Topic 16 of 33 - Your Place in the Learning Journey
The Abomination of Desolation
The phrase "abomination of desolation" - or "abomination that causes desolation" - appears in Daniel 9:27, 11:31, and 12:11, and is taken up by Jesus in Matthew 24:15 and Mark 13:14. Its original reference is to the act of Antiochus IV Epiphanes in 167 BCE: the erection of an altar to Zeus (and possibly a statue of Zeus or Antiochus himself) on the altar of burnt offering in the Jerusalem Temple, and the offering of pig sacrifices upon it. This act was the specific trigger for the Maccabean revolt. Understanding its original meaning is the necessary starting point for understanding what Jesus meant when he used the phrase.
The Hebrew phrase underlying "abomination of desolation" is a deliberate play on words. The Seleucid name for the deity - Baal Shamem, meaning "Lord of Heaven" - is mocked by replacing it with shiqqutz shomem, "the abomination that makes desolate." It is a piece of polemical wordplay that expresses both contempt for the pagan deity and horror at the desecration of the sacred space. First Maccabees 1:54 describes the erection of "the abomination of desolation upon the altar" using the same terminology, confirming the connection.
When Jesus uses the phrase in Matthew 24:15 - "So when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation, spoken of through the prophet Daniel - let the reader understand - then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains" - he is applying Daniel's language to a future crisis. The interpretive question is which crisis he meant. Three main proposals have been advanced: the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 CE (the most widely held scholarly view), some event still in the future (the dispensationalist reading), or a combination in which Jesus's words addressed both the imminent destruction of Jerusalem and a further eschatological event. The parenthetical "let the reader understand" suggests that the original audience was expected to recognize the reference.
The phrase has continued to generate interpretation throughout Christian history. Paul's "man of lawlessness" who "sets himself up in God's temple" in 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 appears to draw on the same imagery. Revelation's beast who demands worship may also be in this tradition. The pattern established by Antiochus - a human ruler claiming divine prerogatives and demanding that religious practice be replaced by political loyalty - has recurred often enough in history that the phrase retains its power as a warning about the pretensions of earthly power against the sovereignty of God.