What time period does the vision in Daniel 8 cover?
The vision in Daniel 8 covers the immediate history, not the long-term future. It was given in the third year of King Belshazzar and concerns events that would unfold in the near term, particularly involving the Medean Persian empire, as the vision was seen in Shushan, the Medean Persian capital.
Les explains that the vision in Daniel 8 was intended to show the unfolding of the rather immediate history, not the long-term yet. Daniel received this vision in the third year of King Belshazzar while he was in Shushan, the capital of the Medean Persian empire on the Tigris River. This vision fits Daniel's broader prophetic focus on Gentile world events, and like Ezekiel and Revelation—the other books written outside Israel—it uses symbolism. So the time period covered is the near-term historical outworking, not the distant future.