Daniel 7:1–8

The Vision of the Four Beasts

¹In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel saw a ^adream and visions in his head as he lay on his bed; then he ^bwrote the dream down and said the ¹following summary of the matter.

²Daniel answered and said, “I was ^alooking in my vision by night, and behold, the ^bfour winds of heaven were stirring up the great sea.

³“And four great ^abeasts were coming up from the sea, different from one another.

⁴“The first was ^alike a lion and had the wings of an eagle. I kept looking until its wings were plucked, and it was lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man; and a heart of a man was given to it.

⁵“And behold, another beast, a second one in the likeness of a bear. And it was raised up on one side, and three ribs were in its mouth between its teeth; and thus they said to it, ‘Arise, devour much meat!’

⁶“After this I kept looking, and behold, another one, ^alike a leopard, which had on its ¹back four wings of a bird; the beast also had ^bfour heads, and ²dominion was given to it.

⁷“After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a ^afourth beast, fearsome and terrifying and extraordinarily strong; and it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ^bten horns.

⁸“While I was contemplating the horns, behold, ^aanother horn, a little one, came up among them, and three of the first horns were pulled out by the roots before it; and behold, ¹this horn possessed eyes like the eyes of a man and ^ba mouth speaking great boasts.