‘And when he shall stand up his kingdom will be broken and will be divided towards the four winds of heaven. But not to his posterity, nor with similar dominion to that with which he ruled, for his kingdom will be plucked up even for others beside these.'
This is not the epitaph that Alexander would have desired. He stood up only to be broken. So was Alexander the Great dismissed by God. His great empire was just a passing fancy. ‘Divided towards the four winds of heaven' may be intended to signify heavenly princes over each of the four sections into which the empire eventually split, compare Daniel 10:13; Daniel 10:20. (It may be simply directional but ‘of heaven' usually denotes more, depicting heavenly activity). But his throne would not go to ‘his posterity'. As mentioned above both his young sons were murdered. All he had achieved would be for others, ‘plucked up even for others beside these', initially for all his generals, but gradually uniting into four separate sections. The mighty ‘unified' power of his empire would not be sustained. However strong they may seem, empires rise, and divide, and fall. As with the image in chapter 2 the empires were deteriorating in splendour.
The two that would concern Israel were the Egyptian empire under the Ptolemies (the king of the south) and the Syrian empire under the Seleucids (the king of the north). Sadly for Israel both coveted Palestine.