| Two
choices are possible for the antecedent: 1) the Prince of the host or 2)
the one exalting himself. Upon this choice, the “daily” will be
associated either with the Prince of the host or the pagan phase of the
horn from littleness. Hasel dedicates three short sentences in his 84 page
exegesis to this problem. He relies on “grammatical nearness”
supported by the Greek Septuagint, the Theodotian and the Latin Vulgate
for his decision that the antecedent of “from him” is the Prince of
the host.27 However,
relying solely on the Hebrew Masoretic text, rather than a secondary Greek
translation, and strictly using the basis of “grammatical nearness”,
the first clause in verse 11a concludes with “he exalted himself” (higdil)
and the second clause in verse 11b begins with “from him” (mimmennu).
The translation of mimmennu as “from him” in contrast to “by
him” is confirmed by the cultic language parallels (see Section 7.0) in
Leviticus where both rum and mimmennu are used in
conjunction with one another.28
It is immediately evident on the basis of grammatical nearness that the
antecedent of “from him” is the one exalting himself or pagan Rome. As
Hasel points out in a footnote,29
syntactically the first two clauses in verse 11 are inverted verbal
clauses, meaning the object precedes the verb which contains the subject,
contrary to normal word order. It is suggested that Daniel inverted the
normal Hebrew syntax of these two clauses for the specific purpose of
making an unmistakable connection of the antecedent (he exalted himself)
associated with the phrase, “from him”, by placing them adjacent to
one another (“...he exalted himself, and from him...”). An internal
reflection of the type A:B::B’:C results from this inverted syntax with
the end of verse 11a reflecting the identification of the first word
(prepositional phrase: “from him”) in verse 11b.
This
is illustrated in the following chart. |