.) Jeremiah 48:35; Rth 4:14. return] hurl back, and at the same time requite,—viz. by the humiliating repulse at Magnesia, after which, in Appian’s words (Syr. c. 37), men used to say, ἦνβασιλεὺςἈντίοχοςὁμέγας.

After this shall he turn his face unto the isles - The islands of the Mediterranean, particularly those in the neighborhood of and constituting a part of Greece.

18. Isles — Or, coasts. This refers especially to the campaign by sea and land which Antiochus waged against Asia Minor, so disastrously terminated by the battle mentioned above. But a prince, etc.