Daniel 5
Goodbye Babylon Empire
King’s party guests drink from Temple cups
1Babylonian King Belshazzar [1] threw a party for an elite group of 1,000 nobles. He drank with them at the feast.2Still drinking, [2] he ordered servants to bring out some war trophies. The trophies were gold and silver cups his father, [3] Nebuchadnezzar, took from the Jerusalem Temple. Belshazzar wanted his nobles, wives, and concubines [4] to drink from them. 3So he brought out the gold cups from the Jerusalem Temple and everyone drank from them. Cheers. [5]
4They had a good time drinking the wine and celebrating their gods crafted from gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.
Disembodied hand writes on palace wall
5Suddenly a human hand appeared in thin air. The king saw it. He watched as it began writing on the plaster wall, in the light of a nearby lampstand.6Blood drained from the king’s face. Terrified, he shook so hard that his knees clicked against each other. 7The king screamed for his spirit guides. [6] He said, “I’ll reward anyone who can read this. I’ll dress you in royal purple, accessorize you with a gold neckless, and promote you to my top official.” [7]
8All the usual advisors came and looked at the writing on the wall. But no one could make sense of it. 9This terrified Belshazzar and his face turned pale. Guests at his party didn’t know what to do.
10The queen, from another part of the palace, heard the commotion and came to the banquet hall. She told her husband, “Dear king, I hope you live forever. Don’t be afraid. Don’t let your face lose color. 11There’s a man in your kingdom who’s an expert in this kind of thing. When Nebuchadnezzar was king, this man had the spirit of the Holy God [8] inside him. He was an enlightened man with incredible insight and wisdom. Back then, the king promoted this man and put him in charge of all the other sages and royal advisors with unusual powers. 12The man I’m talking about is Daniel. The king named him Belteshazzar, and he was great at interpreting dreams, deciphering riddles, and solving problems. Tell Daniel to come here. He can translate the writing.”
King asks Daniel to explain the writing on the wall
13Daniel got an escort to the king. Belteshazzar said, “So, you’re Daniel? You’re one of the people my father deported from Judah and exiled here? 14Someone told me you have God’s spirit inside you and that you’re enlightened, insightful, and wise. 15I’ve already had my sages and other spirit guides try to interpret the writing on the wall. They get nothing. 16I’ve heard you can solve puzzles like this. If that’s true, I’ll dress you in royal purple, accessorize you with a gold neckless, and promote you to my top official.”17Daniel told Belshazzar, “It’s okay, you can keep your gifts or donate them to someone else. I’ll read the writing and tell you what it means.
Daniel reads handwriting on the wall
18Dear king, the Supreme God is the one who made Nebuchadnezzar a great and majestic king. 19The king’s God-given power is why everyone was terrified of him, even people from other nations and languages. He killed who he wanted to kill. He spared who he wanted to spare. He honored who he wanted to honor. He humiliated who he wanted to humiliate. 20He got too proud of himself, and it showed. So, he lost his kingdom and greatness.21He couldn’t live among people anymore. He lost his mind and started thinking like an animal. He lived with wild donkeys, ate grass like cattle, and bathed in the morning dew. He lived like this until he realized that the Supreme God rules over everyone and can do whatever he wants with humans.
22You know what I’m talking about. Yet you, too, have failed to rule this kingdom with humility. 23You’ve put yourself on a pedestal at a level reserved for the Lord of heaven. You and your guests, wives, and concubines are drinking wine from sacred cups that don’t belong to you. They come from the Lord’s Temple. You’ve been celebrating your gods who are handmade of melted gold, silver, bronze, and iron and cut from wood and stone. They’re blind and deaf. You know who you forgot to honor? It’s the God who gives you the power to take your next breath. He’s the God who gave you everything you own.
24God sent the messenger who wrote this message to you. 25It says: mene (50 shekels), tekel (one shekel), parsin (two halves). [9]
Daniel explains the cryptic message
26Here’s what it means. Mene means God has done the math and your days are numbered because your kingdom is going out of business.27Tekel means God put you on a scale to measure your worth, and you didn’t measure up.
28Peres means your kingdom is going to get split in half. Some of it will go to the Medes, [10] and the rest to the Persians.”
