Daniel 11:31

_ _ arms — namely, of the human body; not weapons; human forces.

_ _ they — Antiochus’ hosts confederate with the apostate Israelites; these latter attain the climax of guilt, when they not only, as before, “forsake the covenant” (Daniel 11:30), but “do wickedly against” it (Daniel 11:32), turning complete heathens. Here Antiochus’ actings are described in language which reach beyond him the type to Antichrist the antitype [Jerome] (just as in Psalms 72:1-20 many things are said of Solomon the type, which are only applicable to Christ the Antitype); including perhaps Rome, Mohammed, and the final personal Antichrist. Sir Isaac Newton refers the rest of the chapter from this verse to the Romans, translating, “after him arms (that is, the Romans) shall stand up”; at the very time that Antiochus left Egypt, the Romans conquered Macedon, thus finishing the reign of Daniel’s third beast; so here the prophet naturally proceeds to the fourth beast. Jerome’s view is simpler; for the narrative seems to continue the history of Antiochus, though with features only in type applicable to him, fully to Antichrist.

_ _ sanctuary of strength — not only naturally a place of strength, whence it held out to the last against the besiegers, but chiefly the spiritual stronghold of the covenant-people (Psalms 48:1-3, Psalms 48:12-14). Apollonius “polluted” it with altars to idols and sacrifices of swine’s flesh, after having “taken away the daily sacrifice” (see on Daniel 8:11).

_ _ place ... abomination that maketh desolate — that is, that pollutes the temple (Daniel 8:12, Daniel 8:13). Or rather, “the abomination of the desolater,” Antiochus Epiphanes (1 Maccabees 1:29, 37-49). Compare Daniel 9:27, wherein the antitypical desolating abomination of Rome (the eagle standard, the bird of Jupiter, sacrificed to by Titus’ soldiers within the sacred precincts, at the destruction of Jerusalem), of Mohammed and of the final Antichrist, is foretold. 1 Maccabees 1:54, uses the very phrase, “the fifteenth day of the month Casleu, in the hundred forty-fifth year, they set up the abomination of desolation on the altar”; namely, an idol-altar and image of Jupiter Olympius, erected upon Jehovah’s altar of burnt offerings. “Abomination” is the common name for an idol in the Old Testament. The Roman emperor Adrian’s erection of a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus where the temple of God had stood, a.d. 132; also the erection of the Mohammedan mosque of Omar in the same place (it is striking, Mohammedanism began to prevail in a.d. 610, only about three years of the time when Popery assumed the temporal power); and the idolatry of the Church of Rome in the spiritual temple, and the final blasphemy of the personal Antichrist in the literal temple (2 Thessalonians 2:4) may all be antitypically referred to here under Antiochus the type, and the Old Testament Antichrist.