Daniel 11:17 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

He shall also set his face to enter with the strength of his whole kingdom Or rather, He shall also set his face to enter, by force, the whole kingdom: and upright ones with him; thus shall he do If this translation be right, the upright ones here intended are the Jews who marched under his banners, and are so denominated to distinguish them from the other idolatrous soldiers. But the LXX. read, και ευθεια παντα μετ ' αυτου ποιησει, he shall make all things right, or straight, or make agreement with him, that is, with Ptolemy. So also the Vulgate. Antiochus would have seized upon the kingdom of Egypt by force; but fearing, according to Appian, if he did so, he should bring the Romans upon him, he judged it better to proceed by stratagem, and to carry on his designs by treaty rather than by arms. He therefore proposed a marriage between his own daughter Cleopatra and King Ptolemy, now sixteen years old, to be consummated when they should come of age; which offer, made by Eucles of Rhodes, was accepted, and a contract fully agreed between them. Thus the text, And he shall give him the daughter of women His daughter, so called, as being one of the most eminent and beautiful of women. He himself afterward conducted her to Raphia, where they were married; and gave in dowry with her the provinces of Cœlosyria and Palestine, upon condition of the revenues being equally divided between the two kings. All this he transacted with a fraudulent intention, corrupting, or to corrupt, her, and induce her to betray her husband's interests to her father. But his designs did not take effect: for it is here said, she shall not stand on his part, neither be for him Ptolemy and his generals were aware of Antiochus's artifices, and therefore stood upon their guard; and Cleopatra herself affected more the cause of her husband than of her father, insomuch that, as Livy relates, (lib. xxxvii, cap. 3,) she joined with her husband in an embassy to the Romans, to congratulate them upon their victories over her father, and to exhort them, after they had expelled him out of Greece, to prosecute the war in Asia, assuring them, at the same time, that the king and queen of Egypt would readily obey the commands of the senate.