What are the four beasts of Daniel 7?

Question 10161.

The four beasts of Daniel 7 come out of a churning sea in a night vision, and they cover the same ground as the metal image of Daniel 2 from an entirely different angle. Where Nebuchadnezzar saw a magnificent statue, Daniel saw predators.

That difference in perspective is the first thing to notice. A pagan king dreamed of human empire as gold and silver. A prophet of God saw the same empires as beasts tearing at the world, and heaven’s assessment is the accurate one.

The Vision and Its Interpretation

Daniel sees four great beasts come up out of the sea, different from one another, and an angelic interpreter tells him what they are: “These four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth” (Daniel 7:17). Kings here stands for kingdoms, as verse 23 makes clear when it speaks of a fourth kingdom on earth.

The sea in prophetic imagery usually stands for the restless mass of the Gentile nations, and the Aramaic word for the creatures, chevah, simply means a living beast. Out of the turmoil of the nations these powers rise, and none of them is domesticated.

The Lion, the Bear and the Leopard

The first is like a lion with eagle’s wings, whose wings are plucked off and which is made to stand on two feet like a man, with the mind of a man given to it. Babylon fits exactly. Winged lions guarded the gates of the city, and Nebuchadnezzar’s humbling in Daniel 4, when he lost his reason and was restored, is written into the imagery.

The second is like a bear raised up on one side with three ribs in its mouth, told to arise and devour much flesh. Medo-Persia was the lopsided partnership Daniel 8 describes as a ram with one horn higher than the other, and the three ribs correspond neatly to its three great conquests of Lydia, Babylon and Egypt. Persia fought by weight of numbers rather than speed, which is bear-like warfare.

The third is a leopard with four wings and four heads. Alexander’s Greece moved with a speed the ancient world had never seen, and on his death the empire divided among four of his generals. Among the four beasts this one is the most obviously identified by history, and it happened three centuries after Daniel wrote.

The Fourth Beast

The fourth is given no animal name at all, which is itself significant. It is terrifying, dreadful and exceedingly strong, with great iron teeth, devouring and breaking in pieces and stamping what is left with its feet. It is different from all the beasts before it, and it has ten horns.

Iron teeth tie it to the iron legs of the image, so this is Rome. But Daniel’s interest lies almost entirely in the horns, and specifically in a little horn that comes up among them, uproots three, and has eyes like the eyes of a man and a mouth speaking great things.

That little horn makes war on the saints and prevails against them, speaks words against the Most High, and thinks to change the times and the law. The saints are given into his hand for a time, times and half a time, which is three and a half years and matches the second half of the tribulation. This is the man Paul calls the man of lawlessness and John calls the beast. See who is the Antichrist? and the man of lawlessness.

Why the Four Beasts Matter More Than the Statue

Daniel 2 gives the outline. Daniel 7 gives the moral character and the endgame. The four beasts show us what these empires look like to heaven, and then the scene shifts abruptly to a courtroom.

Thrones are placed, the Ancient of Days takes His seat, His clothing white as snow, a river of fire flowing out before Him, thousands upon thousands attending Him. The court sits in judgement and the books are opened. The boastful horn is silenced and the beast is destroyed.

Then comes one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven, presented before the Ancient of Days and given dominion and glory and a kingdom that shall not pass away. Jesus used that title of Himself more than any other, and at His trial He quoted this very passage to the high priest, which is why they tore their robes. My article on the Second Coming follows that thread.

The Saints Receive the Kingdom

Three times the chapter says that the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess it forever. After all that devouring and stamping, the beasts do not get the last word. The people they trampled do.

In its immediate setting this refers to faithful Israel delivered at the end of the tribulation, and it is bound up with the covenant promises God made to Abraham and David. Believers of this age share in that reign as those who return with the King. Either way, the direction is the same: the beasts fall and the saints reign.

Beasts and Metals: One Sequence, Two Views

The relationship between the four beasts and the image of Daniel 2 deserves a paragraph of its own, because it shapes how the whole book is read.

Chapter 2 came to Nebuchadnezzar in the second year of his reign. Chapter 7 came to Daniel roughly fifty years later, in the first year of Belshazzar. The empires are the same and the pictures could hardly be more different. Gold, silver, bronze and iron on one hand; a lion, a bear, a leopard and a nameless horror on the other.

I take the difference as deliberate. God shows a Gentile king what human empire looks like to human eyes and shows His prophet what it looks like from above. The four beasts are the truer picture, and the fact that both visions end with an everlasting kingdom given by God is the point on which they agree completely. See the Daniel 2 statue and the world empires.

The Alternative Readings

Two other interpretations circulate widely and both deserve an answer.

The critical view splits Media from Persia, making the four beasts Babylon, Media, Persia and Greece, and finds the little horn in Antiochus Epiphanes. That requires Daniel to be written after the events, around 165 BC. It also contradicts the book itself, which repeatedly treats the Medes and Persians as one law and one realm, and which describes the two-horned ram of chapter 8 as the kings of Media and Persia together.

The historicist view makes the little horn the papacy and spreads the vision across church history. I understand its appeal to the Reformers, who were reading Daniel under real persecution, and I do not think it survives the details. The little horn’s career lasts three and a half years, ends with a heavenly courtroom, and is followed immediately by the saints receiving the kingdom. That is a compressed sequence, not a millennium of institutional drift.

Reading the four beasts as four successive empires with the last one revived at the end keeps every detail in play without straining any of them. You can read the chapter for yourself at the NET Bible and weigh the notes.

Whichever way a reader leans, the four beasts of Daniel 7 were never given to satisfy curiosity about geopolitics. They were given to a man in exile whose nation had been swallowed, to tell him who would still be on the throne when the last empire fell.

What Daniel Was Given and Not Given

It is worth noticing what the four beasts vision withholds as well as what it supplies.

Daniel is given the sequence, the character of each power, the ten horns and the little horn among them, the courtroom, and the outcome. He is not given names, dates, or a way of calculating when any of it happens. When he asks for more, he is told to go his way, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end.

That combination of clarity and reticence is characteristic of biblical prophecy, and it is deliberate. Enough is revealed to make us confident. Not enough is revealed to make us speculative, though we manage it anyway.

So, now what?

Daniel’s own reaction is instructive and rather comforting. He says his spirit within him was anxious and the visions alarmed him, that his colour changed, and that he kept the matter in his heart. A godly man found prophecy disturbing, and Scripture records it without embarrassment.

So if the four beasts unsettle you, you are in respectable company. But look where the chapter puts its weight. Far more space is given to the courtroom and the Son of Man than to the horns. The beasts are loud and they are temporary. The thrones are quiet and they are permanent.

Whatever is roaring in your part of the world this week, it has already been given a time limit by a court that has already sat. Does that change how you read the headlines?

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.

Daniel 7:14 (ESV)