The Stick and the Fire: Greece and the Maccabees

The stick that struck the dog is Alexander the Great of Macedon, the third king seen by Daniel in his prophetic vision. He killed Koresh and took the royal crown from him (Daniel 8). He is called a stick or staff because his rule stretched over almost the entire civilized world (Daniel 11), a powerful and upstanding ruler like a staff (Avoda Zara 41). The word chutra also stands for a sequence of events, as the first letters of each phrase in a Hebrew passage spell out its letters. Alexander exerted great effort during his life studying natural wisdom and philosophy from his teacher Aristotle, but all his efforts were in vain. His soldiers destroyed many cities, yet he died far from home, and a wicked king, Antiochus, reigned after him. The fire that burned the stick is Yehuda Maccabee, who killed the Macedonian Greeks and their king and destroyed their land, saving Bnei Yisroel from their dominion. The word nura, together with the word itself, equals in gematria “Yehuda Maccabee and his brothers the Kohanim.”