Daniel 7:1

Daniel 7:1 says, In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.  We are now backing up in time to the first year of Belshazzar's reign.  We are also being told of some of Daniel's dreams and visions.  These are prophetic visions, and as Matthew Henry says they are hard to interpret.  They do point to suffering for God's people and not for the prosperity that many Jews expected to come in this world.  God's kingdom is spiritual and not physical.  The first eight verses speak of the four beasts that Daniel saw in his dreams.  Verse two adds, Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea.  Daniel first speaks of the four winds of heaven.  Matthew Henry said these represented kingdoms or those rulers within a kingdom always being at war with each other.  Verse three continues, And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.  After the four winds, Daniel saw four great beasts rising out of the sea.  These beasts were different from one another.  Verse four states, The first was like a lion, and had eagle’s wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it.  Matthew Henry says this first beast represented the Chaldeans, who had a heart like a lion and wings like an eagle for a time.  Then, they had their wings plucked and their heart was a man's heart.  Their power went away.  Kingdoms on earth can be powerful for a time, then just lose their power.  Verse five adds, And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh.  Matthew Henry says this beast represented the Persian monarchy, which was like a bear and the ribs in its mouth represented kingdoms that were devoured.  This kingdom was not quite as glorious as the Chaldean kingdom but was more brutal.  Verse six continues, After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard,which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it.  According to Matthew Henry, this beast represented the Grecian empire, which under Alexander the Great was even larger and more powerful than the empire of Nebuchadnezzar.  Upon the death of Alexander the Great, the kingdom was divided between four rulers.  Verse seven says, After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.   This is unnamed beast is considered by some to represent the Roman empire, which did rule most of the known world and was at times very brutal.  Verse eight adds, I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of man, and a mouth speaking great things.  This little horn in this case would be the Turkish empire, which defeated three of the kingdoms within the Roman empire.  Others consider this fourth kingdom to be Syrian, and the horns its ten rulers, with the little horn representing Antiochus Epiphanes, who by whatever means claimed the power of three of the other ten.  This is all according to Matthew Henry.