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Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers - That God who sent the evangelists and apostles to preach the pure doctrine. These true fathers of the Christian Church, and their God, this Church has not regarded, but put councils, and traditions, and apocryphal writings in their place.
Nor the desire of women - Both the Greek and Latin Church, in their antichristian enactments, have discouraged, and in several cases proscribed, marriage, under the pretense of greater chastity, to the discredit of God's ordinance, and Christianity itself.
Nor regard any god - For the mandates and decrees of that Church have been often in defiance of God and his word, for it has magnified itself above all power and authority in heaven and on earth. It professes to hold the keys, and to open and shut heaven at pleasure, both to states and individuals.
Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers - The God that his fathers or ancestors had worshipped: That is, he would not be bound or restrained by the religion of his own land, or by any of the usual laws of religion. He would worship any God that he pleased, or none as he pleased. The usual restraints that bind men - the restraints derived from the religion of their ancestors - would in this case be of no avail. See the notes at Daniel 11:36. This was in all respects true of Antiochus. At his pleasure he worshipped the gods commonly adored in his country, or the gods worshipped by the Greeks and Romans, or no gods. And, in a special manner, instead of honoring the god of his fathers, and causing the image of that god to be placed in the temple at Jerusalem, as it might have been supposed he would, he caused the altar of Jupiter Olympius to be set up there, and his worship to be celebrated there. In fact, as Antiochus had been educated abroad, and had passed his early life in foreign countries, he had never paid much respect to the religion of his own land. The attempt to introduce a foreign religion into Judea was an attempt to introduce the religion of the Greeks (Jahn, Heb. Commonwealth, p. 267); and in no instance did he endeavor to force upon them the peculiar religion of his own nation. In his private feelings, therefore, and in his public acts, it might be said of Antiochus, that he was characterized in an eminent degree by a want of regard for the faith of his ancestors. The language used here by the angel is what would properly denote great infidelity and impiety.
Nor the desire of women - The phrase “the desire of women” is in itself ambiguous, and may either mean what they desire, that is, what is agreeable to them, or what they commonly seek, and for which they would plead; or it may mean his own desire - that is, that he would not be restrained by the desire of women, by any regard for women, for honorable matrimony, or by irregular passion. The phrase here is probably to be taken in the former sense, as this best suits the connection. There has been great variety in the interpretation of this expression. Some have maintained that it cannot be applicable to Antiochus at all, since he was a man eminently licentious and under the influence of abandoned women. Jerome, in loc., John D. Michaelis, Dereser, Gesenius, and Lengerke suppose that this means that he would not regard the beautiful statue of the goddess Venus whose temple was in Elymais, which he plundered.
Staudlin and Dathe, that he would not regard the weeping or tears of women - that is, that he would be cruel. Bertholdt, that he would not spare little children, the object of a mother‘s love - that is, that he would be a cruel tyrant. Jerome renders it, Et erit in concupiscentiis faminarum, and explains it of unbridled lust, and applies it principally to Antiochus. Elliott, strangely it seems to me (Apocalypse, iv. 152), interprets it as referring to what was so much the object of desire among the Hebrew women - the Messiah, the promised seed of the woman; and he says that he had found this opinion hinted at by Faber on the Prophecies (Ed. 5), i. 380-385. Others expound it as signifying that he would not regard honorable matrimony, but would be given to unlawful pleasures. It may not be practicable to determine with certainty the meaning of the expression, but it seems to me that the design of the whole is to set forth the impiety and hard-heartedness of Antiochus. He would not regard the gods of his fathers; that is, he would not be controlled by any of the principles of the religion in which he had been educated, but would set them all at defiance, and would do as he pleased; and, in like manner, he would be unaffected by the influences derived from the female character - would disregard the objects that were nearest to their hearts, their sentiments of kindness and compassion; their pleadings and their tears; he would be a cruel tyrant, alike regardless of all the restraints derived from heaven and earth - the best influences from above and from below.
It is not necessary to say that this agrees exactly with the character of Antiochus. He was sensual and corrupt, and given to licentious indulgence, and was incapable of honorable and pure love, and was a stranger to all those bland and pure affections produced by intercourse with refined and enlightened females. If one wishes to describe a high state of tyranny and depravity in a man, it cannot be done better than by saying that he disregards whatever is attractive and interesting to a virtuous female mind.
