Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me; for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. The versions do not call for much remark.
The LXX. renders "glory" by "spirit" or "breath;" and the Peshitta renders it by "body." The Massoretic is superior, as more difficult and more likely to be the source of the other two than either of them.
Theodotion's rendering, δόξα, confirms this. Daniel explains how he alone had seen the vision, and narrates the effects contact with the spiritual had on him, "There remained no strength in me;… And I retained no strength"—a redoubled statement of weakness not necessarily meaning, as Jephet-ibn-Ali would have it, that the one refers to his inability to flee like his attendants, and the other to his inability to stand upright.
It is probably due merely to the great impression this sudden powerlessness made on him. For my comeliness was turned in me into corruption. From the natural brightness of the skin in life the face assumed the yellow pallor of death (comp.
Daniel 7:28). "And my countenance was changed in me;" comp. also Habakkuk 3:16, "When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones." While the ideas here are the same, the parallelism is made more striking by the difference of the terms.