Prophecy.—"The king of the south shall be strong, and one of his princes ... shall be strong above him;... his dominion shall be a great dominion." Verse 5.
History.—The history testifies that the king of the south (Egypt, under Ptolemy) was strong; but one of the four princes was "strong above him." Seleucus, of Syria and the east, pushed his dominion northward, subduing most of Asia Minor, and extending his boundary into Thrace, on the European side, beyond the Dardanelles. Henceforward, as Mahaffy says,
"there were three great kingdoms—Macedonia, Egypt, Syria—which lasted, each under its own dynasty, till Rome swallowed them up."—"Alexander's Empire," p. 89.
Thus Seleucus took the territory of the north, and the Syrian power became king of the north, its empire extending from Thrace, in Europe, through Asia Minor to Syria and the Euphrates. The seat of empire was removed from the east, and Antioch, in northern Syria, "once the third city of the world," became the famous capital.
The prophecy next foretold in remarkable detail the contests between these two strong powers, the king of the north (Syria and Asia Minor) and the king of the south (Egypt). The conflict raged back and forth till the coming of the Romans. The Holy Land was the frequent meeting place of the contending armies. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes it:
"Palestine was as of old the battle field for the king of the north and the king of the south.... The history of these times is lost in its details."—Ninth edition, Vol. XV, art. "Macedonian Empire," p. 144.
We shall not follow the details of this contest as foretold in the prophecy, nor yet the outline of events after the coming of the Roman power ended the rivalry between Syria and Egypt. It is necessary only that we fix the events and geographic terms of this early portion of the prophecy. Then we shall have the key to the closing portion, dealing with events of the last days, when the king of the north again appears.
The Modern King of the North
In the last verses of the chapter we find the king of the north a chief actor in this same region, "at the time of the end." Verse 40. And we are told that when this power comes to its end, it is the signal that the great day of God is at hand. (See Dan. 12:1.)
It becomes a vital question, therefore, what power in these last days is the king of the north, whose end is the signal of the swift ending of the world. Inspiration gives the basis for the answer. The king of the north in the early portion of the prophecy was the power that ruled in Syria and Asia Minor, from the Euphrates to the shores of the Dardanelles. The king of the north, then, of the later portion of the prophecy, must be the power that has been ruling in this same region during the time of the end.