8:9 From one of them came a small horn. 1 But it grew to be very big, toward the south and the east and toward the beautiful land. 2 8:10 It grew so big it reached the army 3 of heaven, and it brought about the fall of some of the army and some of the stars 4 to the ground, where it trampled them.
1 sn This small horn is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who controlled the Seleucid kingdom from ca. 175-164
2 sn The expression the beautiful land (Heb. הַצֶּבִי [hatsÿvi] = “the beauty”) is a cryptic reference to the land of Israel. Cf. 11:16, 41, where it is preceded by the word אֶרֶץ (’erets, “land”).
3 tn Traditionally, “host.” The term refers to God’s heavenly angelic assembly, which he sometimes leads into battle as an army.
4 sn In prescientific Israelite thinking the stars were associated with the angelic members of God’s heavenly assembly. See Judg 5:20; Job 38:7; Isa 40:26. In west Semitic mythology the stars were members of the high god’s divine assembly (see Isa 14:13).