Nor regard any god - Any religious restraints whatever - the laws of any god worshipped in his own land or elsewhere - in heaven or on earth. That is, he would be utterly irreligious in heart, and where it conflicted with his purposes would set at nought every consideration derived from reverence to God. This harmonizes well with the previous declaration about women. The two commonly go together. He that is unrestrained by the attractive virtues of the female mind and character; he that has no regard for the sympathies and kindnesses that interest virtuous females; he that sees nothing lovely in what commonly engages their thoughts; and he that throws himself beyond the restraints of their society, and the effects of their conversation, is commonly a man who cuts himself loose from all religion, and is at the same time a despiser of virtuous females and of God. No one will expect piety toward God to be found in a bosom that sees nothing to interest him in the sympathies and virtues of the femme mind; and the character of a woman-hater and a hater of God will uniformly be found united in the same person. Such a person was Antiochus Epiphanes; and such men have often been found in the world.
For he shall magnify himself above all - Above all the restraints of religion, and all those derived from the intercourse of virtuous social life - setting at nought all the restraints that usually bind men. Compare the notes at Daniel 8:10-11.
Verse 37
The Hebrew word for woman is also translated wife; and Bishop Newton observes that this passage would be more properly rendered “the desire of wives.” This would seem to indicate that this government, at the same time it declared that God did not exist, would trample under foot the law which God had given to regulate the marriage institution. And we find that the historian has, unconsciously perhaps, and if so all the more significantly, coupled together the atheism and licentiousness of this government in the same order in which they are presented in the prophecy. He says: —DAR 266.5
“Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion was that which reduced the union of marriage — the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society — to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in and cast loose at pleasure, when their taste was changed or their appetite gratified. If fiends had set themselves at work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan than the degradation of marriage into a state of mere occasional cohabitation or licensed concubinage. Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as the sacrament of adultery. These antireligious and antisocial regulations did not answer the purpose of the frantic and inconsiderate zealots by whom they had been urged forward.” — Scott’s Napoleon, Vol. I, p. 173.DAR 267.1
“Nor regard any god.” In addition to the testimony already presented to show the utter atheism of the nation at this time, the following fearful language of madness and presumption is to be recorded: —DAR 267.2
“The fear of God is so far from being the beginning of wisdom that it is the beginning of folly. Modesty is only an invention of refined voluptuousness. The Supreme King, the God of the Jews and the Christians, is but a phantom. Jesus Christ is an impostor.”DAR 267.3
Another writer says: —DAR 268.1
“Aug. 26, 1792, an open profession of atheism was made by the National Convention; and corresponding societies and atheistical clubs were everywhere fearlessly held in the French nation. Massacres and the reign of terror became the most horrid.” — Smith’s Key to Revelation, p. 323.DAR 268.2
“Hebert, Chaumette, and their associates appeared at the bar, and declared that God did not exist.” — Alison, Vol. I, p. 150.DAR 268.3
At this juncture all religious worship was prohibited, except that of liberty and the country. The gold and silver plate of the churches was seized upon and desecrated. The churches were closed. The bells were broken and cast into cannon. The Bible was publicly burned. The sacramental vessels were paraded through the streets on an ass, in token of contempt. A week of ten days, instead of seven, was established, and death was declared, in conspicuous letters posted over their burial places, to be an eternal sleep. But the crowning blasphemy, if these orgies of hell admit of degrees, remained to be performed by the comedian Monvel, who, as a priest of Illuminism, said: —DAR 268.4
“God, if you exist, avenge your injured name. I bid you defiance! You remain silent. You dare not launch your thunders! Who after this, will believe in your existence? The whole ecclesiastical establishment was destroyed.” — Scott’s Napoleon, Vol. I, p. 173.DAR 268.5
Behold what man is when left to himself, and what infidelity is when the restraints of law are thrown off, and it has the power in its own hands! Can it be doubted that these scenes are what the omniscient One foresaw, and noted on the sacred page, when he pointed out a kingdom to arise which should exalt itself above every god, and disregard them all?DAR 268.6