Daniel 11:29,30 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

At the time appointed Namely, by God. At the time determined by the divine providence, he shall return and come toward the south He shall march into Egypt again. Antiochus perceiving that his fine-woven policy was unravelled, and that the two brothers, Philometor and Euergetes, instead of wasting and ruining each other in war, had laid aside their mutual dissensions, and provided for their common safety and interest by making peace, and agreeing to reign jointly, was so offended, that he prepared war much more eagerly and maliciously against both than he had before against one of them. Early, therefore, in the spring he set forward with his army, and passing through Cœlosyria, came into Egypt; and the inhabitants of Memphis submitting to him, he came by easy marches down to Alexandria. But it shall not be as the former That is, this expedition shall not be so successful as his former ones: for the ships of Chittim shall come against him That is, the ships which brought the Roman ambassadors, namely, Popilius Lænas and his companions; who came from Italy, touched at Greece, and arrived in Egypt, at the supplication of the Ptolemies, to command a peace between the contending kings: see an account of this matter in the note on Daniel 8:23. The reason of the Romans acting in this imperious manner, and of Antiochus so readily obeying, was, as Polybius suggests, the total conquests that Æmilius the Roman consul had just made of the kingdom of Macedonia. Therefore he shall be grieved and return It was a great mortification to Antiochus to be so humbled, and so disappointed of his expected prey. He led back his forces into Syria, says Polybius, grieved and groaning, but thinking it expedient to yield to the times for the present. And have indignation against the holy covenant Or, the law of God. Antiochus being disappointed in his designs upon Egypt, vented all his fury upon the Jews; for he detached Apollonius with an army of twenty-two thousand men, who coming to Jerusalem slew great multitudes, plundered the city, set fire to it in several places, and pulled down the houses and walls round about it. Then they built, on an eminence in the city of David, a strong fortress, which might command the temple; and issuing from thence they fell upon those who came to worship, and shed innocent blood on every side of the sanctuary, and defiled it; so that the temple was deserted and the whole service omitted; the city was forsaken of its natives, and became a habitation of strangers. So shall he do, he shall even return, &c. After his return to Antioch, he published a decree which obliged all persons, upon pain of death, to conform to the religion of the Greeks; and so the Jewish law was abrogated, the heathen worship was set up in its stead, and the temple itself was consecrated to Jupiter Olympus. In the transacting of these matters he had intelligence with them that forsook the holy covenant Namely, Menelaus and the other apostate Jews of his party, who were the king's chief instigators against their religion and country: see 1Ma 1:41-64; 2Ma 6:1-9. “It may be proper to stop here, and reflect a little, how particular and circumstantial this prophecy is concerning the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, from the death of Alexander to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. There is not so complete and regular a series of their kings; there is not so concise and comprehensive an account of their affairs, to be found in any author of those times. The prophecy is really more perfect than any history. No one historian hath related so many circumstances, and in such exact order of time, as the prophet hath foretold them; so that it has been necessary to have recourse to several authors, Greek and Roman, Jewish and Christian; and to collect something from one, and something from another, for the better explaining and illustrating the great variety of particulars contained in this prophecy. The prophecy indeed is wonderfully exact, not only to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, but beyond that time.” So that we may conclude in the words of the inspired writer; No one could thus declare the times and seasons but He who hath them in his own power: see Acts 1:7; and Bishop Newton.