Daniel’s Dream of Four Beasts

The theme of four empires in Nebuchadnezzar’s nightmare would repeat later in Daniel’s life. In chapter seven, Daniel describes a prophetic dream of his own. In it, he watches as four terrifying and unusual beasts rise out of the sea. Each beast represents one of the same four empires foreshadowed by Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2.

Daniel 7:1-3

1 In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.

2 Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.

3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

In Biblical prophecies, water usually represents masses of people. The imagery of beasts coming out of the sea in Daniel’s dream signifies the human composition of these empires and their armies.[1] Near the end of the vision, Daniel asked someone standing next to him to explain the meaning of the four beasts. This individual interpreted the beasts as four kings who will arise.

Daniel 7:16-17

16 I came near unto one of them that stood by, and asked him the truth of all this. So he told me, and made me know the interpretation of the things.

17 These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth.

Many of the Bible’s end-times prophecies are intertwined. It is essential to understand Daniel’s four-empire prophecies before attempting to interpret the shared themes found in later prophecies. Babylon, beasts, horns, the sea, the Tribulation, and the Antichrist’s battle against Christians are common threads between Daniel, Revelation, and many other end-times prophecies. The symbolic elements of these themes have the same or similar meanings across different end-times prophecies as if they were written by the same author throughout the centuries, which Christians believe supports the divine inspiration of scripture.

As a reference point for the year of Daniel’s prophecy, Babylon’s crown prince, Belshazzar, ruled as a regent in his father’s absence from 553 until 543 or 542 BC.[i] He was likely killed when Persia’s king Cyrus II—now called Cyrus the Great—captured Babylon on October 12, 539 BC.[ii]

Belshazzar’s father, King Nabonidus, had entered a self-imposed exile at Tayma in Arabia beginning in May 553 BC.[iii] May corresponds with Iyar and Sivan, the second and third months in the Hebrew calendar. In Babylon, the reigns of kings were counted from the first month of the year, Nisan, which aligns with March and April. Since Nabonidus was the sole king of Babylon on the first day of Nisan in 553 BC, that year would have been counted as a part of his reign, even though Belshazzar’s regency would have begun no more than two months later. This implies Daniel’s dream in chapter seven occurred between March 552 BC and April 551 BC.

The Lion with Eagle’s Wings: The Neo-Babylonian Empire

Daniel 7:4

4 The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.

Daniel began by describing the first beast he encountered in his dream. Like the golden head in King Nebuchadnezzar’s nightmare, this winged lion symbolizes the Neo-Babylonian Empire, where Daniel and the Jews were held captive at the time of the prophecy. Babylon was approaching its end as a world empire, and God showed Daniel the great powers that would follow it on the regional stage.

The Babylonian Empire expanded at the expense of smaller neighboring kingdoms. As it conquered, it exemplified a fierce lion, its wings symbolizing the empire’s ability to ascend above other regional powers. In Daniel’s dream, the lion’s wings were plucked, representing a halt to its growth.

As the formerly winged lion was pacified, it became more peaceable and humane, foreshadowed by the fact that it stood on its hind legs like a civilized man with a human heart. At this point in its history, Babylon would no longer rapidly overcome other kingdoms. The imagery of the next beast in Daniel’s dream predicted the fall of the Babylonian Empire thirteen years later.

The first beast of Daniel 7; the Neo-Babylonian Empire, 539 BC.

The Unbalanced Bear: The Achaemenid (Medo-Persian) Empire

Daniel 7:5

5 And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.

The fall of Babylon was also predicted by the earlier prophets Isaiah[2] and Jeremiah,[3] both of whom even mentioned the Medes by name as the empire’s conquerors. The Medes built a vast empire in the Middle East in the seventh century BC. They continued to expand their reach, ultimately defeating the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 609 BC. Although this victory made Media one of the leading powers of the ancient Near East, its empire was short-lived. The Persian king Cyrus the Great revolted against the Medes in 553 BC. In 550, Media was conquered when its king, Astyages, was captured by his soldiers and handed over to the Persian conquerors.[iv]

After the rebellion, the Medes were subjects of the Persians but remained well-respected within the new Achaemenid Empire. The Persians adopted many Median traditions and rituals, and their nobles were even assimilated into the Persian political class and military hierarchy.[v] For this reason, the Achaemenid Empire is sometimes referred to as the Medo-Persian Empire. Daniel’s unbalanced bear was higher on one side than the other—just as the Persians had more power than the Medes in their shared empire. The empire was Persian, but the Mede nobility retained significant influence.

