Daniel 11:31 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And arms shall stand on his part His arms shall so prevail as to make an entire conquest of the Jews, to profane the temple, and cause the daily service performed there to cease: see note Daniel 8:11; and compare 1Ma 1:39; and 2Ma 5:2-5. The temple is here called the sanctuary of strength, either because it was fortified after the manner of a castle, or else because it was a token of the divine protection, as being the place God had chosen to be worshipped in. We are informed by Josephus, by the author of the Maccabees, and others, that Antiochus's soldiers entered the temple and plundered it, and that afterward he ordered that the Jews should not be suffered to offer up the daily sacrifices, which, according to the law, they were accustomed to offer; that he compelled them also to omit their worship of the true God, and to pay divine honours to them whom he regarded as gods, and to make shrines in every city and village, and to build altars, and daily to sacrifice swine upon them: see Joseph. Antiq. lib. 12. cap. 5, sec. 4. And they shall place the abomination that maketh desolate In the Scriptures, idols are commonly called abominations. This was a prediction of the great profanation Antiochus should cause to the temple, in placing an idol upon the altar of burnt- offerings: see 1Ma 6:54; 1Ma 6:59. It is probable, that the idol was Jupiter, because we find that they dedicated the temple anew to Jupiter Olympus: see 2Ma 6:2. It is here called the abomination that maketh desolate, because it banished the true worship of God, and his worshippers, from the place.