Four kingdoms of Daniel

The four kingdoms of Daniel are four kingdoms which, according to the Book of Daniel, precede the "end-times" and the "Kingdom of God".

The Book of Daniel originated from a collection of legends circulating in the Jewish community in Babylon and Mesopotamia in the Persian and early Hellenistic periods (5th to 3rd centuries BC), and was later expanded by the visions of chapters 7–12 in the Maccabean era (mid-2nd century BC).

The "four kingdoms" theme appears explicitly in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7, and is implicit in the imagery of Daniel 8. Daniel's concept of four successive world empires is drawn from Greek theories of mythological history. The symbolism of four metals in the statue in chapter 2 is drawn from Persian writings, while the four "beasts from the sea" in chapter 7 reflect Hosea 13:7–8, in which God threatens that he will be to Israel like a lion, a leopard, a bear or a wild beast. The consensus among scholars is that the four beasts of chapter 7, like the metals of chapter 2, symbolise Babylon, Media, Persia and the Seleucid Greeks, with Antiochus IV as the "small horn" that uproots three others (Antiochus usurped the rights of several other claimants to become king).

In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue made of four different materials, identified as four kingdoms:

In chapter 7, Daniel has a vision of four beasts coming up out of the sea, and is told that they represent four kingdoms:

This is explained as a fourth kingdom, different from all the other kingdoms; it "will devour the whole earth, trampling it down and crushing it" (v. 23). The ten horns are ten kings who will come from this kingdom (v. 24). A further horn (the "little horn") then appears and uproots three of the previous horns: this is explained as a future king.

In chapter 8 Daniel sees a ram with two horns destroyed by a he-goat with a single horn; the horn breaks and four horns appear, followed once again by the "little horn". The passage says the goat is the king of Greece and its initial horn its first king (v21).

Rashi, a medieval rabbi, interpreted the four kingdoms as Nebuchadnezzar ("you are the head of gold"), Belshazzar ("another kingdom lower than you"), Alexander of Macedon ("a third kingdom of copper"), and the Roman Empire ("and in the days of these kings"). Rashi explains that the fifth kingdom that God will establish is the kingdom of the messiah.