The 552 or 551 BC date of Daniel’s dream, as recorded by the prophet, indicates his prophecy would have occurred in the middle of the war between Media and Persia, before the Achaemenid Empire existed. Babylon’s 539 BC defeat occurred thirteen years after Daniel’s prophecy predicted it. The three ribs in the mouth of the bear likely symbolized the three empires that would comprise the Achaemenid Empire: Persia, Media, and Babylon. At its height, the empire was the most expansive the world had seen.

The second beast of Daniel 7; the Achaemenid Empire, 479 BC.

The Leopard with Four Wings and Heads: The Greek Empire

Daniel 7:6

6 After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.

While the Persians still held the territory of Anatolia in modern Turkey, another kingdom began to rise. After the assassination of King Philip II of Macedon at Aegae in 336 BC, the king was succeeded by his twenty-year-old son, Alexander. The Greek states of Thessaly, Thebes, Athens, and Thrace—vassals subjugated to Macedonian rule—attempted to take advantage of the transfer of power and revolted. The young king mobilized his cavalry and marched south to subdue the uprising. After quelling the revolts in southern Greece, Alexander was named Hegemon, or Supreme Commander, of the unified Greek city-states.

With stability restored at home, Alexander could shift his focus to the Achaemenid Persians stationed across the Bosporus in the east.[vi] In 334 BC, Alexander crossed the strait and invaded Anatolia. Over the next four years, he rapidly conquered Syria, Egypt, Babylon, and Persia. By 330 BC, the entire Achaemenid Empire lay conquered at Alexander’s feet.[vii]

The third beast of Daniel 7; the Macedonian Empire, 323 BC.

Alexander the Great swept through much of the known world, running through kingdoms and empires with the speed of a leopard without losing a single battle. When he died at the age of thirty-two without an heir, his empire was divided among several successors, known today as the Diadochi. These men fought against each other for more than two decades during four wars historians call the Wars of the Diadochi. Only four Diadochi remained after the 301 BC Battle of Ipsus: Cassander, Ptolemy, Lysimachus, and Seleucus—the four heads and wings of Daniel’s leopard beast.

The divided Macedonian Empire after the Fourth War of the Diadochi, 301 BC.

The Dreadful, Terrible, and Exceedingly Strong Beast: The Roman Empire

After the leopard empire, Daniel describes a different kind of beast—one without any resemblance to a familiar wild animal. This fourth beast was described as “dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly.” Just as the legs and feet of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream were made of iron, this beast had iron teeth. Daniel watched as the fourth beast “devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it,” indicating an empire that would effortlessly conquer lesser kingdoms. It also had ten horns—a feature explained later in Daniel’s dream.

Daniel 7:7

7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.

In around 509 BC, the Roman Kingdom was replaced by a republic. Not long after the division of Alexander’s Macedonian Empire, the Roman army conquered—or devoured—much of the known world. Rome’s republican system survived for nearly five centuries until Julius Caesar’s assassination and the subsequent civil war between rivals Octavian and Mark Antony. When Octavian defeated Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, he became the de facto leader of the Roman Republic.

On January 16, 27 BC, Octavian was given the religious title “Augustus,” meaning “illustrious one,” and the civil title “Princeps,” meaning “increased one” or “venerated one.”[viii] Princeps had historically been given to the head of the Roman Senate. When the Senate bestowed this title upon Octavian, he became the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus.[ix]

Augustus also gave himself the title “Imperator Caesar divi filius,” which translates to “Commander Caesar, son of the deified one”—a reference to the fact that he was Julius Caesar’s adopted son. The word “Imperator” is the source for the English words “emperor” and “empire,” making 27 BC the official beginning of the Roman Empire.[x] From this starting date, we can determine that Daniel envisioned an empire 525 years before its founding.

The fourth beast of Daniel 7; the Roman Empire, 117 AD.

The Ten Horns of the Roman Beast

In Daniel’s dream, the Roman beast was seen with ten horns. Daniel 7:24 unambiguously states that the ten horns represent ten kingdoms that will arise out of Rome following the collapse of its empire.

