Belshazzar the king made a great feast. Daniel 5:1 Belshazzar B. Kent. This feast is, like how many other events, rescued from oblivion by the interposition of a Divine hand. The presence of God in history is its salt, and keeps it from perishing. When does credible history begin, but with the exodus of Israel from Egypt? What kind of interest attaches to European history, apart from the work of God in the church? Let English history be read, minus the Reformation and Puritan element, and it would be very meagre and watery. What rescues human life from insignificance? The presence of God What gives to the work of every day a serious interest? The presence of God. Whereever we see the finger of God, we are arrested. We may see it in the page of history, in the life of a family, in the quiet prosperity of a church. This poor, luxurious, profane king, who comes up, drinks, trembles for an hour before us in the blaze of splendour, and then passes away swiftly into chaos and old night — this reveller would never have been heard of, but for "the fingers of a man's hand that wrote ever against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of his palace." There is nothing interesting in this man. He does nothing, says nothing, is nothing; nothing but a dark ground on which fiery letters are written, the more luminous because the ground is black. We take a kind of interest in Nebuchadnezzar, with his proud, stormy greatness; with his gigantic plans and terrible visions. We read of his insanity with concern approaching to horror. If Belshazzar excites any feeling in our minds it is utter astonishment at his folly. Was this a time to give a great feast to the thousand of his lords? Cyrus, with his mighty army, lay outside his city — Cyrus, who had already defeated him in a pitched battle — Cyrus, the greatest soldier in the world. What had the gods of gold and silver done for Nebuchadnezzar? How had they avenged the slight put upon the golden image which he had set up? What had they done for the poor insane king? How had they helped Belshazzar lately, when Cyrus beat him and shut him up in Babylon, a prisoner in his own capital? They slighted the great and awful past, with its stern lessons; and they have always had a hard and dreadful future, who made early work of the past. If men will not take the trouble to read the warnings of yesterday, to-morrow's fingers will write a word on their walls which will scare their eyeballs, and make their knees shake! Oh, take kindly to the warnings of all history, but of your own in particular, for it is as grave and important to you as over Belshazzar's ought to have been to him. But when they made light of the God of Israel over their cups, they made light of those "portions and parcels of the dreadful past," which they must have known and remembered. "Thou, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this." "They lifted up themselves against the Lord of heaven," though they had seen His marvellous works wrought before them. The fiery furnace, the four men in the fire, the dream, the madness, the recovery, the proclamation; they knew it all; they slighted it all; and at this time, too, with the foe at their gate, and such a foe! The Chaldeans are called in, as of old, and, as usual, are at fault. Then the queen mother, Nitocris, the wife of Nebuchadnezzar, "came into the banquet-house." Profane history speaks well of this lady. She was a wise and prudent woman, and had the chief administration of affairs Her memory was all alive. She recollected past perplexities. She remembered Daniel, and said, "Let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation." "Then Daniel was brought in before the king." Scarlet and a gold chain! and, in the meantime, the Mede and the Persian are entering by stealth, like thieves in the night, through the dried-up bed of the Euphrates! "Let thy gifts be to thyself." "Tekel" "Weighed in the balances and found wanting." A very significant word. It represents God as putting us into a just balance, and judging accordingly. This is not an unusual figure. "Thou dost weigh the path of the just." "By the Lord actions are weighed." "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes; but the Lord weigheth the spirits." We all remember how strongly the Bible speaks of "a just weight." Look at this great appearance of royal government, pride, pomp, and circumstance of state — Belshazzar's rule over the poor people of Babylon — how fine it all looks. But look at it; is it doing what it professes to do? Is it defending the city? Is if caring for the poor? Drunken on the night of the seige. A sham government. Light as a leaf before the whirlwind. God takes it up, weighs it, finds it worthless, and throws it to Cyrus. Then the officer of justice steps in and does his work. Pass for what you are; and be what you pass for; or Peres, the sentence will go against you. You pass for a Christian, you use the passwords of the Christian religion; men take your word, just as without suspicion we take our pounds of meat and tea, and pay for them. Is it only seemingly good weight? Tekel you will be found out. A light ruler! But stop! before we blame Belshazzar and other light kings, let us ask a question — Are you doing in the royal line what you profess to do? Are you ruling your households in the fear of God? Is there a just government there! Is there equity, love, purity, the law of truth, swaying the family? Ye the scrutiny of Heaven is there a kingdom of God there? And how is the inner kingdom ruled? You profess to have a conscience, a presiding judge — reason. Are you taking it easy, and making light of your responsibilities, of the charge which God has laid upon you, and thinking that God doth not see? "Let integrity and uprightness preserve us, O God of our salvation." ( B. Kent. ) Belshazzar's Feast G. Campbell Morgan. Now let us look at the scene. What is this a picture of? Can you express the whole of that revel in one word? I think I can, and this is the word — godlessness. When, presently, the soothsayers have proved their ignorance, and the enchanters are unable to decipher the mystic writing upon the wail, and Daniel comes, what is the supreme charge that he makes against Belshazzar? He does not charge him with drunkenness, though he is drunk: he does not charge him with sacrilege, though he has sent for the golden vessels of the House of God in order that these drinking men may drink from them; he does not charge him with lasciviousness of life, although there are tokens of it on every hand in that banqueting hall. This is the charge that Daniel makes against the king. He passes from the superficial to the central, and in these words he makes his supreme charge against the king: "The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast then not glorified." Every power of the king was a God-given power — his breath, all his ways, his throne, his opportunity, his kingdom, his capacity for laughter and for tears — everything God-given, and yet he sat on the throne without reference to the other throne: exercised his kingship without reference to the other kingship; laughed without reference to God; entered into all the avenues of his own life and enjoyed the very blessings of Heaven, and yet without reference to God, and this not because of ignorance. And now mark in the case of this king how that supreme sin works itself out. Foolhardiness! The enemies are at the gate; Darius is on his way; the very kingdom over which the man presides in self-satisfying security is being undermined and shaken to its foundations. Foolhardiness! A feast where there ought to have been preparations for a fight Belshazzar has been living as though Nebuchadnezzar had never lived; Belshazzar has been living as though his father had never come under the immediate government of God; he has been living as though the great lessons of the past had never been uttered or taught. And you tell me he has forgotten! No, he never forgot; these men do not forget — they act as though they had forgotten, but forgotten they have not. But you say to me: "How do you know he has not forgotten?" Because when the wine has worked into his brain and the wit is out therefore, the underlying memory asserts itself in idiotic insult: "Fetch the vessels of the House of God, and we will drink from them." That is how godlessness works out in its finality. If you let me turn aside for a moment, I can quite understand there is a young man who is living a godless life to-night, and he says: "I never meant to do it." Belshazzar never meant to do it. Do not allow the sin to blind you to the facts of life that are patent on every hand. Do you suppose that any murderer who has gone to his doom ever meant to commit murder? Never. But it was the last bitter fruitage of the root of godlessness. That is how godlessness works itself out. And I look at that great banqueting hall with its thousand lords, and I look at Belshazzar, the man who knew, who had lived as though he did not know, who remembered in the midst of the revelry, and then insulted