Daniel 8:2

And I saw in the vision; and it came to pass, when I saw, that Iwas in Shushan, the citadel, whichis in Elam, the province; and I saw in the vision, and I was by the stream Ulai] The verse is awkwardly worded, and in part tautologous; its object is to describe where Daniel seemed to find himself in the vision. -Elam" is the Heb. form of the Sumerian (or -Accadian") Êlam-ma, -highland," which in Ass. assumed the fem. term. and became Êlamtu: it denoted originally (Delitzsch, Paradies, p. 320 f.) -the mountainous region beginning N. and E. of Susa, and corresponding roughly to the modern Khusistan." Persia proper was S. E. of it. It is mentioned frequently both in the O.T. (Genesis 10:22; Isaiah 11:11; Jeremiah 49:34, &c.), and also in the Assyrian Inscriptions: Anshan, or Anzan, the home of Cyrus, was the district in the S.-W. of Elam, bordering on what is now the lower course of the Tigris, but what in ancient times was the upper part of the Persian Gulf (called by the Assyrians the Nâr Marratum, or Bitter(salt) River) [318]. Shushan (Susa) was the capital of Elam. Asshurbanipal (b.c. 668 626) invaded Elam more than once, and has left a full and vivid account of the occasion on which he stormed and sacked Shushan (KB[319], ii. 203 ff.). Darius Hystaspis appears to have been the first Persian king who erected palaces at Shushan, or held his court there [320]; and from his time onwards, as the principal residence of the Persian kings (cf. Nehemiah 1:1; Esther 1:2, and passim), it held for nearly two centuries a commanding position in the ancient world. -From Susa, during this period, the peoples of W. Asia and E. Europe awaited their destiny; in the Apadâna tributary princes, ambassadors, and satraps, including the noblest of the Greeks, as Antalkidas (387 and 372), Pelopidas and Ismenias (367), did homage at the feet of the Great King. In the palaces of the citadel were enacted bloody harem-tragedies, in which eunuchs and women were the actors (Esther, Amytis, Amestris, Parysatis, Statira). Here Xerxes fell under the daggers of Artabanus and Aspamithras, and here Bagoas poisoned two kings" (Billerbeck, Susa, p. 154). Susa was thus a suitable spot at which the seer should find himself in a vision that pourtrayed with some prominence both the rise and the fall of the Persian power (Daniel 8:3). See further, on Susa, p. 125 f.

[318] Maspero, Struggle of the Nations(with Map), p. 30 f.

[319] B.Eb. Schrader, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek(transliterations and translations of Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions), 1889 1900.

[320] Billerbeck, Susa(1893), pp. 128, 129, 133 ff.

For other instances of visionary transference to a distant locality, see Ezekiel 8:3 to Ezekiel 11:24; Ezekiel 40:2 ff.

Shushan, the citadel] the standing title of Shushan in the O. T. (Nehemiah 1:1; Esther 1:2; Esther 1:5; Esther 2:3; Esther 2:5; Esther 2:8; Esther 3:15; Esther 8:14; Esther 9:6; Esther 9:11-12). The word rendered -citadel" (birah) is peculiar to the later Hebrew, being found otherwise only in 1 Chronicles 29:1; 1 Chronicles 29:19; Ezra 6:2; Nehemiah 2:8 (see Ryle's note), vii. 2. It is probably the Ass. birtu, -castle" (Delitzsch, Ass. Handwörterbuch, p. 185), and denotes a castellated building or enclosure, a castle, citadel, or acropolis.

Elam, the province] Cf. Ezra 6:2, -Media, the province." It is, however, extremely doubtful whether Elam, especially after the rise and successes of Cyrus, was a -province" (Daniel 3:2-3) of the Babylonian empire: the word seems rather a reminiscence of the time when the district in which Susa lay was a principal -province" of the Persian empire.

the stream Ulai The word rendered streamoccurs only here and Daniel 8:3; Daniel 8:6; but it appears to differ only phonetically from the one found in Jeremiah 17:8, and (in a slightly different form) in Isaiah 30:25; Isaiah 44:4. The Ulai is the Ass. U-la-a-athe waters of which Asshurbanipal, on his first invasion of Elam, states that he -coloured with blood like wool" (KB[321] ii. 183) the Eulaeus of the classical writers, which Pliny (H. N. vi. 27) says flowed close by Susa. The difficulties which were formerly felt in identifying the Eulaeus have been cleared up by the surveys of Loftus and Dieulafoy. There are at present three rivers flowing near Susa, from the mountains on the north, into the Persian Gulf. On the S.-W. of Susa, some four or five miles from the site of the ancient acropolis, flows the Kerkha (the ancient Choaspes): on the east is the Abdizful (the Coprates), which runs into the Karun (the Pasitigris); and the Eulaeus was a large artificial canal some 900 feet broad, of which traces remain, though it is now dry, which left the Choaspes at Pai Pul, about 20 miles N.-W. of Susa, passed close by the town of Susa on the N. or N.-E., and afterwards joined the Coprates.

[321] B.Eb. Schrader, Keilinschriftliche Bibliothek(transliterations and translations of Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions), 1889 1900.