Daniel 7:24

24 And the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings.

By now, you may be wondering what these four ancient empires have to do with the end times. While describing the Roman beast in chapter seven, Daniel 7 goes one step further, providing valuable insight into the identity of the Antichrist that Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in chapter two did not.

Although Daniel initially saw ten horns on the Roman beast, an eleventh horn was revealed in verse eight. This horn was “diverse” from the others, representing a different type of power than the first ten kings. The eleventh horn represents not a political leader but a religious one—the Antichrist.

Daniel 7:8

8 I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.

In verses eight and twenty, we learn that three kingdoms would collapse before the Antichrist assumes his full power. Daniel wrote that these three horns were “plucked up by the roots” before he saw the eleventh horn rise.

Daniel 7:20-21

20 And of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows.

21 I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them;

Later in his dream, Daniel watched as the Antichrist horn “spake very great things” and “made war with the saints, and prevailed against them.” This imagery aligns with descriptions of the Antichrist found elsewhere in the Bible. From these two verses, we know the Antichrist—while speaking grandiloquently and emulating a Christian—would persecute the followers of Jesus Christ.

The Ten Kingdoms

To date, the most extensive eschatological study on the Biblical end times is Edward Bishop Elliott’s masterwork, Horae Apocalypticae, first published in 1837. Elliott concluded there were two possible periods to identify the ten kingdoms. The first was in 486 AD, as he noted it took about a decade after the chaotic fall of Rome before these ten kingdoms achieved stability. Those kingdoms were the Alemanni, Anglo-Saxons, Baiuvarii, Burgundians, Franks, Heruli, Ostrogoths, Suevi, Vandals, and Visigoths.[xi]

Of these kingdoms, the first three to fall were the Alemanni, the Heruli, and the Burgundians. The Alemanni lost their kingdom sometime around the year 496.[xii] Next, the last known king of the Heruli, Rodulf, was most likely defeated by the Lombards in 508.[xiii] The Burgundians were third, falling to the Franks in 532 at the Battle of Autun. Burgundy’s lands were incorporated into the kingdom of their Frankish conquerors two years later.[xiv] With the collapse of the Burgundians’ kingdom, three horns had been “plucked up.”

The year 532 is the earliest point that a candidate for the Antichrist could come to power. Daniel specifically said that exactly three kingdoms would fall before the Antichrist’s arrival, so the date the fourth kingdom collapsed is equally as important as the date the third was conquered. Identifying the fourth kingdom to collapse will give us the latest possible date the Antichrist could have come to power, just as the third kingdom gave us the earliest date. The Vandal Kingdom became the fourth to lose its sovereignty when it was defeated by the famed Byzantine general Belisarius in March of 534.[xv] This means that candidates for the role of the Antichrist must have appeared in the two years between 532 and 534.

The dates of the collapses of the Burgundian and Vandal kingdoms are essential clues to determine the identity of the Antichrist. The ending dates of the first three kingdoms indicate that the Antichrist will not be a future world figure. While the collapse of the Western Roman Empire was a future event when Revelation was written, all ten kingdoms that arose from Rome’s empire have been lost to history. If a future Antichrist were to emerge, his appearance would be centuries after the respective collapses of the third and fourth kingdoms.

Elliott’s second option for the ten horns was decades later, in 533. The Anglo-Saxons, Visigoths, Suevi, Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Baiuvarii remained from the 486 list, but the Franks had split into three kingdoms—the Franks of Central France, the Burgundian-Franks, and the Alemanni-Franks—and the Lombards were added to the list.[xvi] Elliott believed that these kingdoms were those meant by Daniel’s prophecy. However, this is likely incorrect, as the Lombards did not ascend immediately after the fall of Rome and did not become a kingdom until 568 AD. In fact, the Alemanni, Heruli, Burgundians, Vandals, Ostrogoths, and Baiuvarii from the 486 AD list had all lost kingdom status before the founding of the Lombard Kingdom. Their delayed arrival on the European scene makes it unlikely that the Lombards would have been one of the ten kingdoms of Daniel 7.

486 AD borders of the ten kingdoms that arose from the collapsed Western Roman Empire.

Daniel 7:25

25 And he shall speak great words against the most High, and shall wear out the saints of the most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.