God.. Now, still watching that hall and that scene, I pray you mark the next fact: the Divine assertion in the midst of the revelry, the handwriting by which God asserted His own presence and His own Divine right amid all the revelry of foolhardy men. For let me say at once that all the mystery of the soothsayers and the enchanters was not due to the mystery of the writing, but to their attempt to explain away simple, evident truths. "Mene," everyone knew that it meant "remembered"; "Tekel," everyone know that it meant "weighed"; "Upharsin," everyone knew that it meant "divided." And whereas I do not for a single moment want to take away from the fact that there dwelt in Daniel the spirit of insight into spiritual things; in Daniel as in many another man, the spirit that sees into the heart of spiritual things is the spirit of a little child. It was the cleverness of the soothsayers that prevented their understanding the writing on the wail, and all the heated feverishness of the king to get someone to explain it was not heated feverishness to get someone to explain it, but to explain it away; and what Daniel did was to come and speak the truth and enforce it and drive it home, the truth that was patent to the king. This was God asserting Himself in the life of this man. It was an assertion of Himself that interfered with all human arrangements, that disturbed the feast. Just look at the king. His knees smote together, his countenance was changed, he sees all the horror of his own foolhardiness and all the awful fruitage of his own sin. If he can he will escape it; if he can he will undo the past and blot out his own handwriting; but he cannot, and God has come into the midst of the revelry to disturb the life of this man. Now, mark the writing for a moment. Remembered, counted, finished — there is no more. The solemnity of this whole story lies in the fact that it is not a warning uttered, but a verdict pronounced. "In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain." In looking at the narrative as we have been doing for the last few minutes, I cannot possibly put any single word of hope into the story. It is not a story of hope; it is a story of judgment; swift, sure, irrevocable — nothing left. A man had his opportunity, had his examples, had his warnings, best of all had God — failed. Now, why take you back to the old story? Only in order that I may now for a few moments endeavour to take out of the story the principles of importance and ask you to face them. And what is the first? That the supreme sin of every life, including all others within it, is the sin of godlessness. Godlessness is the root of sin. And if it should happen that to-night in the case of some person in this house the end should come, if your years are numbered and the last hour is upon you and you have failed, what is your sin? Exactly what this man's sin was. "The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified." You belong to God, everything you have is a Divine gift, and all these years of your life up to the present moment What is the story of your life? You are God-created; His image is on your brow; the supreme glory of the Godhead in some sense is reproduced and re-expressed in you. "The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways." What relation have you borne to Him? And I want to ask you now for a moment, since God created man and God preserved man, what relation have you borne in the days and years of your life to the God who created you, to the God who has preserved you? That is the supreme thing; there is no other question left; there is no other problem ought to vex the heart of man but that. Now, is it true of you that you have not glorified Him? You have thought of Him as a distant Deity; you have thought of Him, perhaps, as a supreme intelligent force behind Nature, to be spoken of reverently and nothing more; you have thought of Him as the God of judgment and the God of mercy, for you have lived in the gentle light which breaks from the cross of the Crucified. But these things are of no moment; the question is, How have you answered your knowledge and your conviction concerning God? And remember, godlessness is the life lived within the provision of God that never recognises the One who provides. I would have you very solemnly put away from your mind the false idea that godlessness is the peculiar condition of the man who dwells in the slum, that godlessness is that which expresses itself in profanity and bestiality and lasciviousness — all those things are true, but there is a godlessness which is refined, cultured, pleasant, and yet is the most arrant and hardening godlessness of the age, issuing in indifference and presently manifesting itself, it may be, in the sceptical allusion and the pitying and patronising attitude which a man takes up to those who are godly people. Oh! the blight of it. That is the supreme sin. And out of this sin of godlessness spring all the other sins. Folly! A man has lost the balance of life who has lost his sense of and obedience to God. But what was the supreme sin of the man illustrated in the story of the prodigal? It was this, that he took his father's substance and wasted it in riotous living. And that is the sin of humanity the whole way along. It is you sin that every gift God has bestowed upon you, you have wasted upon yourself. And there is no man more blind, no man more utterly foolish, no man proving his insanity more than the man who lives through these days so swiftly passing without reference to God and without relation to God. Godlessness issues in folly; godlessness leaves a man a prey to all the lusts to play about the life to tempt. And what is the other lesson? It is that, sooner or later, God asserts Himself in every human life. The freedom of the will is a limited freedom. God in His great universe will never allow the will of man to be so free as wreck for evermore all who come into contact with him. Liberty and licence are two things, and there must be a moment when God arrests the life and deals with the man. This man knew about Nebuchadnezzar and yet did not humble himself; he never laid the glory of his own opportunity at the footstool of the Divine sovereignty, and made wreckage of his life in consequence. God, at some point, comes into every man's life, arresting it. "Ah!" you will say, " I have not glorified God, and the godlessness of principle hag blossomed into the fruitage of evil habit." Do not play with the habit do not try to cut off the habit; get down to the principle, and by way of the cross of Christ to-night find your way back into the Kingdom of God, yielding to Him your whole life, trusting in the Saviour who comes with matchless patience wooing you back to God, and then, when presently the story is told of your life, instead of the sentence being passed, "Found wanting," it will be written, "Ye are complete in Him." ( G. Campbell Morgan. ) The Night Feast of Belshazzar D. Marsh, D.D. Belshazzar was the last of the Babylonian kings. The great feast which he made for a thousand of his lords was on the last night of his reign. He belonged to the proud and profligate race of the Chaldeans, whom the Hebrew prophets describe as given to pleasures, dwelling carelessly, and trusting in wickedness. All this can be abundantly shown from the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; from the Greek historians, Herodotus, Xenophon, and Diodorus. and from inscriptions on monuments that remain to this day. And knowing all this concerning the young men of that great and mighty city of ancient time, we are not surprised that Babylon became a desolation. The day of doom is not far off from thy great city when its young men have become "tender and delicate"; nerveless and spiritless about the nobler demands of effort and duty. There is no more effectual way to destroy a great and mighty nation than to give its young men all the money they want, provide them with plays and festivities and amusements and dances and wine, and then leave them to sweat the life and manhood out of body and soul in the hot-bed of pleasure and self-indulgence. That is the way Babylon was ruined. That is the way imperial Rome became an easy prey to northern barbarians. That is the way Christian Constantinople came under the debasing and abominable sway of Mohammedans. That is the way Venice ended a thousand years of independent and glorious history with shame and servitude. Belshazzar had everything to flatter his pride and indulge his passions. He was an absolute monarch, holding the life and property of his thousand lords and his countless people entirely at his disposal. His servants were princes. His concubines were the daughters of kings. His capital was enriched with the spoils of nations — his provinces were cultivated by captive people. He was hasty and violent in temper, yet effeminate and luxurious in his habits of living. He was gracious and indulgent toward his favourites; and yet when their best efforts to please him did not happen to suit his caprice of the moment, he