Daniel 11:31 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And arms shall stand on his part, &c.— After Antiochus, arms, that is, the Romans, shall stand up. As ממלךֶ mimelech, signifies after the kings in Daniel 11:8 so ממנו mimennu, may here signify after him. See also Nehemiah 13:21 and Daniel 11:23 of this chapter, in the original. Arms, says Sir Isaac Newton, are every where in this prophesy put for the military power of a kingdom; and they stand up, when they conquer and grow powerful. Hitherto Daniel had described the actions of the kings of the north and south; but upon the conquest of Macedon by the Romans, he left off describing the actions of the Greeks, and began to describe those of the Romans in Greece; who conquered Macedon, Illyricum, and Epirus, in the year of Nabonassor 580. Thirty-five years after this, by the will of Attalus, they inherited all Asia westward of mount Tartarus; sixty-nine years afterwards they conquered the kingdom of Syria, and reduced it into a province; and thirty-four years after that they did the like to Egypt. By all these steps the Roman arms stood up over the Greeks; and after ninety-five years more, by making war upon the Jews, They polluted the sanctuary of strength [the temple, so called by reason of its fortifications], and took away their daily sacrifice; and then placed the abomination of desolation: for that this abomination was thus placed after the days of Christ, appears from Matthew 24:15. In the 16th year of the emperor Adrian, and of our Lord 132, they placed the abomination by building a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus, where the temple of God in Jerusalem stood; upon which the Jews, under the conduct of Barchocab, rose up in arms against the Romans, and in the war had fifty cities demolished, nine hundred and fifty of their best towns destroyed, and five hundred and eighty thousand men slain by the sword; and in the end of the war, in the year 136, were banished Judaea on pain of death; and thenceforward the land remained desolate. See Sir Isaac Newton's Observations on Daniel, and Bishop Newton.