Chapter Five

1–9. Belshazzar’s feast, the appearance of the hand that wrote mysterious letters on the wall, the helplessness of the Babylonian wise men to read them. 10–16. The summons of Daniel at the advice of the queen mother. 17–29. The prophet’s speech to Belshazzar and his explanation of the mysterious inscription. 30–31. The death of Belshazzar and the accession of Darius the Mede.

Daniel 5:1. Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine before the thousand. According to the Book of Daniel, the last Babylonian king was Belshazzar (Belshatsar), the son of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan 5:2), who reigned for more than two years (Dan 8:1) and was killed on the night Babylon fell (Dan 5:30). But among the successors of Nebuchadnezzar to the throne, as listed by the Chaldean historian Berossus, there is no Belshazzar. He calls Nebuchadnezzar’s successor Evil-merodach, and places the conquest of Babylon in the 17th year of an unknown king, Nabonidus, who was not known to the prophet Daniel. Similarly, according to Herodotus, the last Babylonian king was not Belshazzar but Labynetus. Such a discrepancy between biblical and non-biblical accounts, which gave some interpreters reason to deny the authenticity of the Book of Daniel, causes others to seek reconciliation. The most natural and correct means to this end was long considered to be the identification of Belshazzar of the Book of Daniel with one of the successors of Nebuchadnezzar mentioned by Berossus. Josephus Flavius made the first attempt at this, saying that the last Babylonian king was Belshazzar, ‘called Nabonidus by the Babylonians.’ The same view was held by the renowned historian Niebuhr, who affirmed that the name Belshazzar was an honorary title of Nabonidus, as also by Michaelis, Cornelius à Lapide, Calmet, Knobel, and Ewald; among Russian interpreters, Bukharev. Others – Kranichfeld, Clifford, Keil and Delitzsch, Hevernik, Hupfeld, and Smirnov – based on the designation of Belshazzar as ‘the son of Nebuchadnezzar’ – identified him with the actual son of the latter, Evil-merodach, who reigned two years, and finally, still others – with Labosoardus. As for the validity of these views, it is very insignificant. Against the identification of Belshazzar with Evil-merodach and Labosoardus is the fact that neither of them was the last Babylonian king, as Belshazzar is in the Book of Daniel. His death and the division of the Babylonian empire between the Medes and Persians are presented as inseparably linked events (Dan 5:30-31). Likewise, the identification of Belshazzar with Nabonidus is inadmissible. First, neither the prophet Daniel nor Berossus mentions a double name that the last Babylonian king supposedly bore; second, the fates of Belshazzar and Nabonidus, as presented by the prophet Daniel and Berossus, are completely different. The first was killed on the night Babylon was taken (Dan 5:30), while the second, defeated by Cyrus, was sent by him from Babylon to Carmania, where he died. Abandoning all these attempts as clearly untenable, the latest literature on the Book of Daniel holds the view that Belshazzar mentioned in it is the actual, real name of the last Babylonian king – the name of the son of Nabonidus. This view is based on cuneiform inscriptions from the time of the latter. In one of them, discovered by the Englishman Loftus in the ruins of Ur of the Chaldees, Nabonidus addresses a prayer to the god Sin with the following petition: ‘As for me, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, keep me from any sin against your bright deity and grant me a long life, and turn the heart of Belshazzar, my firstborn son, my heir, so that he reveres your bright deity, does not walk in the path of sin, but enjoys the happiness of life.’ In another inscription of the same king, the following phrase occurs twice: ‘May I, Nabonidus, king of Babylon, reverent of your bright deity, enjoy a long and happy life, and prolong the days of Belshazzar, my firstborn son, so that he does not turn aside into sin.’ On the basis of these inscriptions, Rawlinson identifies Belshazzar mentioned in them with Belshazzar of the Book of Daniel. ‘Nabonidus’s eldest son,’ he says, ‘is named Bel-shar-usur, a name shortened in the Book of Daniel to Belshatsar, just as the name Nergal-sharezer was turned into Neriglissar by the Greeks.’ Identity of names alone, of course, does not prove identity of persons. But the full possibility of identifying the biblical Belshazzar with Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, from the cuneiform inscriptions does not admit, in the opinion of interpreters, of any doubt. And first of all, judging by the promise to make Daniel the third ruler in the kingdom (Dan 5:16), Belshazzar was not the supreme king of Babylon; he himself held the second place, and therefore could only offer Daniel the third. In other words, Belshazzar of the Book of Daniel appears in the role of co-regent: sole rulers sometimes granted the second place in the kingdom for services (Esth 10:3; 1 Esd 3:7; 1 Esd 4:42). Belshazzar, the son of Nabonidus, is clothed with precisely this power. According to Vigoureux, the text of the so-called Cyrus Cylinder presents him as viceroy: he stood at the head of the army, surrounded by high officials, in the strongholds of the land of Akkad (the northern part of Babylonia), while his father for several years voluntarily withdrew from the affairs of government. Similarly, Rawlinson, drawing attention to certain inscriptions of Nabonidus that limit themselves to prayer for the salvation of his son Belshazzar alone, asserts that the mention of the royal prince instead of the king himself represents a phenomenon completely without precedent, and the only explanation for it is that Belshazzar was participating in the rule of his father during his lifetime. As for the co-regency of Belshazzar, its causes are thought to lie in the following. Nabonidus, being a usurper, in order to secure power for his descendants, declared his son king during his own lifetime; this son was born to him of a daughter or granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar, whom he married with the same intention of retaining the Babylonian throne (Vigoureux, Knabenbauer). Appointed co-regent with his father, Belshazzar in the later years of his reign became the actual king. In view of the military campaign of Cyrus the Persian, Nabonidus was forced to spend the end of his reign in constant absence from Babylon, first as an ally of Croesus of Lydia, and then as the defender of his country on its frontiers. Under these circumstances, the transfer of power over Babylon to Belshazzar, left there, was a natural thing. Subsequently, according to Xenophon, Nabonidus, defeated by Cyrus, returned not to Babylon but to Borsippa. The ruler of the first, the arbiter of its fate, became Belshazzar, as the Book of Daniel tells us. Belshazzar’s feast fell at the time of the siege of Babylon by the Medes and Persians (Dan 5:28). In accordance with this, Herodotus also tells that the Babylonians, at the time their capital was taken by Cyrus, were celebrating merrily; the whole people gave themselves over to dances and amusements. Strikingly apparent in this circumstance is the king’s carelessness – he feasts with his nobles at a critical moment – and this finds its explanation first of all in his confidence in the strength of the Babylonian walls (see explanation of Dan 4:27). They seemed impregnable not only to him but even to Cyrus, who, according to Herodotus, doubted the possibility of taking Babylon by force and resorted to trickery. No less significant a role in Belshazzar’s carelessness was played by his youth. According to Berossus, Nabonidus reigned 17 years. And if his marriage to a relative of Nebuchadnezzar, who bore him Belshazzar, fell in the first year of his rule, then at the time of Babylon’s conquest, the latter could not have been more than 16 years old. According to Assyro-Babylonian depictions of feasting kings, feasts consisted of drinking rather than eating: the feasters are usually represented only as drinking. The prophet Daniel describes Belshazzar’s feast with these same features. Among those portrayed on the same monuments are women. The presence of women at the feasts of ancient Persians is also noted in the Book of Esther (Esth 1:9 and others).

