Antiochus IV

【[Daniel 8:9] “Out of one of them came forth a little horn, which grew exceedingly great toward the south, toward the east, and toward the glorious land.”

[Daniel 8:23-24] “And at the latter end of their kingdom, when the transgressors have reached their limit, a king of bold face, one who understands riddles, shall arise. His power shall be great, but not by his own power; and he shall cause fearful destruction and shall succeed in what he does and destroy mighty men and the people who are the saints.”

Antiochus IV, whose name means “God Manifest,” adopted the title Nikēphoros (“Bearer of Victory”) after defeating Egypt, believing himself to be the incarnation of a god. He served as regent for the Seleucid Empire, which was located north of Israel. Antiochus IV was originally the guardian of a young crown prince, but he murdered the prince and usurped the throne.

Antiochus was the first Seleucid king to use divine epithets on his coinage. This might have been an imitation of similar policies adopted by earlier Hellenistic monarchs of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, or perhaps he was encouraged by the ruler cult already established within the empire by his father, Antiochus III. Additionally, Antiochus also tried to project a common touch and actively engaged with the public: he appeared in public bathhouses and even attempted to serve as a newly created municipal official. These actions were unsettling and even quite bizarre to his subjects. Due to Antiochus’s occasional capricious behavior, some who detested him even changed his epithet Epiphanes to Epimanes (“the Madman”).

Two of the most famous events during Antiochus IV’s reign were: he almost conquered Egypt but was forced to withdraw due to the intervention of the Roman Republic; and he implemented a Hellenization policy against the Jewish people. He was determined to eradicate Judaism, defiling the Temple by sacrificing pigs on its altar and bringing many prostitutes into the Temple—truly committing every kind of wickedness. He also erected a statue of Zeus in the Temple in Jerusalem. This tyrannical act sparked the Maccabean Revolt. Antiochus IV is considered a prefigurement of the end-time Antichrist; he is a shadow of the Antichrist.