Belshazzar assassinated
29Belshazzar honored his promise. He had Daniel dressed in purple with a gold chain necklace and promoted him to his top official. The king ordered city criers to formally announce Daniel’s promotion. [11]30Belshazzar was killed that night. 31Darius, a man from the land of the Medes, conquered the Babylonians. [12] He was about 62 years old at the time.
Footnotes
Belshazzar was a co-regent, according to ancient Babylonian records, not a king. He was more of an Associate King. His father, Nabonidus, was king. But he preferred to live in Arabia. His son Belshazzar served as co-regent from 555-539 BC, when Persian invaders from what is now Iran captured the city of Babylon and executed him. He was 41 years old. One Greek history writer from the 300s BC, Xenophon, described Belshazzar as out of control, cruel, and with no interest in gods.
There’s a hint in the context that he has tipped the wine goblet too many times.
It’s unclear why the writer of Daniel called Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar. Documents from that era confirm he was the oldest son of Nabonidus. Belshazzar and Nebuchadnezzar didn’t seem to be related. Perhaps he was the son in the sense that he was a successor in Babylon’s family tree of kings.
Concubines were women—often slaves—who lived with a man in a legally binding relationship as secondary wives. They had less social status than a primary wife, along with fewer privileges and probably more chores. The reason for having a concubine wasn’t necessarily for the pleasure of it, but for the sons of it. People wanted kids. Especially boys. Big families provided more security. They worked together and took care of each other.
Okay, “cheers” may be a stretch, but the people were drinking from holy cups. They were holy because they were reserved for use in the service of God. They were anointed (Exodus 40:9) and devoted to sacred use for God’s pleasure, but these people were using them for their own pleasure.
The writer describes the group of advisors the king called, but with terms that aren’t clear. That’s why Bible translations handle the terms differently. Translators used terms such as: enchanters, astrologers, fortune-tellers, exorcists, diviners, and Chaldeans. Chaldea was a small territory in what is now southeastern Iraq. It followed the shores of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the northern tip of the Persian Gulf. The king may have used the name to refer to a particular kind of royal advisor who lived in Chaldea, such as an astrologer or fortune-teller.
The text literally says the king would promote the person to the third highest position in the kingdom. Belshazzar wasn’t in the number one position. His dad was, Nabonidus. Belshazzar as co-regent while his dad lived in Arabia, held the number two spot. The best he could offer his spirit guide was the number three spot.
[1] 5:11. It’s unclear if the king is referring to God or gods. The description is most often translated as “holy gods,” in the plural. But the phrase works either way: singular or plural. Some translate it as “holy deity.”
It’s unclear if the king is referring to God or gods. The description is most often translated as “holy gods,” in the plural. But the phrase works either way: singular or plural. Some translate it as “holy deity.”
It’s literally mene, tekel, parsin. These were numbers for an accountant. Ancient coins carry these names. A mene was 50 shekels in Judah or 60 in Babylon. A royal shekel was 11.5 grams or 0.4 ounces. A lighter shekel was 9.5 grams or 0.33 ounces. Tekel means one shekel. Parsin was the plural of peres, which means half or divided. There’s irony in the word parsin. It sounds like “Persian.” And it’s the Persians who are at the city gates and about to come in and kill Belshazzar.
Media was a nation of people known as the Medes. They united with the Persians to defeat the Babylonian Empire. They lived in what is now northern Iran, just south of the Caspian Sea. Mount Ararat lies within this region. That’s where a Bible writer says Noah’s boat ran aground after the Great Flood (Genesis 8:4).
Bad timing for Daniel it would seem, with the Persian army at the city gate and intent on erasing Babylon’s Empire and claiming it for themselves.
Darius the Mede or King Darius the Great? Medes were from the Midian Empire in what is now northern Iran. Darius the Mede, reported here, takes over at the death of Belshazzar. King Darius the Mede hasn’t shown up in history outside the Bible. And on the timeline of most scholars, it seems, there’s no room for him. The Book of Daniel says he was the king of Babylon after Belshazzar but before Cyrus the Great. Yet ancient documents say Cyrus took over when his army invaded, and Belshazzar was executed. In histories outside the Bible, the first Darius to rule the Persian Empire was Darius the Great, third emperor of the Achaemenid Dynasty. He reigned over the Persian Empire from 522-486 BC. He started about 83 years after Daniel was taken from Jerusalem to Babylon.
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