Daniel 5:2. When he tasted the wine, Belshazzar ordered that the vessels of gold and silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. Daniel 5:3. Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken out of the sanctuary of the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. Daniel 5:4. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone. The feast, proceeding in the usual manner, unexpectedly ended with blasphemy against God, expressed in the transformation of vessels dedicated to Him into festive drinking cups and in songs of praise in honor of pagan gods. The first said that in the eyes of believers the God of Israel deserved no respect – His vessels were taken for a base use; the second even more intensified and underscored this thought – arrogantly set the power of pagan gods against the powerlessness of the God of the Hebrews. Therefore, Josephus Flavius is completely right in calling Belshazzar “bolder” than Nebuchadnezzar, who did not dare to use the vessels of the Jerusalem temple for himself and placed them in the temple of his god.

Daniel 5:5. Immediately the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall opposite the lampstand in the king’s palace, and the king saw the palm of the hand as it wrote. Daniel 5:6. Then the king’s face turned pale, and his thoughts alarmed him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees knocked together. Forgetful Belshazzar was brought to his senses by the appearance of the hand that wrote mysterious letters on the palace wall: boldness was replaced by terror. As the excavations carried out in Babylonia testify, the inner walls of houses were covered with stucco – a strong cement of slaked lime and gypsum, and this in turn was covered with white plaster, on which sometimes entire pictures were depicted. The letters written on this prepared wall were visible to those feasting, as they were illuminated by the lampstand that lit up the feast hall.

Daniel 5:7. The king cried aloud to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the diviners. The king declared to the wise men of Babylon: Whoever reads this writing and tells me its interpretation shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom. For reading the inscription, Belshazzar promises the customary reward given by Eastern kings for important services: purple garments, the manufacture of which Babylon was especially famous for (Ezek 27:24), and a golden chain. Such custom was observed among the Egyptians (Gen 41:42), the Medes, Persians (Esth 6:8; Esth 8:15), Syrians (1 Macc 10:20; 1 Macc 14:43-44), and other ancient peoples.

Daniel 5:8. Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or make known to the king the interpretation. According to the opinion of Prideaux and Kranichfeld, the Chaldean wise men could not read the inscription because it was written in ancient Phoenician. But such an assumption is hardly probable: the ancient Phoenician language was known to the Babylonians by virtue of their constant commercial relations with Phoenicia. The Talmudists explain the helplessness of the Chaldeans by the fact that the inscription was made in a special cabalistic way, for instance, not horizontally but vertically, or the words were written in reverse order, or, finally, from each word only one or two initial letters were written, which is why neither the sense of individual expressions nor that of the entire phrase could be grasped.

