Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet;
Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others ... which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet. Balaam, an Aramean, dwelling on the Euphrates at the beginning of Israel's independent history, and Daniel at the close of it, prophetically exhibit to the hostile world-powers Israel as triumphant over them at last, though the world-powers of the East (Asshur) and the West (Chittim) carry all before them, and afflict Eber (Israel) for a time (Numbers 23:8-10; Numbers 23:28; Numbers 24:2; Numbers 24:7-9; Numbers 24:17-18; Numbers 24:22-24). To Balaam's "Asshur" correspond Daniel's two eastern kingdoms, Babylon and Medo-Persia; to "Chittim," the two western kingdoms, Greece and Rome (cf. Genesis 10:4; Genesis 10:11; Genesis 10:22). In Babel, Nimrod the hunter (revolter) founds the first kingdom of the world (Genesis 10:8-13).
The Babylonian world-power takes up the thread interrupted at the building of Babel and the kingdom of Nimrod. As at Babel, so in Babylon, the world is united against God: Babylon, the first world-power, thus becomes the type of the God-opposed world. The fourth monarchy consummates the evil; it is "diverse" from the others only in its more unlimited universality. The three first were not in the full sense universal monarchies. The fourth is; so in it the God-opposed principle finds its full development. All history moves within the Romanic, Germanic, and Slavonic nations: it shall continue so to Christ's second advent. The fourth monarchy represents universalism externally; Christianity internally Rome is Babylon fully developed. It is the world-power corresponding in contrast to Christianity, and therefore contemporary with it (Matthew 13:38, "The field is the world;" Mark 1:15; Luke 2:1, so Cesar's decree for the registration of the Jews for taxation indicates the world-power's maturity, when the kingdom of God makes its first humble appearance on earth in the person of Jesus then born, and born at Bethlehem in consequence of that registration; Galatians 4:4).