God’s Word for You

Daniel 8:9-10 some of the army and some of the stars

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Wednesday, December 3, 2025

9 Then from one of them another horn came, a small one. It grew in power to the south and to the east and toward the Beautiful Land. 10 It exalted itself against the army of heaven. It threw some of the army and some of the stars down to the earth and trampled them.

This other horn that began small and grew very large was a king coming from one of the four horns that replaced the goat. That is to say, it was a king who rose up from one of the kingdoms that followed Alexander. In history, we recognize this to be the Seleucid king (8th in line) Antiochus, who called himself “Epiphanes” (the manifest or glorious one). But the Jews made a pun on this title and called him “Epimanes,” the Mad Man.

In the vision, Daniel saw this horn grow larger (that is, in power) first toward the south, then east, and finally west toward “the Beautiful Land” or Israel, as we see from Jeremiah 3:19 and Ezekiel 20:6. Since those two prophets were contemporaries with Daniel, I take this to mean that “the Beautiful Land” was a way of talking about Israel for the people of the exile. How was this expressed in the vision? The horn almost seems to act like a vine, twisting this way and then that way—and since goats do not grow horns this way, it could indeed be something like this. Or it could simply mean that the goat looked one way and then another, or dashed off one way and then another. The manner is not important to our understanding of the vision.

But then, this king “exalted himself toward the army of heaven.” Oftentimes, translations will say “host of heaven,” but this is an old-fashioned word that suggests the man in charge of a party instead of a vast army. Our rubric when I worked on the Wartburg Project (which produced the Evangelical Heritage Version, ©2019) was to translate this as “army.” The army of heaven could be one of two of three things:

1, The good angels.
2, A human army of believers, fighting under God’s banner.
3, The holy Christian church, fighting spiritual warfare, even in their daily lives.

Before we identify which of these is probably meant here, we should at least look at the other group in the text: “the stars.” Who or what could this be?

1, The literal stars in the sky, that is, the celestial objects like the stars, planets, moons, comets, and other things that move throughout the second heaven (see Isaiah 13:10). Throwing down some of these would seem to be a reference to the end of the world. John Chrysostom said, “When night perishes, the usefulness of the stars will no doubt pass away along with the night.”

2, A way of speaking about falling church leaders. Whenever a pastor or priest must leave the church in disgrace, it certainly damages the reputation of Christ and his church. Gregory the Great says: “Antichrist will crush some who both shine with the light of righteousness and are strong in the power of their works.”

3, A literal but mysterious phenomenon, such as when there is a raging fire like a forest fire or a large bonfire, and flames and burning matter fills the air on account of the conflagration. It will seem as if stars are falling on account what is taking place. We have seen some things like this in recent times when portions of rockets or satellites have re-entered the atmosphere and fall burning to the earth once again.

4, Some destructive battle on or near the Last Day when angels, perhaps, will battle with lightning, comets, meteors, or other flaming flashes in the skies.

It is also possible that, assuming that “heavenly army” and “stars” are not the same (although some, like Leupold, take them to be the same), then it could be that this is a figurative way of speaking about war against God’s people: the army, and the army’s leaders or “stars.” In the days of Antiochus, there was war against the Maccabees, and many soldiers of the Jewish army were killed, and many of their leaders, too, including Judas Maccabeus himself. At the battle of Elasa in 160 BC, “the battle became desperate, and many on both sides were wounded and fell. Judas also fell, and the rest fled” (1 Maccabees 9:17-18).

The vision, which might certainly point to that war and its dead, could also foreshadow the warring of the Antichrist against the people of God, but in a more ordinary way. For the lies and temptations of the Antichrist that deceive so many people lead a whole army host of Christians into unbelief, turning aside from Christ to put their trust in saints or good works or the false hope of making up for the guilt of their sins by purging it all away themselves someplace after they die. And even some great shining stars of the faith can and have been swept away in such waves of heresy and false teaching. Professor Gerhard’s wisdom about this is: “The outcome and day of the Lord will explain those things best of all.”

Therefore, since we surely know that we will and do suffer attacks from the Antichrist and other false teachers, this verse is a warning and a reminder to us to be on our guard. We are guarded best by his holy Word. So we keep returning to worship, not only for the preaching, but for the hymns that remain in our minds, for the confession and absolution (forgiveness) we receive, for the reminder at the very beginning of the service of our baptism when the minister says, “In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). We keep reading our catechism and studying it, and we keep reading the Scriptures. For “all Scripture is God-breathed, and is useful for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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