¹And I, in the first year of Darius the Mede, I stood as a strengthener and as a stronghold for him.

²And now I will tell you what is sure: look, three more kings will arise in Persia, and the fourth will gain great wealth, more than anyone. And in keeping with his strength, through his wealth, he will rouse everyone against the kingdom of Greece.

³And a mighty king will arise and will rule a great dominion, and do as he pleases.

⁴And when he has arisen, his kingdom will be broken and divided toward the four winds of the skies, but not for what comes after him, nor like his dominion that he ruled; for his kingdom will be uprooted and go to others, besides these.

⁵The king of the south will grow strong, and one of his captains will grow strong over him and will rule; his dominion will be a great dominion.

⁶At the end of years they will make an alliance, and the daughter of the king of the south will come to the king of the north to make things level; but she will not keep the strength of the arm, nor will he stand, nor his arm. She will be given up, she and those who brought her, and the one who bore her, and the one who strengthened her, in the times.

⁷And from a shoot of her roots one will arise in his place; he will come against the army and enter the stronghold of the king of the north, and he will act against them and prevail.

⁸Even their gods, with their molten images, with their precious vessels of silver and gold, he will bring as captives into Egypt; and he will stand away from the king of the north for years.

⁹And he will come into the kingdom of the king of the south, and return to his own ground.

¹⁰His sons will engage in strife and will gather a multitude of great armies; and he will surely come, overflow and pass through; then he will return and engage in strife as far as his stronghold.

¹¹The king of the south will be embittered, go out, and fight against him, against the king of the north; he will raise up a great horde, but the horde will be given into his hand.

¹²The horde will be carried off, and his heart will be lifted high; he will bring down tens of thousands, but he will not prevail.

¹³And the king of the north will return and raise up a multitude greater than the first; and at the end of the times, after some years, he will surely come with a great army and great property.

¹⁴In those times, many will arise against the king of the south; and the sons of the violent ones of your people will lift themselves up to make the vision stand, but they will stumble.

¹⁵The king of the north will come and heap up a mound, and capture a city of fortifications; the forces of the south will not stand, nor the people of his choicest ones, for there will be no strength to stand.

¹⁶The one who comes against him will do as he pleases, and no one will stand before him; he will take his stand in the land of Beauty, with complete destruction in his hand.

¹⁷He will set his face to come with the power of his whole kingdom, and what is upright with him, and he will carry it out; he will give him the daughter of the women to ruin it, but she will not stand, and she will not be his.

¹⁸He will set his face toward the coastlands and will capture many; but a commander will put an end to his scorn toward him; not only that, he will turn back his scorn on him.

¹⁹Then he will turn his face toward the strongholds of his own land, but he will stumble and fall, and will not be found.

²⁰And in his place one will stand who sends an oppressor through the splendor of the kingdom; but in a few days he will be broken, not in anger and not in battle.

²¹And in his place there will stand a despised one, on whom they had not set the majesty of the kingdom; he will come in ease and take hold of the kingdom by smooth flatteries.

²²The forces of the flood will be washed away before him and broken, and also the leader of the covenant.

²³And from the time of joining with him, he will act with deceit; he will rise and become mighty with a small nation.

²⁴In quietness and in the fertile fields of the province he will come, and he will do what his fathers never did, nor the fathers of his fathers: he will scatter plunder, booty, and property among them; and against strongholds he will reckon his plans, but only until a time.

²⁵He will rouse his strength and his heart against the king of the south with an army large; and the king of the south will contend in battle with an army large and exceedingly mighty, but he will not stand; for they will reckon plans against him.

²⁶Those who eat his delicacies will break him; his army will overflow, and many slain will fall.

²⁷As for the two kings, their hearts are bent on harm, and at one table they will speak falsehood; but it will not succeed, for the end is yet to come at the appointed time.

²⁸And he will return his land with great property; and his heart will be against the sacred covenant; and he will act, and return to his land.

²⁹At the appointed time he will return and come into the south, but it will not be like the first time, or like the last.

³⁰Ships of Kittim will come against him, and he will be cowed and turn back. He will be enraged against the holy covenant and take action; then he will return and pay attention to those who forsake the holy covenant.

³¹Armed forces from him will take their stand; they will profane the sanctuary, the stronghold, and remove the regular offering, and they will set up the desolating detested thing.

³²Those who act wickedly against the covenant he will pollute with smooth flattery; but the people who know their God will be strong and take action.

³³Those who have insight among the people will give understanding to the many; yet they will stumble by sword and by flame, by captivity and by plunder, for days.

³⁴When they stumble, they will be helped with a little help; and many will join themselves to them with slippery flattery.

³⁵Some of those who act wisely will stumble, so as to refine them, to purify and to make them white, until the time of the end; for it is still for the appointed time.

³⁶The king will do according to his pleasure; he will raise himself high and make himself great above every god, and against the God of gods he will speak extraordinary things. He will succeed until the indignation is complete, for what has been decided will be done.

³⁷He will pay no attention to the God of his fathers, nor to the desire of women, nor will he pay attention to any god; for he will make himself great over all.

³⁸Instead, he will honor the god of strongholds in his place; and a god whom his fathers did not know he will honor with gold and silver, with precious stone and with desirable things.

³⁹He will deal with the fortresses of the strongholds together with a foreign god; whoever acknowledges him, he will increase weightiness, cause them to rule over many, and divide up the ground for a price.

⁴⁰At the time of the end the king of the south will thrust at him, and the king of the north will storm against him with chariotry, horsemen, and many ships; he will come into lands, overflow them, and pass through.

⁴¹He will come into the land of beauty, and many will stumble; but these will slip away from his hand: Edom and Moab and the chief of the sons of Ammon.

⁴²He will stretch out his hand against the lands, and the land of Egypt will have no escape.

⁴³He will rule over the hidden treasures of gold and silver and over all the desirable things of Egypt, with Libyans and Cushites in his steps.

⁴⁴But reports from the sunrise and from the north will terrify him, and he will go out in great rage to destroy many and devote them to destruction.

⁴⁵He will plant the tents of his palace between the seas and the mountain of holy beauty; then he will come to his end, and he will have no helper.