would be cruel as the grave. The great hall of the palace, in which he feasted his thousand lords reclining upon couches, was large enough to accommodate four times as many guests arranged as we now seat ourselves at table. It was adorned with carvings and sculptures of colossal dimensions, and the lofty walls' were emblazoned with the trophies of war and the symbols of idolatrous worship. The profane orgies of royal mirth were adorned with every artistic decoration that the genius of the age could supply. I believe that the fine arts are capable of ministering to the highest and purest civilisation; but thus far they have done little to enlighten the ignorant, to lift up the degraded, or to help the world forward in the career of moral improvement. They have always flourished in the corrupt and reeking society of a dissolute and licentious age. Rome, the modern Babylon, was never more depraved and abominable than when it had Michael Angelo to build St. Peter's, and Raphael to fresco the Vatican. The capital of France was never more like Rome than when the Grand Monarque, Louis the Fourteenth, dazzled the world with his splendid court, and the great masters of every land were decorating the palaces of Fontainbleau, Versailles, and the Louvre, with the loftiest achievements of art. In three hundred years the highest art has done less to refine and improve the common people in Rome and Naples than would be done by the spelling-book and New Testament in one year. Belshazzar inherited the pride, the glory, the riches, the power, the palaces, the capital, the kingdom of his great father. He inherited enough to ruin any young man who was not fortified by great strength of character and a severe mastery of his own appetites and passions. At the time immediately preceding the great feast which Belshazzar made for his thousand lords, the province of Babylon had been overrun and the capital assailed by a great army from the north. But, for some strange and inexplicable reason, the besieging force had apparently withdrawn. No effort appears to have been made to discover what had become of the enemy, or what had occasioned their disappearance. It was enough that they could no longer be seen from the towers and walls. It was taken for granted that the siege was abandoned and the war was over. The whole city was immediately given up to rejoicing and every form of riotous excess. Belshazzar set the example, and people and princes were only too ready to imitate their king. "The music and the banquet and the wine; the garlands, the rose-edours, and the flowers; the sparkling eyes, the flashing ornaments, the jewelled arms, the raven hair, the braids, the bracelets, the thin robes floating like clouds; the fair forms, the delusion and the false enchantment of the dizzy scene," take away all reason and all reverence from the flushed and crowded revellers. There is now nothing too sacred for them to profane, and Belshazzar himself takes the lead in the riot and the blasphemy. Even the mighty and terrible Nebuchadnezzar, who desolated the sanctuary of Jehovah at Jerusalem, would not use his sacred trophies in the worship of his false gods. But this weak and wicked successor of the great conqueror, excited with wine and carried away with the delusion that no foe can ever capture his great city, is anxious to make some grand display of defiant and blasphemous desecration. At the very moment when their sacrilegious revelry was at its height, the bodiless hand came forth and wrote the words of doom upon the wall of the banqueting-room; the armies of Cyrus had turned the Euphrates out of its channel, and marched into the unguarded city along the bed of the stream beneath the walls; they were already in possession of the palace-gates when Belshazzar and his princes were drinking wine from the vessels of Jehovah, and praising the gods of gold and silver and stone; and that great feast of boasting and of blasphemy was the last ceremonial of the Chaldean kings. The reckless and the profane not unfrequently display the greatest gaiety and thoughtlessness when they are on the very brink of destruction. The feeling and the appearance of safety are not always to be taken for reality. Death still enters the banquet-hall anti the ball-room as well as the bed-chamber. The last opportunity for any good work is apt to look just like all that came and went before it. We seldom know that; it is the last, until it is gone never to return. Our only safe way to improve the last opportunity is to use all that come as if any one might be the last. The apparent thoughtlessness of the gay and worldly does not prove that they are at peace with themselves A smiling face and a reckless manner are sometimes put on to hide an anxious and an aching heart. To find joy in everything we do, we must do everything for God. To have the light of Heaven upon our faces in all the dark hours of trial and trouble, we must have Heaven's peace in our hearts. The messages of the gospel is God's way of peace for man. Belshazzar and his thousand lords did not profane the golden vessels of Jehovah until they had drunk wine. Indulgence in the intoxicating cup prepares the way for every excess and profanation. No man can be sure that he will be saved from any degree of shame or crime when once he has a put an enemy in his mouth to steal away his reason." The eye of the Great Judge is upon every scene of profanity and dissipation. The handwriting appeared upon the wall of the bouquet-room in Belshazzar's palace in the hour of their wildest mirth, to show that God was there. And God is in every scene of wickedness and dissipation not less really than in the Holy Place of His own sanctuary. The finger of God is ever writhing the witness of His presence with us upon the living tablets of our hearts. That infinite and awful Witness is in every storehouse, workshop, and place of business, every day of the week and every hour of the day. In the deepest solitude we must all have one companion. To every act and word of our lives there must be one witness, and that witness is the holy and sin-hating God. We cannot escape our accountability to Him. Why, then, not live so that we can give Him our account with joy? Conscience is a mysterious and mighty power in us all. The great and terrible king Belshazzar was completely mastered and unmanned by its secret whisper. He was afraid, because an accusing conscience always makes darkness and mystery terrible to the guilty. It is mightiest in the mighty. Milton's Satan, Byron's Manfred, Shakespeare's Macbeth and Richard the Third are truthful illustrations of the harrowing torture produced in the mightiest mind by the calm, solemn voice within, which only says, "You are wrong." The Supreme Creater has put us absolutely in the power of that mysterious judge which pronounces sentence in our own bosoms upon all our conduct and motives. And we cannot conceive anything worse for a man than to die and go into the eternal world with an unappeased and accusing conscience to keep him company and to torment him for ever. Belshazzar had riches, and pleasure, and glory. He was absolute master in the greatest palace and the greatest city the world had ever seen. But what is his life worth to the world now, except to warn men not to live as he did? With all his splendour and luxury he lived a wretched man, and he died as the fool dies. He lifted himself up against God, he trusted in wickedness, and so he became but as the chaff which the wind driveth away. And the same sovereign God counts out the days of life to us all. He weighs our character, our conduct, our motives, in the balances of infinite truth. And there is no deficit so damaging as that which is charged to one who is found wanting before God. It has been said that the thought of our responsibility to God is the greatest thought ever entertained by the greatest mind. Certainly the discoveries and demonstrations of science cannot carry our minds so far over the sweep of ages and over the expanse of the universe as the bare thought that our individual being is bound inseparably and for ever to the being of the infinite and eternal God. Whatever we do, wherever we are, we can never cease to be responsible to Him. For He has appointed us to do His work. He has given us the means, the faculties, and the opportunity; and He holds us answerable for using them well. What the world wants most is men in whose minds the great thought of responsibility to God is ever present — men who are made strong by the consciousness that they are doing God's work. ( D. Marsh, D.D. ) Belshazzar's Feast W. M Taylor, D.D. The character of Belshazzar appears to have been of the most contemptible description. He was addicted to the lowest vices of self indulgence, and felt no restraint whatever in the gratification of his desires. With all this there was combined an arrogance of the haughtiest kind, which would brook no interference with his designs, and would submit to no expostulation in the interests of morality. At length, however, the cup of his iniquities became full. 1. The intemperance by which this banquet was characterised. He cared for nothing but the revelry of the hour. We know too well the concomitants of an excess like this. 2. The profanity by which this banquet was characterised. There is an old fable which tells of a man who had the choice which of three sins he would commit — drunkenness, adultery, or murder. He chose drunkenness, as being apparently the least, but when he was intoxicated he committed both the others, and thus ended by being guilty of all three. Profanity is rampant even in our midst. Who among us has not often had his ears pained and his heart sickened by the unhallowed use of the name of God by those who have no reverence for him in their hearts? O that men would remember that holy law which says that "the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain"! 