God’s Word for You

Daniel 11:18-19 The Romans appear

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Tuesday, January 13, 2026

18 Afterward he will set his face toward the coastlands, and he will capture many. But a commander shall put an end to his insolence; indeed, he will make him pay for his insolence. 19 Then the king of the North will turn back toward the fortresses of his own land, but he will stumble and fall, and then he will not be found.

King Antiochus the Great began to look for more territory to conquer. There are various reasons for this desire in tyrants. The first is fear. By conquering potential enemies, the theory is that you make them your own, and then there is nothing to fear anymore. In practice, this hardly ever works, because the subjugated people will just end up in revolution to get their old ways back again.

There is greed; this is understandable. But greed often leads a man into trouble. “A greedy man stirs up dissention” (Proverbs 28:25), and “a greedy man brings trouble to his family” (Proverbs 15:27). Perhaps our war in Vietnam was in part over greed and lust for money. There are more modern examples, I’m sure.

There were wars fought, at least in ancient times, for love. As Troilus said about his love: “She is a pearl, whose price hath launch’d above a thousand ships,” or as Christopher Marlowe put it, “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.”

There is also glory, the desire and a need for more and more victory. As one soldier said, “We look’d for no less spoil than glory.” In this case, Antiochus was not so much motivated by glory as by other things.

What were those other things? We heard a new word introduced in the account of the marriage of Cleopatra, the daughter of Antiochus, who had been given to the King of Egypt. This new word was Rome. Cleopatra felt that a Roman alliance would benefit Egypt, her new home. And now her father found that the Roman Republic (not yet an empire) was making its way into Asia Minor. This led Antiochus to protect his border by at least stopping the intrusion, as he saw it, of this new nation.

Landing troops at Ephesus, Antiochus got into position quickly to block the Romans from advancing across the Maeander River, which divides southeastern Asia Minor on a diagonal flowing southwesterly toward the sea. He arranged his army at the city of Magnesia.

The “commander” (Hebrew qatsin) is probably a reference to Scipio Africanus, the Roman commander. He was the brother of the more famous Scipio. He was victorious over Antiochus, and he was called “Asiaticus” after this on account of the victory. The victory included a treaty which crippled the Seleucid Kingdom (as the angel foresaw: “he will make him pay for his insolence”), sending Antiochus back desperate to raise money from the eastern part of the kingdom. He decided to loot the temple of the god Bel in the city of Elymaïs near Susa. The locals did not care for this sacrilege, so on July 3, 187 BC, they mobbed him while he was in their temple, and killed him there. “He stumbled and fell, and then he could no longer be found.”

Those final words hang eerily in the verse and in what has been discovered by archaeology. Antiochus had already built a tomb for himself on Mount Nemrut in southeastern Asia Minor, about a hundred and fifty miles north of Antioch. Antiochus I had built himself a magnificent tomb there, and Antiochus the Great wanted something similar there for himself. Other Seleucid kings are buried there, and a tomb for Antiochus the Great was constructed, but there is no sign at all of a coffin or of his remains. I think that it is possible and even likely that the people of Elymaïs gave him a pauper’s burial there in their city, something like “the burial of a donkey” given to king Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 22:18-19). Whatever happened to his body, the fact remains to this day: “he can no longer be found.”

In the context of the verse, we easily find a proclamation of law in the greed and misconduct of Antiochus following his defeat by the Romans. His sin is not against the First Commandment, since he was plundering the shrine of a false god, but it was surely a violation of the Seventh and Ninth, since he was simply and shamelessly stealing. As to the question of whether the townspeople were justified in putting him to death for violating their pagan temple is an interesting one, and well-worth a discussion in a Bible study. In the end, Antiochus must be found guilty of “exasperating his children (subjects)” (Ephesians 6:4), for even though he was their king, he was robbing a church, pagan or not. Just as a king cannot lay claims that violate morality (such as forcing a man to divorce his wife just so that the king may have her), he cannot force a church to give up its property to him simply because he covets it.

But we also want to remember that it is here, in the single word “commander” of verse 18 that the Romans make their first appearance in the Scriptures. They will, after this, make many more, until our Lord will pray for their forgiveness as they crucified him for the sake of our souls; the first of his seven words from the cross (Luke 23:34).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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