Note 626 — Chapter III

The special allusion, whatever it may precisely mean, is found under three different designations: (i) In viii. 13 it is called happeshang shomeem; Gk., ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐρημώσεως; Vulg., peccatum desolationis. (ii) In ix. 27 (comp. ix. 31) it is shiqqootsîm m'shomeem; Gk., βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως; Vulg., abominatio desolationis. (iii) In xii. 11 it is shiqqoots shomeem; Gk., τὸ βδέλυγμα ἐρημώσεως; Vulg., abominatio in desolationem. Some traditional fact must (as Dr. Joël says) have underlain the rendering "of desolation" for "of the desolator." In xi. 31 Theodotion has ἠφανισμένων, "of things done away with," for ἐρημωσέων. The expression with which the New Testament has made us so familiar is found also in 1 Macc. i. 51 (comp. 1 Macc. vi. 7): "they built the abomination of desolation upon the altar." There "the abomination" seems clearly to mean a smaller altar for heathen sacrifice to Zeus, built on the great altar of burnt offering. Perhaps the writer of Daniel took the word shomeem, "desolation," as a further definition of shiqqoots, "abomination," from popular speech; and it may have involved a reference to Lev. xxvi. 15-31: "If ye shall despise My statutes ... I will even appoint over you terror ... and I will make your cities waste, and appoint your sanctuaries unto desolation." The old Jewish exegetes referred the prophecy to Antiochus Epiphanes; Josephus and later writers applied it to the Romans. Old Christian expositors regarded it as Messianic; but even Jerome records nine different views of commentators, many of them involving the grossest historic errors and absurdities. Of Post-Reformation expositors down to the present century scarcely two agree in their interpretations. At the present day modern critics of any weight almost unanimously regard these chapters, in their primary significance, as vaticinia ex eventu, as some older Jewish and Christian exegetes had already done. Hitzig sarcastically says that the exegetes have here fallen into all sorts of shiqqootsîm themselves.