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. The LXX. rendering is shorter, "And after these things I saw another beast, like a leopard, and four wings stretched over it (ἐπέτεινον), and there were four heads to the beast."
The grammar of this is difficult to understand. As it stands, it must be translated as above; if, however, we might read ἐπὶτεινον, we should avoid the solecism of uniting a neuter plural to a plural verb, rendering, "and it stretched," etc.
Paulus Tellensis renders as above, and adds a clause, "and a tongue was given to it"—a reading to all appearance due to the transposal of לand שׁ. It is difficult, on the present text, to explain how the LXX.
rendered "wings of a fowl," "stretched over it." If, however, the original word were that used in the Peshitta, see word (parehatha), it is explicable that this should have been read פְרַשׁוּ. Theodotion and the Peshitta do not differ from the Massoretic text.
The majority of critical commentators maintain this to be the Persian Empire. A leopard is a less animal than a bear, and therefore, according to the argument these critics used with regard to the second empire, it ought to mean that it symbolized a still smaller empire.
That, however, is impossible. No Jew of the age of the Maccabees could have been under that impression. Moreover, we have the four wings declared to mean that the Persian power extended to all quarters of the world, and attention is directed to the fact that the statement is made concerning it, "dominion was given to it."
This assumes, what would be admitted by everybody to be contrary to fact, had the critics not a further conclusion in view. The traditional interpretation is that the Hellenic Empire—that of Alexander the Great and his successors—is intended here.
In defence of this we have the fact that four, as we have just said, is the numerical sign of the Greek power. In the following chapter we have the goat, with its one notable horn, which, on being broken off, is replaced by four.
In the eleventh chapter we are told that Alexander's empire is to be divided to the four winds of heaven. But "wings" are not prophetically so much the symbol of extensive dominion, as of rapidity of movement.
If Nebuchadnezzar (Ezekiel 17:3) is a great eagle with long wings, it is because of the rapidity of his conquests. Jeremiah says of his horses, they are "swifter than eagles." Again in Lamentations, "Our persecutors are swifter than eagles."
Wings, then, symbolize swiftness of motion. If we turn to the next chapter, the swiftness of Alexander's conquests is the point that most impresses the seer. Swiftness, compared either with the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar or of Alexander, was not the characteristic of the Persian conquests.
Cyrus, in the course of thirty years, had subdued Asia Minor, probably Armenia; had relieved Media, Elam, and Persia from the alien yoke of the Manda; and had conquered Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar, after the battle of Carehemish, had advanced to the river of Egypt.
We do not know the extent and direction of his many campaigns, but rapidity of movement characterized some of them we do know, and Alexander's conquests were made with extreme rapidity. Altogether the figure seems much more suitable for the empire of Alexander than for that of the Persians.