Daniel 11:36–39

In these four verses, Daniel's angelic messenger describes a king of consummate arrogance who exalts himself above every deity, speaks blasphemy against the God of gods, and substitutes the cult of raw military power for all traditional religion. Though the immediate historical referent is Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Catholic tradition reads this passage as a prophetic type of the eschatological Antichrist — the supreme embodiment of humanity's perennial temptation to place the creature above the Creator. The passage is a sober theological anatomy of apostasy: how the rejection of the true God produces not atheism but a counterfeit religion of self and power.

Verse 36 — "The king will do according to his will"

The oracle pivots here from the historical conflicts between the Ptolemies and Seleucids (vv. 1–35) into a description of a king who transcends all normal political and religious categories. The phrase "will do according to his will" (Hebrew: ya'aśeh kirṣônô) is a formula of absolute sovereignty used elsewhere in Daniel only of God Himself (4:35) — the appropriation of divine prerogative is itself the first act of blasphemy. He "exalts" and "magnifies" himself — both verbs are reflexive, meaning this king is his own author of glory, acknowledging no source of authority beyond himself.

"He will speak marvelous things against the God of gods" — the word translated "marvelous things" (niplā'ôt) normally describes the wondrous acts of God (cf. Ps 78:12). Here it is weaponized as boastful blasphemy. Antiochus IV took the title Epiphanes ("God Manifest"), minted coins bearing his own divine image, and desecrated the Jerusalem Temple in 167 BC — all textbook fulfillments. Yet the phrase "until the indignation is accomplished" is crucial: even this monstrous figure operates only within the permissive will of God. His outrages are bounded by a divine "until," a reminder that all tyranny has an expiration date appointed by Providence.

Verse 37 — "He won't regard the gods of his fathers, or the desire of women"

This verse catalogs three specific objects of rejection. First, "the gods of his fathers" — Antiochus would have been expected to honor the Seleucid pantheon, particularly Zeus Olympios, whom his dynasty favored. His self-divinization overrides even this loyalty. Second, "the desire of women" (ḥemdat nāšîm) is most plausibly a reference to the Syrian cult of Tammuz/Adonis — a dying-and-rising fertility deity for whom women traditionally wept (cf. Ezek 8:14). The king scorns even this popular piety. Some patristic interpreters (notably Jerome) read this phrase as a reference to celibacy or the contempt of natural affection — a reading that, while not the primary sense, contributed to later Christian typology of the Antichrist as one who distorts human love. Third, he will "not regard any god" — this is the logical terminus of the ascending self-exaltation begun in verse 36: the journey ends in a practical monotheism of the self.

Verse 38 — "The god of fortresses" (maʿuzzîm)

This is one of the most theologically dense phrases in the chapter. The Hebrew maʿuzzîm means "strongholds" or "places of strength." The king does not abandon religion — he displaces its object. Military power itself becomes numinous, a deity honored with gold, silver, precious stones, and costly gifts. This is not simply secularism; it is the sacralization of violence and coercive power. For Antiochus, this may reflect his promotion of the Roman practice of worshipping the genius of military strength — some scholars identify the "foreign god" of v. 39 with Jupiter Capitolinus or a Roman military deity he encountered during his years as a hostage in Rome. The theological irony is sharp: the man who claims to be above all gods still bows — to force.

Catholic tradition illuminates this passage on three levels simultaneously, holding them together with a precision that neither purely historical-critical nor purely allegorical readings achieve alone.

The Antichrist Tradition. St. Jerome, in his Commentariorum in Danielem, insisted against Porphyry (who claimed all of Daniel 11 referred only to Antiochus) that verses 36–45 contain a "leap" beyond Antiochus to the final Antichrist — noting that historical fulfillment under Antiochus is incomplete. The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms this typological structure, teaching that before Christ's Second Coming "the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers" and that a religious deception will offer "an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth" — described as "the supreme religious deception" (CCC 675). This is precisely the structure of Daniel 11:36–39: a counterfeit totality that mimics the absolute sovereignty belonging only to God.

The Theology of Idolatry. The passage illustrates the Catechism's teaching that idolatry "consists in divinizing what is not God" and that this "applies to power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state" (CCC 2113). The maʿuzzîm — the god of fortresses — is the patron deity of every totalitarian state. Pope St. John Paul II's Centesimus Annus (§45) warned against ideologies that absolutize the state or the nation, which is precisely what this unnamed king does institutionally.

The Inversion of Covenant. For the Fathers, this king's rejection of the "gods of his fathers" and "the desire of women" points to the Antichrist's contempt for natural law itself — the order of creation written into human hearts (Rom 2:15). St. Thomas Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 94, a. 1) identifies the "first precept" of natural law in the orientation of human desire toward God; this king's absolute self-magnification is a systematic inversion of that natural ordering. His violence against the Temple is thus simultaneously political, religious, and metaphysical.

Daniel 11:36–39 reads less like ancient history and more like a diagnostic tool for modern spiritual discernment. The "god of fortresses" is worshipped wherever raw power — military, financial, technological, or social — is treated as the ultimate value to which everything else, including conscience, must yield. A Catholic today can examine where this logic has colonized their own life: Does careerism or financial security function as a maʿuzzîm, an altar where moral compromises are quietly deposited?

More broadly, the passage challenges Catholics to resist what St. John Paul II called "the culture of death" — not merely in its obvious expressions, but in the subtler tendency to grant absolute authority to political leaders, institutions, or ideological movements that demand the loyalty due to God alone. The verse's insistence that the king's rampage lasts only "until the indignation is accomplished" is a profound antidote to despair: no earthly tyranny — personal, political, or spiritual — is ultimate. Providence has already written its expiration date.

The practical application is clear: name your maʿuzzîm. Identify the "foreign god" you have begun to honor with your most precious resources — time, money, anxiety, and devotion — and return those to the God of gods through concrete acts of repentance and reorientation in prayer.