You're prolly at the mattress ball, so I'll leave this for you tomorrow. Written by a Jewish convert scholar with a degree in Ancient Northwest Semitic languages, so he should know what he's talking about - Clifford Goldstein, MBA:
"Much ado is made regarding the origin of the little horn. The texts in questions are as follows: “Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven. And out of one of them came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land” (Daniel 8: 8, 9). The question arises, when it says that “out of one of them” came forth a little horn, what did the “them” refer to—one of the “four notable ones,” the four generals who divided Alexander’s empire (out of which Antiochus came), or was it from one of “the four winds of heaven,” that is, simply, one of the compass points of the map? The evidence points strongly in favor of the latter, that is, the little horn came of out the “four winds of heaven,” which is the immediate antecedent of the phrase, “and out of one of them.” The original Hebrews reads, “and from the one, from them,” the “them” being the plural nouns closest to the phrase itself, which are “the four winds of heaven” (in Hebrew “heaven” is a plural noun). Much grammatical, syntactical, and contextual evidence points to “the winds of heaven,” not the four “notable ones,” as the origin point of the little horn power."
