God’s Word for You

Daniel 8:6-7 When Persia Fell

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, December 1, 2025

6 He came to the two-horned ram I had seen standing beside the canal and charged him in a great rage. 7 I saw him attack the ram furiously, striking the ram and shattering his two horns. The ram was powerless to stand against him; the goat knocked him to the ground and trampled on him, and none could rescue the ram from his power.

It’s no good asking how I, one of the people of God, found myself in the place of the greatest risk and danger in a mountain pass so very many miles away from my home on that day. I am one of the exiles, a Galoot, and you may call me Meheb if you like.

The Persian king told my family and the rest of God’s people that we could go home. But my grandfather was an old man, and my father and his brother did not want to leave him behind, and so we stayed. Does it matter now that my father passed up chance after chance to return to Judea? Does it matter now that I, even I, did not go? Do you think that I stayed behind on account of a woman, still just whisp of a girl? I am here to tell you about the battle you have asked about. So I shall tell you the “what” and not the “why.”

Service in the army of the Achaemenid kings—you would call them Persian kings—was not a bad life. We were well-led, and our name fought many battles for us. Darius our king knew full well that a reputation is as important as spears, and our numbers! Ten thousand ten times over marched down from the north on that day. September in the mountains is a beautiful time of year to be on the march. But the army under the king’s banner made slow going through the mountains this time.

Darius was proud of his Achaemenid heritage. It was his ancestor, Cyrus the Great, two hundred years ago now, who first led mounted men into battle. Mounted, that is, on horseback. Darius still uses some of the old ways, mind you, men riding camels (we call them the Dromedary Cavalry!) and men riding elephants, too. But that brings us to how I came to be where I was in the battle line.

My own horse, Susa, was a beautiful beast. The Satrap who commanded our unit thought she was named after the Persian capital, of course, but really Susa is just “Horse” in my native Hebrew. It was that strange chance that got me into trouble. The Satrap took Susa’s reins the morning we crossed into the river valley and told me that he was taking my mount. His horse had met with an accident in the night, he said, and he couldn’t command from on foot. So he told the other officers that I had volunteered for the van, and he rode off with my beautiful black Susa, the sleek mare I had ridden for two years in the service of the king.

The van, if you don’t know, is the very front of the army, the spearhead that goes first into battle. And I was assigned the lead scouting position, the point of the spear, if you take my meaning. The drop of morning dew on the end of the spear point! None of us would deny that we were always afraid before a battle. During a fight, there is no time to think, but before! The knees of some men actually knock. And many of us were secretly or openly sick. I was just quiet that day, frustrated over losing my Susa.

We saw the Greeks to the south as the sun rose. They were not below us where we thought they would be, but mostly above us at another part of the valley. They had the high ground. We outnumbered them more than three to one, but the mountain pass kept our armies bunched together behind the van. This Alexander was either lucky or he had chosen this spot as the only place where his smaller army would have the advantage. We soon learned about his advantage.

Darius took his place in the center, perhaps a half-mile behind my group. I was farther ahead, using banners to signal about the numbers I counted. Ten thousand in the rear, perhaps fifteen thousand in the center, and a little more than five thousands on each of the wings. Alexander had a few elephants and some camels just as we had, but he had horsemen, too, and their spears were long. They glinted brightly in the red sunrise.

I kept my eyes open, for it was my duty to do so, but I prayed using the words of King David, “Blessed be the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war. He shows me mercy” (Psalm 144:1-2). Then we started the slow charge, walking, not running, toward the Greek center. I thought about my lowered spear and my place in the vanguard. It was then that I actually saw Alexander. He was all in white and gold on a white horse. A plume of red streamed behind his gorgeous helmet; it was impossible for the Greeks not to know where their young king was. He was just twenty-five.

Suddenly we were fighting. As we engaged the heavily armed Greek hoplites, I was trading spear thrusts with a big, savage warrior with a shaved head under his copper helmet. I stayed true to my training and always heard the instructor’s voice: Feint, parry, thrust and thrust again. Now another step; plant the feet, rear foot out, forefoot straight ahead: Feint, parry, thrust and thrust again. His lance went wild on the third exchange, and my thrust sank into his upper chest. His eyes never closed, even as he sank to his knees. I retrieved my lance and met the next man, who had just killed the spearman to my right. The minutes of battle quickly became an hour, and my muscles ached.

Then the whole Greek army wheeled, even as we charged in to press the attack. They had opened a hole in our left flank. The Greek King, Alexander, was flying through the lines while we watched. I wondered whether his horse’s hooves even touched the ground, and then I remembered the Prophet Daniel who said that about the goat in the mysterious vision of the goat and the ram!

Another parry, another thrust. This was four or five spears later for me, picking up weapons where I could on the field. Another quick march across open ground, minding the bodies and the rocks and there, to my left, a dying horse—my Susa! The Satrap who had taken her was pinned underneath, but I had no time to stop or to see whether I could help him. I was just stooping down to stroke poor Susa’s mane when I was struck. It was a foolish thing to do in a battle, but that stoop saved my life. A thrust came from a Greek peltast, a spearman with no armor—light infantry, you westerners would say. The spear struck me in the shoulder. In the half-crouch, the thrust that would have pierced my heart or liver went far too high, and I was hurt in my left shoulder. The Greek spearman ran past me and cheered. Our King Darius had fled the field. The battle was lost. I fell beside my dead Susa and wept. Prisoners were being marched away.

A man I took for a Greek slave wearing nothing but a scrap of robe—I think he was one of their surgeon-slaves—bound my shoulder and gave me a skin of wine and told me to walk home. He produced a cake of dates and thrust a bread roll into my hand. As I was taking a drink of the wine he said, “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble.” He was quoting one of the Hebrew prophets (Nahum 1:7)! That Greek slave was a Galoot of Israel the same as me. Before I could ask his name he was gone, and as full as the field had been half an hour before, it was empty now except for the bodies of the dead and one lonely camel; its lead pinned under the rider’s dead body on the ground. The beast bellowed and knelt down, and the only noise left in the field were the cries of the very first arrivals after any battle: the crows. The crows.

That Greek king had knocked our Persian ram to the ground and trampled him. You may already know that Darius was shamed after this. Some of his own nobles murdered him, that last of the Achaemenid kings. The Persia that had sent my people home to Judea was no more. There was nothing keeping me back any longer.

I freed the reins of the poor camel and climbed up—the last of the Dromedary Cavalry!—thinking of the surgeon-slave of the Greeks who quoted the prophets to me as he set me free, for I never tasted a single hour as a prisoner due to him. Persia was fallen, and I was free. “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in him.” Those were the words of Nahum. Camel and I took two whole months to arrive in Galilee. I traded scraps of armor for money on the way, along with a silver ring and a dozen daggers I plundered before leaving the valley of the battle. We came to a village that was called “The Village of Consolation,” but it can mean “Village of Nahum,” as well. So camel and I made our home there, in Galilee, there in Capernaum. The Lord spared my life when Persia fell. The Lord is good, indeed.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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