Daniel 12:8 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And I heard, but I understood not— The prophets did not always receive the interpretation of what was revealed to them. See 1 Peter 1:12. Study and particular application were required, and often an immediate revelation. The evidence which appears to us so clearly in the greater part of the prophecies that respect the Lord Jesus Christ, and the establishment of the church, was exceedingly obscure to the generality before the event. It was the same with respect to those which concerned the persecutions of Antiochus. This prophesy is of distant reference and interpretation; it is necessary, therefore, that it should be involved in obscurity. What is delivered may satisfy the minds of the pious and faithful; but it is not meant that the curious should be gratified, that human pride should be indulged, or that the counsels of God should be made subservient to the ambition of princes, or any sinister designs of man.