3. This night was one of supernatural visitation. What means the sudden lull in the noisy revel? The king is pointing, with a shudder of agony, where a mysterious hand is tracing letters on the wall. No ray of hope brightens the gloom of that awful sentence. 4. A night of terrible retribution. God threatens, but He means what He says, and He will bring it to pass. God is faithful who has threatened. ( W. M Taylor, D.D. ) Excessive Social Enjoyment William White. Social enjoyment, when guided by reason, when bounded by temperance, when springing from mutual benevolence, is not forbidden by religion, and may tend, in so far, within these limits, to promote the welfare of the world. Considering, however, the shortness of man's life, the solemnity of his condition as a lost sinner, the infinite eternity into which he must soon enter, and the tribunal of Divine holiness before which he must soon stand, it appears evident that man has not much time to spend in feasting. Considering the destitution and misery that are in the world, it is also clear that he cannot devote much of his means to this end without being guilty of inhumanity to his fellow-creatures and disobedience to that God who commands us, according to our ability, to show kindness to the poor. Much immorality, much inhumanity, much ungodliness, are manifested by all classes in the large sums which they expend, and the time, more precious than gold, which they dissipate, in feasts and entertainments. It is one of the crimes of our land, and fast becoming one of its calamities, that our ancient simplicity, and our ancient sobriety and frugality, are fast departing from among us, and that, instead of them, there is coming in a flood of epicureanism, and affectation, and frivolity. Luxury, love of false refinement, refinement of manners and not of morals, refinement in appearance apart from dignity of character, is coming in upon us more and more, in every succeeding generation. And unless there be a change in the morality of the land, effected by its religion, or some awful calamity be sent to us by a righteous Providence, this growing luxuriousness will, in a short time, be the ruin of our beloved country. It will dissolve the national character. It will be worse than hurting the trade or hurting the agriculture of the land. It will hurt the population. It will produce a degenerate race of men. Luxury, as all history shows, is one of the greatest among national evils. ( William White. ) Belshazzar's Feast W. A, Scott, D.D. I. THE FEAST OF BELSHAZZAR. It was a great annual festival, commemorative of some great event. Some think it was Sacae, the Saturnalia of the Babylonians. Others say it was a feast in honour of the king's birthday, or of his coronation. Whatever feast it was, it seems to have been attended with the pomp, religious rites, and services of the empire. The Babylonians were famous above all other nations for intemperance, especially in drinking. A feast commemorative of a man's birthday or of his marriage is not necessarily sinful. A national festival is not in itself sinful; nor was it the eating and drinking in moderation, but the excess, and the spirit in which it was done, that made Belshazzar's feast so impious. Their excess was a great sin, but their defiance of Jehovah and impious mockery in using the sacred vessels brought from Jerusalem was a far greater sin. The king and his lords, by using the holy vessels of the Jewish temple for their licentious and idolatrous festival, hurled defiance at the God of Abraham, and showed their contempt for the power of Him who doeth according to His will in the armies of Heaven. The king, heated with wine, commanded them to bring in the vessels of the Jerusalem temple. There was needless insult to the captive Jews, as well as impious blasphemy against their God, in this desecration of their holy vessels. Any and every perversion of holy things is a desecration of them. When the sacrament is taken without faith to discern the Lord's body, or to cover some sinister design, or as a passport to some office, then the sacred vessels of the Lord's house are desecrated to an unholy end. In whatever way religion is dragged from its lofty and controlling sphere, and made to gild the claims of a party or of a sect, then and there we have a repetition of Belshazzar's profanation. When the Sabbath is made a day of pleasure, of visiting, feasting, and writing letters — when the house of God is used for anything but the purpo

Benson Commentary Daniel 5:1 Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Daniel 5:1 . Belshazzar — The son of Evil-merodach, and grandson of Nebuchadnezzar; made a great feast to a thousand of his lords — To the principal officers and great men of his court, and was himself present at it. This feast was made at a time of public rejoicing, being an annual festival, when the whole night was spent in revelling; of which season Cyrus took the advantage to make himself master of the city, as Herodotus and Xenophon relate, and as was foretold by Jeremiah 50:24 ; Jeremiah 51:39 ; Jeremiah 51:57 , where see the notes. Daniel 5:2 Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein. Daniel 5:2-4 . Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine — When he grew warm with wine, Houb. Commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels, &c. Triumphing thereby over God and his people. They drank wine — Made themselves merry with wine. And praised the gods of gold, &c. — Praised, as gods, senseless images of gold, silver, brass, iron, &c. thus insulting the great God of heaven and earth, as if these images were more powerful than he, and had enabled them to prevail against him and his people. This their conduct was the more sinful, because Nebuchadnezzar had, not long before, prohibited, by a solemn decree, that any one should speak lightly of the God of the Jews. The Alexandrine and Coptic versions, after mentioning their praising their false gods, add, “But the everlasting God they praised not.” Such a wanton and sacrilegious insult deserved and called for exemplary punishment. Daniel 5:3 Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them. Daniel 5:4 They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. Daniel 5:5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote. Daniel 5:5-6 . In the same hour — At the very time; came forth fingers of a man’s hand — The likeness of a man’s hand; and wrote over against the candlestick — The angel Gabriel, say the rabbins, directing this hand, and writing by it. Belshazzar seems to have filled up the measure of his iniquity, by this act of gross impiety and dishonour done to the true God. And the king saw — It seems, first saw; the part of the hand that wrote — It is probable this candlestick was a hanging sconce, near the king, and that the light it cast made him see the hand while it was writing, as well as the writing which remained on the wall. His seeing the hand, but not the person whose hand it was, made the thing more frightful. Then the king’s countenance was changed, &c. — His face became pale with terror: for although he could not read the writing, and therefore did not know what was its purport, yet a sense of guilt made him forebode that the words had some dreadful meaning; and his thoughts troubled him — His remorse of conscience respecting the past, and his fearful apprehensions with regard to the future; so that the joints of his loins were loosed — He discovered the disorder of his mind by the trembling which seized his whole body. And his knees smote one against another — So soon can the terrors of God shake the loftiest cedars, and terrify the tyrants of the earth! Thus can the Lord spoil the mad mirth of drunken atheists in a moment! “The expressions in this verse, in a collected view, contain such a description of terror as is rarely to be met with; the dead change of the countenance, the perturbation of the thoughts, the joints of the loins becoming relaxed, and the knees smiting against each other, are very strong indications of horror. Horace has, ‘Et corde et genibus tremit;’ and Virgil, ‘Tarda trementi genua labant;’ but these are far inferior to the picturesque description of Daniel.” — Wintle. Daniel 5:6 Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. Daniel 5:7 The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom. Daniel 5:7 . The king cried aloud — Manifesting at once great fear and great impatience; to bring in the astrologers, &c. — In this he imitated Nebuchadnezzar his grandfather: it seems indeed to have been the general practice of these heathen kings, in all unexpected emergencies, to apply to these their wise men for help. But the ill success of Nebuchadnezzar, in such applications, might have taught Belshazzar a better lesson. The king said, Whosoever shall read this writing, &c. — To engage these wise men to exert the utmost of their skill in this matter, he promises that whosoever would give him a satisfactory account of this writing should be dignified with the highest honours of the court; and be the third ruler in the kingdom — “Grotius considers the king as the first, the king’s son as the second, and the interpreter of the vision to be the third. Or it may mean, that there should be a triumvirate appointed to govern the kingdom, as was the case in the beginning of the reign of Darius, and the interpreter should be one of these. Mr. Bruce (vol. 4. p. 32) speaks of a person who was suddenly advanced to a command, the third in the kingdom of Abyssinia for rank, power, and riches; and that, at his public investiture, he had a circle of gold put upon his head, was clothed with a white and blue mantle, and made the king’s lieutenant-general in the provinces allotted to him.” — Wintle. Daniel 5:8 Then came in all the king's wise men : but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof. Daniel 5:8-9 . Then came in all the king’s wise men — Ambitious of the honour, and desirous to gratify the king. But they could not read the writing — Because, says Houbigant, it was written in the ancient Samaritan characters, which were very unlike the Chaldean letters. Or perhaps only the initial letters, M.T.P. were written. But God, for his own glory, reserved the honour of reading and interpreting it for his servant Daniel. Mr. Wintle renders the clause, “They were unable to read the writing, so as to make known the interpretation to the king.” Then was King Belshazzar greatly troubled — His consternation and distress were renewed and increased, his last hope having failed him; and his lords were astonished — His associates in sin shared in the consternation; and notwithstanding their number, mirth, and wine, were dismayed and terrified exceedingly. Daniel 5:9 Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonied. Daniel 5:10 Now the queen, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banquet house: and the queen spake and said, O king, live for ever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed: Daniel 5:10-12 . Now the queen, &c. — The king’s wives and concubines sat with him at the feast, Daniel 5:2 ; therefore the person here called the queen, and said to come into the banqueting-house on this solemn occasion, must have been the queen-mother, the widow of Evil-merodach, named Nitocris, a lady, according to Herodotus, eminent for her wisdom, and who had the chief direction of public affairs. The queen said, Let not thy thoughts trouble thee — Be not so distressed, nor yield to terror and despondency. There is a man in thy kingdom — Some persons are apt to wonder that Daniel was unknown to Belshazzar, which others have accounted for from the abandoned and indolent character of this prince; but there is a further reason: which Mr. Harmer, vol. 1. p. 166, has hinted, from Sir John Chardin, namely, that he had been mazouled, as they express it in the East, that is, displaced at the death of a prior king; since, in the East, when the king dies, the physicians and astrologers are removed: the former for not having driven away death, and the latter for not having predicted it. It is probable, however, that Daniel was not totally unknown to the king; but being perhaps in no esteem, or not employed in any considerable department of the state, in the early part of his reign, he was not readily recollected. In whom was the spirit of the holy gods — See note on Daniel 4:8 . And in the days of thy father — That is, of thy grandfather, Nebuchadnezzar, light and understanding, &c. — That is, an enlightened understanding, or supernatural illumination, as the next words show. Such an insight he had into things secret, and such a foresight of things to come, that it was evident he was divinely inspired, and possessed of extraordinary wisdom, given him from above. Forasmuch as an excellent spirit and knowledge, &c., were found in the same Daniel — His excellent disposition, his humble, holy, heavenly spirit, was both a great ornament to his wisdom, and fitted him for the reception and increase of that extraordinary gift of God. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation — She speaks with confidence; for, being aged, and Nebuchadnezzar having been dead not above twenty-four years, she no doubt well remembered the extraordinary events which had occurred in the latter part of his life, and the supernatural inspiration, and extraordinary wisdom, which Daniel had manifested on these occasions. And she speaks as if she knew where to find Daniel, though Belshazzar probably did not. Daniel 5:11 There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him; whom the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, I say , thy father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers; Daniel 5:12 Forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams, and shewing of hard sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar: now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the interpretation. Daniel 5:13 Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spake and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Jewry? Daniel 5:13-17 . Then was Daniel brought in before the king — Daniel was now near ninety years of age; so that his years and honours, and former preferments, might have entitled him to a free admission into the king’s presence; yet he was willing to be introduced, as a stranger, by the king’s servants. The king said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel — This question of the king shows, that if he was at all acquainted with Daniel, it was very imperfectly; and that in however high esteem that extraordinary man had been held in the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and whatever offices of trust and honour he had then filled, he was now sunk into neglect, Belshazzar being a weak and vicious prince, according to the character historians give of him, and one who interested himself very little in public affairs, leaving the care of them to his mother, and himself minding nothing but his pleasures. Now if thou canst read the writing, &c., thou shalt be clothed with scarlet — He promises him the same rewards if he could read and interpret the writing as he had promised his wise men on condition of their doing it. Then Daniel answered, Let thy gifts be to thyself — As Daniel was now in years, and Belshazzar young, he therefore seems to take a greater liberty, and to deal more plainly with him, than he had done upon the like occasions with Nebuchadnezzar. He addresses him as a very aged and eminent person would address one much younger than himself. When he was consulted by Nebuchadnezzar, and was allowed the liberty of conversing with him and giving him counsel, he foresaw that the Chaldean monarchy would continue for some time, and that his being preferred would give him an opportunity of being useful to his brethren; but he now knew that that empire was about to terminate, and Belshazzar’s reign and life to come to a period. Nebuchadnezzar, though an idolater and a tyrant, yet had great abilities, attended to the affairs of his kingdom, and was, in many respects, very eminent as a monarch; but Belshazzar was every way base, odious, and contemptible. “Above all, he had that night been insulting the God of heaven in the most daring manner, by profaning the sacred vessels in his revels, and extolling his own idols. Daniel therefore knew that his doom was irreversible, and immediately to be put in execution; and he did not speak to him as a subject to his prince, but as the delegate of heaven he denounced sentence against him as a condemned criminal.” — Scott. Some commentators have been puzzled to account for Daniel’s rejecting the king’s presents here, and afterward accepting them, as is mentioned Daniel 5:29 ; but his intention in what he now says is only modestly to decline the honours, and to intimate that they could have no influence on his mind, which yet, at the king’s command, afterward he could not but accept. In other words, he means to say, that he was ready to do whatever the king enjoined, without any respect to a recompense: see Calmet. Yet will I read the writing unto the king — Daniel seems to have made this declaration in consequence of a persuasion wherewith he was inspired of God, before he even cast his eye upon the writing. Daniel 5:14 