Later in Daniel 7, an angel explains the prophet’s dream to him. Within this interpretation, we receive additional insight into the Antichrist when the angel predicts he will speak blasphemously against God and persecute his followers. The phrase “a time and times and the dividing of time” in verse twenty-five refers to the length of the severe persecution of Christians known as the Great Tribulation. Bible scholars almost universally accept it to mean “a year, two years, and a half year”—or three and a half prophetic years. In the next chapter, we will define the difference between prophetic and calendar years.

Summary

The Four Empires and God’s Kingdom

Both Nebuchadnezzar’s nightmare in Daniel 2 and Daniel’s own dream in Daniel 7 were prophecies describing four major ancient empires—the Neo-Babylonians, Medo-Persians (Achaemenids), Greeks, and Romans
In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, a stone is cut “without hands,” representing God’s kingdom
- The stone strikes the statue on the feet—the Roman segment
- This predicted that Jesus would arrive during the Roman Empire
- Daniel prophesied that God’s kingdom would be established during the time of these empires and would destroy earthly kingdoms
- The stone becomes a “great mountain” that covers the whole earth, representing the spread of Christianity
In Daniel’s dream, the Roman Empire beast has ten horns representing the ten kingdoms that would arise from the empire’s collapse

The Antichrist

The eleventh horn on the head of the fourth beast in Daniel 7 represents the Antichrist, who will come from Rome
The Antichrist could only come to power after the defeat of exactly three of the ten kingdoms that arose from the fallen Roman Empire
- The third kingdom to fall was the Burgundians, who were conquered in 532 AD
- The fourth kingdom to be conquered was the Vandals, who were defeated in March of 534 AD
- Candidates for the role of the Antichrist must have appeared in the two years between 532 and 534 AD
- If the Antichrist were to come at a future date, he would appear long after the defeats of all ten kingdoms
Daniel 7 tells us the Antichrist will also speak great words against God, wear out the saints, and change the times and laws
The saints shall be given into the Antichrist’s hand for “a time and times and the dividing of time”—three and a half prophetic years

[1] Revelation 17:15 And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

[2] Isaiah 13:17 Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.

[3] Jeremiah 51:11 Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of his temple.

[i] Beaulieu, Paul-Alain. 1989. “The Sojourn in Arabia.” In The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556-539 B.C., 165. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.

[ii] Albertz, Rainer. 2003. Israel in Exile: The History and Literature of the Sixth Century B.C.E. 69-70. Society of Biblical Literature.

[iii] Beaulieu, Paul-Alain. 1989. “The Sojourn in Arabia.” In The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon 556-539 B.C., 168-169. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.

[iv] Briant, Pierre. 2002. From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire, 31. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

[v] Herodotus. 1920. Herodotus I: Books I-II, translated by A.D. Godley, 125-171. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press and William Heinemann Ltd.

[vi] Bose, Partha. 2003. Alexander the Great’s Art of Strategy, 93-96. New York: Gotham Books.

[vii] Wilcken, Ulrich. 1967. Alexander the Great, 146. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

[viii] Eck, Werner, and Sarolta A. Takács. 2003. The Age of Augustus, translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider, 50. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

[ix] Dio, Cassius. 1917. “54.12.1-5.” In Roman History, Vol. VI, by Cassius Dio, 313-315. London and New York: William Heinemann and G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

[x] Syme, Ronald. 1958. “Imperator Caesar: A Study in Nomenclature.” In Historia, Vol. 7, No. 2 175-188.

[xi] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Beast’s Ten Horns.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. III, 135. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halladay.

[xii] Gregory of Tours. 1916. “The Second Book.” History of the Franks, translated by Ernest Brehaut, 39-41. New York: Columbia University Press.

[xiii] Sarantis, Alexander. 2010. “The Justinianic Herules: from Allied Barbarians to Roman Provincials.” In Neglected Barbarians, edited by Florin Curta, 361-402. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

[xiv] Bernard, François, T.N. Bisson, Jeremy David Popkin, John E. Flower, Jean F.P. Blondel, Gabriel Fournier, John Frederick Drinkwater, et al. 2024. France. March 9. Accessed March 10, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/place/France/The-sons-of-Clovis#ref464446.

[xv] The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2023. “Vandal.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. January 23. Accessed March 2, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vandal-Germanic-people.

[xvi] Elliott, Edward Bishop. 1862. “The Beast’s Ten Horns.” In Horae Apocalypticae, Vol. III, 120. London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halladay.

Four Diadochi Empires After the Battle of Ipsus