Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. This is said by Bevan to be the most difficult verse in this whole book.
There is a difference here between the Q'ri and the K'thib. The latter reads הרים, the hiphil of רום, while the former reads הרם, the hophal of the same verb At first sight the difficulty is not lessened by consideration of the versions.
The Septuagint as it at present stands is utterly unintelligible, "Until the leader of the host shall save the captivity, and by him everlasting mountains were broken down, and their place and sacrifice taken away, and he placed it in the very ground, and he prospered [reading with Syriac] and was, and the holy place shall be laid waste."
This confusion is due to confluence of readings, and is not difficult to disentangle with the help of the Massoretic text. Up to the last two words the Septuagint is a translation of a text differing from the Massoretic simply by intelligible variations and repetitions not uncommon in the Septuagint.
The first clause of the LXX. originally was probably, "Till the prince shall deliver the captivity," reading שְׁבִי (shebee) instead of צַבָא (tzaba)—a scribe, finding צבא in his Hebrew, then added the translation of it to the margin of his Greek copy, from which it got into the text.
The original of the LXX. had also יַחִּיּל (yatztzeel) instead of הִגְדִיל ‛hig'deel)—a confusion easily made in the elder script, in which יand הwere like. We learn from the Talmud that גwas liable to be mistaken by scribes for .
צ Moreover, "captivity" would naturally suggest נצל, "to deliver." The second clause is, "By him the everlasting mountains were broken down." Here hayreem has been read with the K'thib, and vocalized as if it were hareem, and tameed, "continual," translated as equivalent to עולם (‛olam), "everlasting."
The next clause reveals the other meaning of tameed, "sacrifice," which probably had been written on the margin, and then dropped into the text. The latter part of the Septuagint verse appears to be confused with the latter part of the following verse according to the Massoretes.
Theodotion is even less intelligible than the Septuagint, "Until the leader of the host shall save the captivity, and through him the sacrifice was broken down, and he prospered, and the holy place shall be made desolate."
It is to be noticed that the first clause here agrees with the LXX. It is possible that "and he prospered" is a doublet, הִצְלִיַח being read for חֻשְׁלַד in some copy. The Peshitta differs from beth the Greek versions, "Until it arrive to the chiefs of the host, and by it was set up in perpetuity, and preparing he strengthened the sanctuary," and while it is difficult to understand the origin of the variation in the first clause, it is clear that in the second clause the translator must have read hishleem for hooshlak.
The one thing that seems clear is that the reading of the K'thib is to be preferred. We should read hayreem, not hooram. Only the first of these could be read "mountains." If we translate the words as they stand, we shall certainly be removed out of the region of all the commentators.
It is assumed that "the little horn" is the subject of this sentence; but "horn" is feminine in Hebrew, and the verbs here are in the masculine; this is against it being the nominative. The "prince of the host," then, must be the nominative of the verbs and subject of the sentence.
The rendering of the first clause ought to be, then, "Until the prince of the host magnify himself (1 Samuel 12:24), and by himself he shall offer the daily sacrifice. And he shall cast down the foundation of his holy place," reading hishlayk instead of hooshlak.
We should feel strongly in. clined to transfer the first "and" to hayreem, and, changing the punctuation, read, "Until the prince of the host shall make himself greater than he"—viz, the tyrant represented by "the little horn"—"and shall offer the daily sacrifice."
If we might read hishleem with the Peshitta instead of hooshlak, we get a satisfactory meaning to the last clause, in which case we should render, "He shall complete the place of his sanctuary." We would understand by "complete," "to perfectly purify."
Taking the Massoretic text thus with little modification, we have a description of the successes of Judas Maccabseus, who was prince of the host, and as such became stronger than Epiphanes, and then cleansed the temple, and offered the continual daily sacrifice.
We give, as a curiosity, the note of Saadiah Gaon: "The King of Ishmael was more powerful than the kings of Rome who had Jerusalem, and he took Jerusalem from them by force."