I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee. Daniel 5:15 And now the wise men , the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the interpretation of the thing: Daniel 5:16 And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom. Daniel 5:17 Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation. Daniel 5:18 O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour: Daniel 5:18-19 . O thou king — Before Daniel reads the writing, he judges it proper to remind the king of God’s dealings with Nebuchadnezzar, his progenitor, and of those remarkable instances of divine providence, both in mercy and in judgment, which were intended to be an instructive lesson, as to all princes that should hear of them, so especially to all the descendants of that great monarch. He also, with great fidelity and seriousness, sets Belshazzar’s profane conduct before him, that he might be humbled and brought to repentance. The most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, &c. — His great power, and vast extent of empire, were the gifts of God to him, and were not acquired by his own policy or bravery, or those of his generals and armies. Grotius explains the different terms of this verse thus: A kingdom, that is, a widely-extended empire; majesty, or magnificence among his subjects; glory from his victories; and honour from the enlargement of the city, the building of its walls, temple, and palace. And for the majesty that he gave him — For the vast power, riches, and victorious hand which he gave him; all people, nations, &c., trembled and feared before him, &c. — We have here a strong picture of the absolute and independent power of these princes; they regarded their subjects only as slaves. Xerxes, having assembled the great men of his kingdom, when he had determined to undertake the war against Greece, said to them, “I have assembled you that I might not seem to act solely by my own counsel; but remember that I expect obedience, not advice from you.” — Calmet. Daniel 5:19 And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down. Daniel 5:20 But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him: Daniel 5:20-23 . But when his heart was lifted up — The expressions here have a peculiar force, in marking the haughty insolence of King Nebuchadnezzar. His authority, as mentioned in the last verse, had been raised to the highest pitch; and on that account we find here that his mind was elated, and his spirit grown obdurate in pride and arrogance; instead of his ascribing all his honours and advantages to the real giver of them, the true God, whom he had been brought to acknowledge, and to the neglect of whom, and of improving by his grandfather’s sufferings, the prophet justly and judiciously attributes Belshazzar’s fate. Thou his son, &c., hast not humbled thy heart — Thou hast not been made sensible of thy own utter weakness, and thy absolute dependance on Jehovah, the true God, who thus abased thy father in the midst of his power and pride. But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven — As if thou hadst been equal, or even superior to him in wisdom and power. He instances in four particulars: 1st, They have brought the vessels of his house before thee — To profane them in your idolatrous feasts: 2d, Thou hast praised the gods of silver and gold, &c., which see not, &c. 3d, Thou hast not glorified the true God, in whose hands thy breath is, and all thy ways: yea, 4th, Thou hast highly dishonoured, affronted, and reproached him. Daniel 5:21 And he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will. Daniel 5:22 And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this; Daniel 5:23 But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou, and thy lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is , and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified: Daniel 5:24 Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written. Daniel 5:24-28 . Then was part of the hand sent from him — The LXX. read, ??? ????? ?? ???????? ????? ???????? ?????????? ?????? , ??? ??? ?????? ?????? ??????? . “On this account hath the joint, or part of a hand, been sent from his presence, and hath formed this writing.” The reading in the Vulgate is to the same purpose. Houbigant translates the verse, “Therefore is the hand sent from him, the fingers whereof have formed this writing.” And this is the writing, MENE, &c. — In the Arabic the three words are considered as participles, Mensuratum, Appensum, Divisum, “Measured, Weighed, Divided.” The words are fully explained by Daniel in the following verses. MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, &c. — God hath numbered the days of thy reign, and put an end to it. The word MENE is doubled in the foregoing verse, to show that the thing was certain, and established by God, as Joseph tells Pharaoh in a like case, Genesis 41:32 . TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, &c. — The reason that an end is put to thy reign so soon is, that thou art found light in the scales of divine equity. Wicked men are often compared to silver adulterated, and alloyed with baser metals, which makes it too light when weighed in the balances: such was Belshazzar when weighed in the scales of divine justice. The same comparison is used by Homer, when Hector’s fatal day approaches, Iliad, xxii, and by Virgil, at the death of Turnus, Æn. 12. And so Milton, in the war of the angels, “ — — — — — Long time in even scale The battle hung.” Par. Lost, b. 6. 50:245. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided — Or broken from thee. The word PERES signifies broken; and it also signifies the nation of the Persians, for they were called Paros, by the Chaldeans: so that this word not only signified that the Babylonish kingdom should be broken, but also by whom it should be broken. UPHARSIN, the other word in the writing, is a participle of the same verb from whence PERES is derived, and literally signifies, And they divide it. Concerning Belshazzar’s destruction, see notes on Isaiah 14. Daniel 5:25 And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. Daniel 5:26 This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Daniel 5:27 TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Daniel 5:28 PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. Daniel 5:29 Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. Daniel 5:29 . Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel — The king was so struck with his superior wisdom, and conceived himself so bound by the promise he had made before his nobles, that he ordered the prophet to be rewarded immediately with the honours he had promised him, which he was forced to accept, and which probably prepared him for a more easy reception by the succeeding monarch. “Nor let it be matter of wonder that Daniel is said to be clothed as it were immediately, for these habits were always at hand for the eastern monarchs to reward their friends or favourites with; and Mr. Harmer tells us, from Sir John Chardin, that the kings of Persia have great wardrobes, where there are always many hundreds of habits ready, designed for presents, and sorted. — Obs., vol. 2. p. 87. It seems likewise that, on some occasions, the great men of the East were accustomed to carry with them, on their journeys, a variety of habits and vestments, in order to distribute them as presents to those whom they wished to honour and reward. And this will account for the changes of garments which Naaman the Syrian had with him, when he returned from the Prophet Elisha, some of which were given to his perfidious servant, 2 Kings 5.” — Wintle. Daniel 5:30 In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain. Daniel 5:30-31 . In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain — He and all his nobles were slain together, in the midst of their feasting and revelling, as Herodotus, lib. 1., and Xenophon, inform us. The latter relates the story thus, Cyropæd., lib. 7. — “That two deserters, Gadatas and Gobryas, having assisted some of the Persian army to kill the guards, and seize upon the palace, they entered into the room where the king was, whom they found standing up in a posture of defence; but they soon despatched him, and those that were with him.” It seems not improbable, likewise, that they burned the houses of the city, or at least the advanced buildings, in their progress, and forced the citizens to quit them in the greatest consternation; for they came upon them with such surprise, that, according to Herodotus, “they had passed through the gates, which were left open in this riotous night, and had taken the extreme parts of the city, before those who inhabited the middle parts knew of the capture,” lib. 1. p. 77. Thus the prophecy of Jeremiah was accomplished, that Babylon should be taken at the time of a public feast, while her princes and great men, &c., should be drunken, and should sleep a perpetual sleep, and not awake: see notes on Jeremiah 51:32 ; Jeremiah 51:39 ; Jeremiah 51:57 . Respecting the method practised by Cyrus to surprise the city, by draining that part of the Euphrates which ran through it, together with many other curious particulars relating to Babylon, see notes on Isaiah 13. And Darius the Median took the kingdom — This Darius is said to be one of the seed of the Medes, Daniel 9:1 , and is supposed, by the most judicious chronologers, to be the same with Cyaxares, the son of Astyages; him Cyrus made king of the Chaldeans, as being his uncle by the mother’s side, and his partner in carrying on the war against the Babylonians; and left him the palace of the king of Babylon, to live there whenever he pleased, as Xenophon relates, Cyropæd., lib. 8. As Darius succeeded to the empire through Cyrus’s permission, or appointment, and was dependant upon him for it, Ptolemy’s canon supposes Cyrus to be the immediate successor of Nabonnedus, or Belshazzar, and allots nine years to his reign; whereas Xenophon reckons two of these years to Darius, and seven to Cyrus. The Chaldee phrase, rendered here took the kingdom, is translated, possessed the kingdom, Daniel 7:18 , and means the same with succeeding in the kingdom. — Lowth. Daniel 5:31 And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old. Benson Commentary on the Old and New Testaments Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.

