Daniel 11:18

And he shall turn his face to the isles(or coast-lands), and shall take many; but a commander shall cause his reproach to cease to him; nay, he shall even return his reproach unto him] Antiochus cherished ambitious designs towards the West. In 196 most of the cities in Asia Minor submitted to him; in the same year he even crossed the Hellespont and seized the Thracian Chersonese, and in 195 set about organizing it as a satrapy for his son Seleucus. In 192 he landed in Greece, and occupied various places to the N. of the Isthmus of Corinth, but was defeated by the Romans in 191 at Thermopylae, and compelled to retire to Ephesus. The Romans next determined to expel Antiochus from Asia. Immense preparations were made on both sides: in the end, the decisive battle was fought in the autumn of 190, at Magnesia, near Smyrna, and Antiochus's huge army of 80,000 men was defeated, with enormous loss, by Lucius Cornelius Scipio (Livy xxxvii. 39 44). Antiochus was now obliged to renounce formally all claims to any part of Europe, or of Asia Minor, west of the Taurus, and to submit to other humiliating conditions of peace [367]. His ruin was complete: "never, perhaps," remarks Mommsen, "did a great power fall so rapidly, so thoroughly, so ignominiously, as the kingdom of the Seleucidae under this Antiochus the Great." These are the events alluded to in the present verse of Daniel.

[367] See fuller particulars in Livy xxxvii. 39 45, 55; or in Mommsen's Hist. of Rome, Bk. iii., chap. ix.

turn his face implying a change of purpose and direction: so Daniel 11:19.

isles(or coast-lands)] Heb. "iyyîm, the word used regularly (e.g. Genesis 10:5; Isaiah 11:11) of the islands and jutting promontories (for it includes both) of the Mediterranean Sea. Here it denotes in particular the coasts and islands of Asia Minor and Greece.

a commander] Lucius Cornelius Scipio, at the battle of Magnesia. The Heb. word (ḳâẓîn) means properly a decider(Arab. ḳâḍi), and is used of one who interposes, or acts, with authority: in Joshua 10:24; Judges 11:6; Judges 11:11, of a military commander, as here; Isaiah 3:6-7, of a dictator, taking the lead in a civic emergency; of other authorities, civil or military, in Isaiah 1:10; Isaiah 22:3; Micah 3:1; Micah 3:9; Proverbs 6:7; Proverbs 25:15 (all).

his reproach implied in the defiant attitude adopted by him towards the Romans: not only had he, for instance, attacked many of their allies, but he told their legates at Lysimacheia that they had no more right to inquire what he was doing in Asia, than he had to inquire what they were doing in Italy (Liv. xxxiii. 40).

to him] a dative of reference, though certainly redundant, after the pron. his; cf. (without a pron.) Jeremiah 48:35; Ruth 4:14.

return] hurl back, and at the same time requite, viz. by the humiliating repulse at Magnesia, after which, in Appian's words (Syr.c. 37), men used to say, ἦν βασιλεὺς Ἀντίοχος ὁ μέγας. For the expression, which forms here a climax on -make to cease," see Hosea 12:14; Nehemiah 4:4 (Heb. 3:36).