God’s Word for You

Daniel 11:16-17 The first Cleopatra

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, January 12, 2026

16 But the invader will do as he pleases, and no one will be able to stand before him. He will take a position in the Beautiful Land, and it will be completely in his hands. 17 He shall set his mind to come with the strength of his whole kingdom, to make a treaty and enforce it. In order to destroy the kingdom of the South, he will give his daughter in marriage to the king of the South; but the plan will not succeed or be to his advantage.

As we continue this chapter, we see as before a detailed prophecy of the events Israel would observe in the relatively near future. God says to his people: Look down from the walls of Jerusalem; look down the hill to the west to the highway along the sea. These things I am telling you are exactly what will happen as history marches past. For the next four hundred years, from now until Alexander, from the Syrian Wars to the Maccabees and beyond, this is what will happen as you rest secure awaiting the coming of the Messiah. And then he will come, just as I have promised: Christ the Lord.

The invader is Antiochus the Great; the uprising of the Jews foreseen in verse 14 would lead him to Israel, which is “the Beautiful Land” (see Daniel 8:9). It is tempting to wonder if the revolt of the Maccabees is meant here, but the reader must be patient. The revolt of the Maccabees did not come until the abuses of the son of Antiochus, which we shall see in Daniel 11:21-35.

At this time (more than ten years after the defeat described in 11:11-13 (the Battle of Raphia) the northern king (Antiochus) had rebuilt his army, and had decided that he could control Egypt in another way, apart from war. He offered peaceful terms to Egypt in 197 BC and also gave his own daughter, Cleopatra, in marriage to the young Egyptian king, Ptolemy V. “Not in good faith,” Luther writes, “but as Daniel says here, ‘to destroy him.’ For by means of his daughter, Antiochus thought to take the young man’s kingdom away from him.” But there was a problem. The young wife arrived in 194 and found Egypt very much to her liking, and she quickly fell in love with her husband; he was 16, she was about 12.

Cleopatra I was called “Sira” or “the Syrian girl” by her people. The Angel in our text calls her literally “the daughter of women” in verse 17, which I have translated “his own daughter.” The phrase can mean “a woman of (or above) all women,” just as “son of man” suggests “THE man” or “the greatest of men.” She was a young woman that her father trusted very much. But young love and marriage turned her heart to her new husband and home. She was just eleven when she was sent away and twelve or nearly twelve when she was married.

She set about promoting her husband’s cause and supported the alliance that Egypt had with Rome. This was not the later Cleopatra famous for romantic movies and an affair with Mark Antony; that was her descendant, Cleopatra VII.

Cleopatra’s choice of husband over father proves Paul’s observation: “When the Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law” (Romans 2:14). For she was moving from obedience to the Fourth Commandment and honoring her father to the obedience of the Sixth Commandment and becoming one flesh with her husband. For what Moses says about a male, a groom, is also true of the female, the bride: “A woman will leave her father and mother and be united to her husband, and they will become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Therefore the bond of marriage supersedes the bond of parents and children. And while a son or daughter should always love, honor and respect their parents, their attention will transfer at the wedding altar to their spouse, since they have formed a new family. As far as we know, Cleopatra Syra did not know the Law of Moses, but she understood the marriage bond by nature. For the Law of God was written on stone tablets on Mount Sinai, but it was also written on the tablets of human hearts through the conscience. For “their consciences bear witness that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15; 2 Corinthians 3:3).

This why, when any person sins, believer or unbeliever, their conscience bothers them. This tells us that the law of God is written on our hearts. Now, on account of sin, the conscience can be mistaken. People can become so used to certain repeated sins that their conscience no longer bothers them about it. Other people, through ignorance of the depth and seriousness of God’s law, do not realize how serious a thing their sins are, or do not recognize some things as sins at all. This is why God also gave us his will through the Law written another way, in the Word of God and the written law, “the Law that was written through Moses” (John 1:17). Now the flesh “trembles because I fear you; I stand in awe of your judgments” (Psalm 119:120). The trembling human heart recognizes that the human will, which is desire, is not the same as the Divine will, which is love. As Abraham Lincoln said: “Men are not flattered by being shown that there is a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it is to deny that there is a God governing the world” (Letter to Thurlow Week March 15, 1865).

Our glorious God has seen fit to reveal his dear Son to us so that the shocking “difference of purpose between the Almighty and [us]” will not crush us and grind us to powder, although this is what our sins deserve, but will make us all the more grateful for the Savior who forgave us, making us one flesh with him—not in the way a bride become one flesh with her husband, but as Paul says, “I am talking about Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32). For we are truly his bride, and he has made us his very own. And the heart of the reborn Christian says, “I desire to do your will, O my God; you law is written within my heart.”

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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