Expositor's Bible Commentary Daniel 5:1 Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. THE FIERY INSCRIPTION IN this chapter again we have another magnificent fresco-picture, intended, as was the last-but under circumstances of aggravated guilt and more terrible menace-to teach the lesson that "verily there is a God that judgeth the earth." The truest way to enjoy the chapter, and to grasp the lessons which it is meant to inculcate in their proper force and vividness, is to consider it wholly apart from the difficulties as to its literal truth. To read it aright, and duly estimate its grandeur, we must relegate to the conclusion of the story all worrying questions, impossible of final solution, as to whom the writer intended by Belshazzar, or whom by Darius the Mede. All such discussions are extraneous to edification, and in no way affect either the consummate skill of the picture or the eternal truths of which it is the symbolic expression. To those who, with the present writer, are convinced, by evidence from every quarter-from philology, history, the testimony of the inscriptions, and the manifold results obtained by the Higher Criticism that the Book of Daniel is the work of some holy and highly gifted " Chasid " in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, it becomes clear that the story of Belshazzar, whatever dim fragments of Babylonian tradition it may enshrine, is really suggested by the profanity of Antiochus Epiphanes in carrying off, and doubtless subjecting to profane usage, many of the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem. The retribution which awaited the wayward Seleucid tyrant is prophetically intimated by the menace of doom which received such immediate fulfilment in the case of the Babylonian King. The humiliation of the guilty conqueror, "Nebuchadrezzar the Wicked," who founded the Empire of Babylon, is followed by the overthrow of his dynasty in the person of his "son," and the capture of his vast capital. "It is natural," says Ewald, "that thus the picture drawn in this narrative should become, under the hands of our author, a true night-piece, with all the colours of the dissolute, extravagant riot, of luxurious passion and growing madness, of ruinous bewilderment, and of the mysterious horror and terror of such a night of revelry and death." The description of the scene begins with one of those crashing overtures of which the writer duly estimated the effect upon the imagination. "Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.": The banquet may have been intended as some propitiatory feast in honour of Bel-merodach.. It was celebrated in that palace which was a wonder of the world, with its winged statues and splendid spacious halls. The walls were rich with images of the Chaldeans, painted in vermilion and exceeding in dyed attire-those images of goodly youths riding on goodly horses, as in the Panathenaic procession on the frieze of the Acropolis-the frescoed pictures, on which, in the prophet’s vision, Aholah and Aholibah, gloated in the chambers of secret imagery. Belshazzar’s princes were there, and his wives, and his concubines, whose presence the Babylonian custom admitted, though the Persian regarded it as unseemly. The Babylonian banquets, like those of the Greeks, usually ended by a "Komos" or revelry, in which intoxication was regarded as no disgrace. Wine flowed freely. Doubtless, as in the grandiose picture of Martin, there were brasiers of precious metal, which breathed forth the fumes of incense; and doubtless, too, there were women and boys and girls with flutes and cymbals, to which the dancers danced in all the orgiastic abandonment of Eastern passion. All this was regarded as an element in the religious solemnity; and while the revellers drank their wine, hymns were being chanted, in which they praised "the gods of gold and silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone." That the king drank wine before the thousand is the more remarkable because usually the kings of the East banquet in solitary state in their own apartments. Then the wild king, with just such a burst of folly and irreverence as characterised the banquets of Antiochus Epiphanes, bethought him of yet another element of splendour with which he might make his banquet memorable, and prove the superiority of his own victorious gods over those of other nations. The Temple of Jerusalem was famous over all the world, and there were few monarchs who had not heard of the marvels and the majesty of the God of Israel. Belshazzar, as the "son" of Nebuchadrezzar, must-if there was any historic reality in the events narrated in the previous chapter-have heard of the "signs and wonders" displayed by the King of heaven, whose unparalleled awfulness his father had publicly attested in edicts addressed to all the world. He must have known of the Rabmag Daniel, whose wisdom, even as a boy, had been found to be superior to that of all the " Chartummim " and " Ashshaphim "; and how his three companions had been elevated to supreme satrapies; and how they had been delivered unsinged from the seven-times-heated furnace, whose flames had frilled his father’s executioners. Under no conceivable circumstances could such marvels have been forgotten; under no circumstances could they have possibly failed to create an intense and profound impression. And Belshazzar could hardly fail to have heard of the dreams of the golden image and of the shattered cedar, and of Nebuchadrezzar’s unspeakably degrading lycanthropy. His "father" had publicly acknowledged-in a decree published "to all peoples, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth"-that humiliation had come upon him as a punishment for his overweening pride. In that same decree the mighty Nebuchadrezzar-only a year or two before, if Belshazzar succeeded him-had proclaimed his allegiance to the King of heaven; and in all previous decrees he had threatened "all people, nations, and languages" that. if they spake anything amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, they should be cut in pieces, and their houses made a dunghill. { Daniel 3:29 } Yet now Belshazzar, in the flush of pride and drunkenness, gives his order to insult this God with deadly impiety by publicly defiling the vessels of His awful Temple, { Daniel 1:2 Comp #/RAPC 1Ma 1:21 ff.} at a feast in honour of his own idol deities! Similarly Antiochus Epiphanes, if he had not been half mad, might have taken warning, before he insulted the Temple and the sacred vessels of Jerusalem, from the fact that his father, Antiochus the Great, had met his death in attempting to plunder the Temple at Elymais (B.C. 187). He might also have recalled the celebrated discomfiture-however caused-of Heliodorus in the Temple of Jerusalem. {#/RAPC 2Ma 3:1-40 } Such insulting and reckless blasphemy could not go unpunished. It is fitting that the Divine retribution should overtake the king on the same night, and that the same lips which thus profaned with this wine the holiest things should sip the wine of the Divine poison-cup, whose fierce heat must in the same night prove fatal to himself. But even such sinners, drinking as it were over the pit of hell, "according to a metaphor used elsewhere. Psalm 55:15 must still at the last moment be warned by a suitable Divine sign, that it may be known whether they will honour the truth." Nebuchadrezzar had received his warning, and in the end it had not been wholly in vain. Even for Belshazzar it might perhaps not prove to be too late. For at this very moment, {Comp. Daniel 3:7 } when the revelry was at its zenith, when the whirl of excited self-exaltation was most intense, when Judah’s gold was "treading heavy on the lips"-the profane lips-of satraps and concubines, there appeared a