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 an invention he might animate his contemporaries to stedfast perseverance in war against the ruthless tyrant Antiochus? This total difference between the facts recorded in this chapter and the circumstances of the Maccabean times described in 1 Macc. 2:42-48, as Kranichfeld has fully shown, precludes any one, as he has correctly observed, “from speaking of a tendency delineated according to the original of the Maccabean times in the name of an exegesis favourable to historical investigation.” The efforts of a hostile criticism will never succeed on scientific grounds in changing the historical matters of fact recorded in this chapter into a fiction constructed with a tendency. =Chap. 4=

Verses 1-3
Dan 4:1-3 (Hebrew_Bible_3:31-33) These verses form the introduction to the manifesto, and consist of the expression of good wishes, and the announcement of its object. The mode of address here used, accompanied by an expression of a good wish, is the usual form also of the edicts promulgated by the Persian kings; cf. Ezr 4:17; Ezr 7:12. Regarding the designation of his subjects, cf. Dan 3:4. בּכל-ארעא, not “in all lands” (Häv.), but on the whole earth, for Nebuchadnezzar regarded himself as the lord of the whole earth. ותמהיּא אתיּא corresponds with the Hebr. וּמפתים אותת; cf. Deu 6:22; Deu 7:19. The experience of this miracle leads to the offering up of praise to God, Dan 4:33 (Daniel 4:3). The doxology of the second part of Dan 4:33 occurs again with little variation in Daniel 4:31