Daniel 8:2

And I saw in a vision,.... The following things: and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam; not in reality, but so it seemed to him in the

And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was at Shushan in the palace, which is in the province of Elam; and I saw in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai. When I saw ... I was at Shushan - Susa.

I was at Shushan; in his mind and thoughts, not bodily, and was by the river Ulai: some think he was locally there, being sent thither in embassy by Cyrus; but Daniel was now at Babylon, when it was besieged and taken, Daniel 5; he was only there in spirit, as the prophet Ezekiel saith he was in Jerusalem, . Now Daniel had this vision at Shushan, because their deliverance was to come by Cyrus the Persian or Elamite, for Elam is Persia. This city was called Shushan, i.e. a lily, for the pleasantness of it: such names they give also their cities in China. The river of Ulai; a river whose waters were so wholesome that they were carried far, and the king drank of no other.

Daniel 8:2 And I saw in a vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I [was] at Shushan [in] the palace, which [is] in the province of Elam; and I saw in a vision, and I was by the river of Ulai.Ver. 2. I saw in a vision.] God revealed himself to men waking in vision, as well as in dreams, wherein the prophets saw things actually done, which hereby they knew were to be done. I was at Shushan.] Which signifieth a lily, so it was called for the pleasantness of the place: now it is called Valdac, of the poverty of the place. Here it was that Alexander found fifty thousand talents of gold, besides silver great store. It was once the royal seat of the kings of Persia, and gave name to the whole province Susiane. See Nehemiah 1:1 Esther 1:1. And I was by the river of Ulai.] Called by heathen authors Eulaeus, but better ολυαιος. It compassed the temple of Diana at Shushan round, and, as some say, the whole city. Pliny saith that the waters of this river were highly esteemed, so that the Persian kings drank thereof. Athenaeus. Pliny, lib. vi. cap. 27.

(2) At Shushan—i.e., Susa. At this time (see Records of the Past, vol. 1, p. 71, &c.) Susa was, as Daniel describes it, in the province of Elam; at a later period it became the capital of the Persian empire. Daniel was at Susa only in vision, he was not bodily transported thither. The Ulai is the river Eulæus, and is mentioned in connection with Susa in the inscription cited above.

Verse 2. I saw in a vision] Daniel was at this time in Shushan, which appears to have been a strong place, where the kings of Persia had their summer residence. It was the capital of the province of Elam or the Elymais; which province was most probably added to the Chaldean territories by Nebuchadnezzar; see Jeremiah 49:34-35. Here was Daniel's ordinary residence; and though here at this time, he, in vision, saw himself on the banks of the river Ulai. This is the same as the river Euleus, which divided Shushan or Susiana from Elymais.

2. And I saw in the vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that I was in Shushan, the citadel, which is in Elam, the province; and I saw in the vision, and I was by the stream Ulai] The verse is awkwardly worded, and in part tautologous; its object is to describe where Daniel seemed to find himself in the vision. ‘Elam’ is the Heb. form of the Sumerian (or ‘Accadian’) Êlam-ma, ‘highland,’ which in Ass. assumed the fem. term. and became Êlamtu: it denoted originally (Delitzsch, Paradies, p. 320 f.) ‘the mountainous region beginning N. and E. of Susa, and corresponding roughly to the modern Khusistan.’ Persia proper was S. E. of it. It is mentioned frequently both in the O.T. (Genesis 10:22; Isaiah 11:11; Jeremiah 49:34, &c.), and also in the Assyrian Inscriptions: Anshan, or Anzan, the home of Cyrus, was the district in the S.-W. of Elam, bordering on what is now the lower course of the Tigris, but what in ancient times was the upper part of the Persian Gulf (called by the Assyrians the Nâr Marratum, or Bitter (salt) River)[318]. Shushan (Susa) was the capital of Elam. Asshurbanipal (b.c. 668–626) invaded Elam more than once, and has left a full and vivid account of the occasion on which he stormed and sacked Shushan (KB[319], ii. 203 ff.). Darius Hystaspis appears to have been the first Persian king who erected palaces at Shushan, or held his court there[320]; and from his time onwards, as the principal residence of the Persian kings (cf. Nehemiah 1:1; Esther 1:2, and passim), it held for nearly two centuries a commanding position in the ancient world. ‘From Susa, during this period, the peoples of W. Asia and E. Europe awaited their destiny; in the Apadâna tributary princes, ambassadors, and satraps, including the noblest of the Greeks, as Antalkidas (387 and 372), Pelopidas and Ismenias (367), did homage at the feet of the Great King. In the palaces of the citadel were enacted bloody harem-tragedies, in which eunuchs and women were the actors (Esther, Amytis, Amestris, Parysatis, Statira). Here Xerxes fell under the daggers of Artabanus and Aspamithras, and here Bagoas poisoned two kings’ (Billerbeck, Susa, p. 154). Susa was thus a suitable spot at which the seer should find himself in a vision that pourtrayed with some prominence both the rise and the fall of the Persian power (Daniel 8:3-7). See further, on Susa, p. 125 f. [318] Maspero, Struggle of the Nations (with Map), p. 30 f. [319] B. Eb. Schrader, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek (transliterations and translations of Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions), 1889–1900. [320] Billerbeck, Susa (1893), pp. 128, 129, 133 ff.For other instances of visionary transference to a distant locality, see Ezekiel 8:3 to Ezekiel 11:24, Ezekiel 40:2 ff. Shushan, the citadel] the standing title of Shushan in the O. T. (Nehemiah 1:1; Esther 1:2; Esther 1:5; Esther 2:3; Esther 2:5; Esther 2:8; Esther 3:15; Esther 8:14; Esther 9:6; Esther 9:11-12).

And I saw in a vision - I looked as the vision appeared to me; or I saw certain things represented to me in a vision. On the word vision, see the notes at Daniel 1:17.

2. He dreams that he is in Shushan. This place is comparatively well known now.