God’s Word for You
Daniel 11:23-24 Contemptible liar
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, January 16, 2026
23 And after an alliance is made with the prince of the covenant, the contemptible person will act deceitfully. He will rise up and become strong with a small people. 24 When the richest parts of the province are at peace he will enter and do what none of his fathers or ancestors had ever done, distributing plunder, spoil, and wealth to them. He will make plans against strongholds, but only for a time.
The “prince of the covenant,” whom we have identified as the high priest of the Jews, had been Onias III. After he fled for fear of his life and his brother Jason purchased the high priesthood for himself, Onias was murdered in 171 BC as we have already recalled. From this point, the secular government was interfering with the spiritual matters of Israel, a state of affairs that would continue until the time of Christ and after his ascension until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD (although it still crops up today). The alliances made by Antiochus IV were never made with any intention by the king that he would ever keep them. When it comes to international politics, first comes threats, then force, then ganging up on countries (treaties with other opposing nations), and then simply lies. Antiochus fell to lying quite easily.
This king of the North continued his contemptible treachery by setting his sights on Egypt. Completely uninterested as to what the Egyptians wanted, he decided that this shiny jewel to his south should belong to him. He made promises, a few deeply-veiled threats, and “visited” Egypt with “a small people” (verse 24). The Egyptians opened all of their gates and let him in; he was, after all, related to Cleopatra their Queen. But then, Luther writes, “he seized the crown and made himself king of Egypt. By such deceitfulness he robbed, plundered, and despoiled the entire country, something his forebears had never been able to do by force.”
After this, Antiochus passed around all of the spoils of his (we can hardly call it a war) coup. One of the easiest ways to get ruthless men to support you is to bribe them with the plunder of your naughty adventures. It is the way of the pirate and of the tyrant.
He “made plans against strongholds” which seemed perfect, by garrisoning them with his own men and by bribing them to stay there, so that when he returned he would have no opposition. “But as usual,” Leupold says, “such underhand dealing gave him an advantage ‘only for a time.’”
Unlike his predecessors, paying off his troops with the plunder of their warfare worked for Antiochus. But he had to keep it up. An army may fight on its stomach, but if they depend on fighting to fill their stomachs, then they have to keep at it. Antiochus found that he was holding a wolf by the ears. He couldn’t let go.
It’s time to step back and look at law and gospel here. This Antiochus is guilty, in these two verses, of unbelief, of failing to worship the true God in any way whatever, of attacking his own family (Cleopatra), of theft and leading others into theft and plunder, of coveting his neighbor’s house (in this case, an entire nation), and of lying. These touch on the First Commandment (for unbelief), the Third (for failing to worship, fear, or love God), the Fifth Commandment (including nepiacide or conspiring to kill his own niece), the Seventh (for stealing), the Fourth (for misguiding his followers and causing them both distress and leading them into temptation and sin), the Ninth (for coveting Egypt and other nations). He was also guilty of lying. When an unbeliever lies, he breaks the Eighth Commandment, but also the strict commands, “Do not lie. Do not deceive one another” (Leviticus 19:11). So even though he did not deceive using the name of God, he lied, and that is a sin all by itself. Paul says the same thing: “Do not lie to each other” (Colossians 3:9).
The condemnation for any of these sins for an unbeliever is the same: eternity in hell. Forgiveness is possible, but only through faith in Christ. Otherwise there is nothing but punishment, which begins for the soul of the damned as soon as the person dies, and continued for his rejoined body and soul after the resurrection, when the judgment will be pronounced on all at the same time, as Daniel says: “to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2).
The Church Father Cassiodorus wrote: “Most wretched of all are the damned both by losing what they love and at the same time by suffering what they do not want—an age without sweet life, and death without a curable end, a city without joy, a hateful country, a bitter dwelling place, an assembly of the sorrowful, a crowd of the crying.” He took much of what he said from Jesus’ simple words, “There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12).
These words are meant to crush our ideas of self-righteousness, and any thought we might have that we can attain eternal life on our own, or even with just a little help. We are powerless to stand before Christ in the judgment. Therefore he invites us to repent of our sins and to believe the good news of the Gospel (Mark 1:15). For when we repent, we turn from our sins and turn to Christ in faith. And when this is done, of course we are facing nothing but a human being here on earth who listens to our repentance, a minister of Gospel. But we confess: “I believe that when this is done, it is as valid and certain in heaven also, as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us himself” (Small Catechism).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.