“The abomination of desolation”
His forces will rise up and desecrate the temple fortress. They will abolish the daily sacrifice and set up the abomination of desolation. (Daniel 11:31 BSB)
What it sounds like today
A dramatic but essentially meaningless apocalyptic phrase.
The cultural key
The phrase names a specific horror: the defiling of the Jerusalem temple with something so pagan and unclean that it renders the sanctuary 'desolate', abandoned by God and unusable for worship. Its first historical fulfillment came in 167 BC, when the Greek king Antiochus IV Epiphanes outlawed Jewish worship, halted the daily sacrifice, set up an altar (or statue) of the god Zeus in the temple, and sacrificed a pig on it, the ultimate defilement, which sparked the Maccabean revolt. 'Abomination' is the biblical word for a detestable idolatrous thing; 'desolation' is what such sacrilege leaves behind. The phrase was so seared into Jewish memory that Jesus reached for it to warn of another coming desecration of the temple ('when you see the abomination of desolation standing where it ought not to be'). A modern reader hears an ominous but empty phrase; the first hearers heard the memory of a pig on God's altar.
Recovered meaning
The 'abomination of desolation' is a pagan desecration that leaves the temple defiled and unusable, first realized when Antiochus IV set up an altar to Zeus and sacrificed a pig in the temple. Jesus later reuses the phrase for a coming desecration.