Once Antiochus is king, he does everything he can to make his power even greater. He greatly enlarges the army. He sets up a network of spies in his kingdom. They are everywhere and they inform him of what people are saying and doing. This allows Antiochus to kill his opponents even before they revolt. That is the way he breaks the opposition. The same thing happens to the prince of the covenant.
How does this happen and who is this person?
The words prince of the covenant
indicate that we should be thinking of the people of Israel here—the people of the covenant. The most important person among God’s people at that time is the high priest. Antiochus dismisses the high priest Onias and he sells the high priesthood to Onias’s brother, Jason. The latter pays 630 talents of silver for it. The new high priest Jason promises Antiochus to build a Greek gymnasium in Jerusalem. Its goal is to teach a new lifestyle to the youth of the covenant.
22 Armies shall be utterly swept away before him and broken, even the prince of the covenant.