portent, which seems at first to have been visible to the king alone. Seated on his lofty and jewelled throne, which "Outshone the wealth of Ormuz or of Ind, Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand Showers on its kings barbaric pearl and gold," his eye caught something visible on the white stucco of the wall above the line of frescoes. He saw it over the lights which crowned the huge golden " Nebrashta ," or chandelier. The fingers of a man’s hand were writing letters on the wall, and the king saw the hollow of that gigantic supernatural palm. The portent astounded and horrified him. The flush of youth and of wine faded from his cheek; -"his brightnesses were changed"; his thoughts troubled him; the bands of his loins were loosed, his knees smote one against another in his trembling attitude, as he stood arrested by the awful sight. With a terrible cry he ordered that the whole familiar tribe of astrologers and soothsayers should be summoned. For though the hand had vanished, its trace was left on the wall of the banqueting-chamber in letters of fire. And the stricken king, anxious to know above all things the purport of that strange writing, proclaims that he who could interpret it should be clothed in scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and should be one of the triumvirs of the kingdom. It was the usual resource; and it failed as it had done in every previous instance. The Babylonian magi in the Book of Daniel prove themselves to be more futile even than Pharaoh’s magicians with their enchantments. The dream-interpreters in all their divisions entered the banquet-hall. The king was perturbed, the omen urgent, the reward magnificent. But it was all in vain. As usual they failed, as in very instance in which they are introduced in the Old Testament. And their failure added to the visible confusion of the king, whose livid countenance retained its pallor. The banquet, in all its royal magnificence, seemed likely to end in tumult and confusion; for the princes, and satraps, and wives, and concubines all shared in the agitation and bewilderment of their sovereign. Meanwhile the tidings of the startling prodigy had reached the ears of the Gebirah -the queen-mother-who, as always in the East, held a higher rank than even the reigning sultana. She had not been present at-perhaps had not approved of-the luxurious revel, held when the Persians were at the very gates. But now in her young son’s extremity, she comes forward to help and advise him. Entering the hall with her attendant maidens, she bids the king to be no longer troubled, for there is a man of the highest rank-invariably, as would appear, overlooked and forgotten till the critical moment, in spite of his long series of triumphs and achievements-who was quite able to read the fearful augury, as he had often done before, when all others had been foiled by Him who "frustrateth the tokens of the liars and maketh diviners mad." { Isaiah 44:25 } Strange that he should not have been thought of, though "the king thy father, the king, I say, thy father, made him master of the whole college of magis and astrologers. Let Belshazzar send for Belteshazzar, and he would untie the knot and read the awful enigma." Then Daniel was summoned; and since the king "has heard of him, that the spirit of the gods is in him, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in him," and that he is one who can interpret dreams, and unriddle hard sentences and untie knots, he shall have the scarlet robe, and the golden chain, and the seat among the triumvirs, if he will read and interpret the writing. "Let thy gifts be thine, and thy rewards to another," {so Elisha, 2 Kings 5:16 } answered the seer, with fearless forthrightness: "yet, O king, I will read and interpret the writing." Then, after reminding him of the consummate power and majesty of his father Nebuchadrezzar; and how his mind had become indurated with pride; and how he had been stricken with lycanthropy, "till he knew that the Most High God ruled in the kingdom of men"; and that, in spite of all this, he, Belshazzar, in his infatuation, had insulted the Most High God by profaning the holy vessels of His Temple in a licentious revelry in honour of idols of gold, silver, brass, iron, and stone, which neither see, nor know, nor heal-for this reason (said the seer) had the hollow hand been sent and the writing stamped upon the wall. And now what was the writing? Daniel at the first glance had read that fiery quadrilateral of letters, looking like the twelve gems of the high priest’s ephod with the mystic light gleaming upon them. M. N. A. M. N. A. T. O. L. P. R. S. Four names of weight. A Mina. A Mina. A Shekel. A Half-mina. What possible meaning could there be in that? Did it need an archangel’s colossal hand, flashing forth upon a palace-wall to write the menace of doom, to have inscribed no more than the names of four coins or weights? No wonder that the Chaldeans could not interpret such writing! It may be asked why they could not even read it, since the words are evidently Aramaic, and Aramaic was the common language of trade. The Rabbis say that the words, instead of being written from right to left, "pillar-wise," as the Greeks called it, from above downwards: thus- p t m m r q n n s l a a Read from left to right, they would look like gibberish; read from above downwards, they became clear as far as the reading was concerned, though their interpretation might still be surpassingly enigmatic. But words may stand for all sorts of mysterious meanings; and in the view of analogists-as those are called who not only believe in the mysterious force and fascination of words, but even in the physiological quality of sounds-they may hide awful indications under harmless vocables. Herein lay the secret. A mina! a mina! Yes; but the names of the weights recall the word m’nah , "hath numbered": and "God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it." A shekel! Yes; t’qilta : "Thou hast been weighed in a balance and found wanting." Peres - a half-mina! Yes; but p’risath : "Thy kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians." At this point the story is very swiftly brought to a conclusion, for its essence has been already given. Daniel is clothed in scarlet, and ornamented with the chain of gold, and proclaimed triumvir. But the king’s doom is sealed! "That night was Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, slain." His name meant, "Bel preserve thou the king!" But Bel bowed down, and Nebo stooped, and gave no help to their votary. "Evil things in robes of sorrow Assailed the monarch’s high estate; Ah, woe is me! for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate! And all about his throne the glory That blushed and bloomed Is but an ill-remembered story Of the old time entombed," "And Darius the Mede took the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old." As there is no such person known as "Darius the Mede," the age assigned to him must be due either to some tradition about some other Darius, or to chronological calculations to which we no longer possess the key. He is called the son of Achashverosh, Ahasuerus ( Daniel 9:1 ), or Xerxes. The apologists have argued that- 1. Darius was Cyaxares II, father of Cyrus, on the authority of Xenaphon’s romance, and Josephus’s echo of it. But the "Cyropaedia" is no authority, being, as Cicero said, a non-historic fiction written to describe an ideal kingdom. History knows nothing of a Cyaxares II. 2. Darius was Astyages. Not to mention other impossibilities which attach to this view, Astyages would have been far older than sixty-two at the capture of Babylon by Cyrus. Cyrus had suppressed the Median dynasty altogether some years before he took Babylon. 3. Darius was the satrap Gobryas, who, so far as we know, only acted as governor for a few months. But he is represented on the contrary as an extremely absolute king, setting one hundred and twenty princes "over the whole kingdom," and issuing mandates to "all people, nations, and languages that dwell in all the earth." Even if such an identification were admissible, it would not in the least save the historic accuracy of the writer. This "Darius the Mede" is ignored by history, and Cyrus is represented by the ancient records as having been the sole and undisputed king of Babylon from the time of his conquest. "Darius the Mede" probably owes his existence to a literal understanding of the prophecies of Isaiah { Isaiah 13:17 } and Jeremiah. { Jeremiah 51:11 ; Jeremiah 51:28 } We can now proceed to the examination of the next chapter unimpeded by impossible and halfhearted hypotheses. We understand it, and it was meant to be understood, as a moral and spiritual parable, in which unverified historic names and traditions are utilised for the purpose of inculcating lessons of courage and faithfulness. The picture, however, falls far below those of the other chapters in power, finish, and even an approach to natural verisimiltude. The Expositor's Bible Text Courtesy of BibleSupport.com . Used by Permission.