Rams and goats are prevalent throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. Rams symbolized both strength and redemption. The ram found in the thicket by Abraham became part of the foundation of faith in the coming Messiah. Rams’ skins were used as part of the Tabernacle covering. Rams were used in the sacrificial offerings of the Temple.
Goats were also used in the sacrificial offerings and goat skins were also one of the four coverings of the Tabernacle. There were two specific goats offered as part of the Day of Atonement activities: one goat becoming a sacrifice; the other became the set-free scapegoat that died in the wilderness. Leviticus 17:7 commands that there will no longer be sacrifices to goat demons making the goat a powerful symbol in satanic culture and worship.
In Matthew 25:31-46 Yeshua describes the judgment of the nations using sheep and goats. One of the reasons for this is because sheep and goats in the Middle East look similar and it’s difficult to discern a sheep from a goat. However, the basis for the judgment is how the people in the nations, and the nations themselves, treat the brothers and sisters of Yeshua. Those who fed his literal Jewish brothers and sisters, gave them drink, welcomed them as a stranger, clothed them, took care of them when they were sick or visited them in prison will receive reward; those who did not will spend eternity in the lake of burning fire. Yeshua will separate sheep nations from goat nations also based on how they treated Israel and the Jewish people. When this Scripture becomes a blanket statement for how we treat others, the depth of its meaning and purpose gets diluted; the prophetic vision disappears.
This waking vision of Daniel occurs in the third and last year of the reign of Belshazzar before he lost the kingdom to the Medes and Persians. Though Daniel has become known throughout this ancient empire as an interpreter of dreams and visions, he is confounded by the ram and the goat.
Daniel was in the citadel of Susa, the province of Elam by the Ulai Canal when he had his vision. Susa was 220 miles east of Babylon and 150 miles north of the Persian Gulf in present-day Iran. Elam was a Median province that had been conquered by Assyria in the 7th century BCE. Susa was insignificant until Darius I rebuilt it and it became the Persian capital. This is the same Susa where Queen Esther reigned with King Xerxes. The Ulai Canal was a large, manmade canal near the city. The change in location from Babylon (the first Beast in Daniel 7) corresponds to this vision (the second Beast) beginning with Media-Persia and looking ahead to when Babylon is no longer a world empire.
- Describe the ram’s horns. Revelation 13:11
2. Describe its behavior.
3. Describe the goat’s horns.
4. Describe its behavior.
5. What nations are to the west, north, and south of Israel?
6. What happens to the ram and goat?
7. What came out of the four horns that were toward the winds of heaven?
8. What did the little horn do?
Revelation 12:1-4
9. What was the judgment?
10. What is the Beautiful Land? The direction of the Glory?
Ezekiel 20:6, 15
11. What does it mean to “fling the Truth on the ground?”
John 17:17.
12. Who gives Daniel and time period for the abomination of desolation?
13. Apart from this being how God defines a complete 24-hour day, from evening to morning, what could these time periods also represent?
14. What is the time period until the restoration of the Temple or ‘sanctuary’ in Jerusalem?
A Little Manna:
In Ezekiel 4:6, God tells the prophet that he appoints days for years. God judged the Israelites’ lack of faith when the spies entered the Promised Land. They had to spend one year in the wilderness for each of the 40 days in the Land (Numbers 14:34). This is why they wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. When God judged the House of Judah and sent them into captivity, they were in Babylon for as many years equal to the number of Jubilee years they didn’t honor – 70. The 2300 days until the sanctuary is properly cleansed refers to how many ‘years’ of the Day of Atonement could not be done because there was/is no Temple. This is important because the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, is the day of cleansing from sin. The sins of the high priest and the people of Israel were atoned for on this day and the Tabernacle/Temple was also cleansed from its human impurities.
When searching for a timeline for the 2300 days, no one used the destruction of the Temple as the time of desolation and the end of the sacrificial system. Though Yeshua became the sacrifice for sin, the sacrificial system did not end with his death and resurrection, but with the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70CE. Until that time, Paul himself offered sacrifices at the Temple (Acts 21:26).
The prophecy given to Daniel is clear that the sacrifices will end until the restoration of the sanctuary. There is prophecy of another Temple that becomes defiled by the man of lawlessness. He will allow sacrifices for a short time, but then cut them off. When Yeshua returns, he will destroy that temple and Ezekiel’s Temple, from which Messiah will reign, will have restored offerings and sacrifices. It is Yeshua who will ultimately cleanse the Temple as the High Priest.
Interpretation of the Vision
15. Who comes to interpret the vision for Daniel?
16. What was Daniel’s reaction?
17. To when does the vision refer?
18. What is the ‘period of fury’ or ‘period of indignation?’
19. What is the ram’s identity?
20. What is the goat’s identity?
21. Who was the Greek king that conquered Persia
22. What four kingdoms arose after Alexander the Great’s death?
23. What will evil be like during the days of the insolent king?
A Little Hebrew: In Daniel 8:23, the word pasha is ‘evildoers’ or ‘transgressors.’ It means to ‘rebel against God and His Law (Torah) or apostatize, break away from authority, revolt.
24. Describe the insolent king?
25. What will be his demise?
26. Why does Daniel keep the vision secret?
27. What happens to Daniel after this vision and its interpretation?
28. There are two temples and two sacrifices mentioned in Daniel’s vision. Where and what are they?
29. From what you are learning, are you seeing prophecy from a different perspective?
30. How important is it to read the prophets to understand the prophets?
A Little Manna:
Some scholars believe the ‘little horn’ represents King Antiochus Epiphanes who forced everyone in the Greek Seleucid empire to sacrifice to the Greek gods. When Antiochus came into Jerusalem, he ended the sacrificial system, he forced the Jews to stop obeying Torah, to stop circumcising their sons, and to stop observing the Sabbath. He forced them to eat unclean animals and sacrifice to foreign gods. Ultimately he desecrated the Temple in Jerusalem with pig’s blood and set an idol of Zeus in the Holy of Holies.
The Jewish people rebelled. They refused to assimilate (amalgamate) their worship of the God with pagan Greek worship and culture. Judah Maccabee became the leader of the rebellion called the Maccabean Revolt (167-160 BCE), and after several years (2300 days) with his small army, he pushed the Greeks out of Jerusalem. The Levites purified the Temple from the abominations of Antiochus as required by Torah (2 Chronicles 29). When they re-dedicated it back to the God of Israel, the memorial became known as Hanukkah (John 10).
Others believe the ‘little horn’ represents Rome whose transgressions were great in their refusal to accept the God of the Jews, who murdered the Messiah, and who eventually destroyed the second Temple in 70 CE.
Most who study these Scriptures see that Antiochus Epiphanes, whose name means anti-christ in the flesh, believe that the events surrounding Hanukkah were just a foretaste of what is coming at the end of the age.
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