Daniel 5:9. Then King Belshazzar was greatly alarmed, and his face turned pale, and his lords were perplexed. Daniel 5:10. The queen, because of the words of the king and his lords, came into the feasting hall. And the queen said: O king, live forever! Let not your thoughts alarm you, nor let your face grow pale! Daniel 5:11. There is a man in your kingdom in whom is the Spirit of the Holy God; in the days of your father, light and understanding and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods were found in him, and King Nebuchadnezzar, your father, made him chief of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and diviners – Daniel 5:12. because an excellent spirit, knowledge, and understanding to interpret dreams, explain riddles, and solve difficult problems were found in Daniel, whom the king named Belshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will show the interpretation. Placed in a hopeless position by the helplessness of his wise men, Belshazzar was extricated from it by the advice of the “queen” to summon Daniel to read and explain the mysterious inscription. The presence of royal wives in the feast hall (Dan 5:2-3), the fact that the queen enters the “feasting hall” (Dan 5:10), and moreover her determination to give the king public advice, which a wife of an Eastern despot would not dare venture – all suggest that by “queen” is meant not the wife of Belshazzar but his mother, a daughter or granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar (Josephus). In Belshazzar being called the son of Nebuchadnezzar in her words, the sense is not literal but transferred – he is a descendant. The word “son” is used in this sense in the cuneiform inscriptions as well. Thus, in the inscription of Shalmaneser II, Jehu, king of Israel, is called the son of Omri, even though he was actually the son of Jehoshaphat (2 Sam 9:2). If Nebuchadnezzar had been Belshazzar’s actual father, there would be no need to add his name: ‘Nebuchadnezzar, your father.’

Daniel 5:13. Then Daniel was brought in before the king. And the king said to Daniel: Are you Daniel, one of the exiles from Judah, whom the king my father brought from Judah? Daniel 5:14. I have heard of you, that the Spirit of God is in you, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you. Daniel 5:15. The wise men and enchanters were brought in before me to read this writing and make known to me its interpretation, but they could not show the interpretation of the matter. Daniel 5:16. But I have heard that you can give interpretations and solve difficult problems. Now if you can read the writing and make known to me its interpretation, you shall be clothed with purple and have a chain of gold about your neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom. Belshazzar was familiar with the history of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, at least the history of his illness (Dan 5:22; cf. v. Dan 5:18-21), but he does not know Daniel (‘Are you Daniel?’) and hears of his wisdom, seemingly for the first time (Dan 5:16; Dan 5:13). The reasons for this lie, it seems, in the palace upheavals and revolutions that began after Nebuchadnezzar’s death: his son Evil-merodach, having reigned only two years, was killed by the husband of his sister, Neriglissar; the latter ruled about 4 years and was killed in war with the Persians; his son and successor Labosoardus reigned only 9 months and was killed by conspirators, among whom was numbered Nabonidus, Belshazzar’s father. The inevitable upheavals resulting from such revolutions led to a change in officials, which affected Daniel with his removal from Babylon: at least in the third year of Belshazzar’s reign he is found in Susa (Dan 8:1-2). There is nothing strange that under such circumstances the prophet was unknown to Belshazzar.

Daniel 5:17. Then Daniel answered and said before the king: Let your gifts be for yourself, and give your rewards to another; nevertheless, I will read the writing to the king and make known to him the interpretation. By refusing the reward, Daniel wanted to show that he, as a prophet of the Lord, would declare the truth without any self-serving motives and calculations, whatever it might be – pleasant or unpleasant for the king.

Daniel 5:18. O king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar your father kingship and greatness and glory and majesty. Daniel 5:19. And because of the greatness that He gave him, all peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him. Whom he would, he killed; and whom he would, he kept alive; whom he would, he raised up; and whom he would, he brought low. Daniel 5:20. But when his heart was lifted up and his mind was hardened so that he dealt proudly, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and his glory was taken from him. Daniel 5:21. He was driven from among men, and his mind was made like that of a beast, and he dwelt with the wild donkeys. He was fed grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, until he knew that the Most High God rules the kingdom of men and appoints over it whom He will. Daniel 5:22. And you his son, Belshazzar, have not humbled your heart, although you knew all this, Daniel 5:23. but you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of His house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them; and you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know; but the God in whose hand is your breath and whose are all your ways, you have not honored. Daniel 5:24. Then the hand was sent from His presence, and this writing was inscribed. Daniel 5:25. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. Daniel 5:26. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end; Daniel 5:27. Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Daniel 5:28. Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. The example of Nebuchadnezzar should have warned Belshazzar against exalting himself before the true God. But he did not heed this lesson – he displayed unprecedented pride – he consciously blasphemed the Most High. By this act Belshazzar showed that he possessed no virtues whatever, nothing that could warrant the prolonging of his and his kingdom’s existence (“Tekel – you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting”). Therefore, God determined to make an end of them – to terminate their further existence (“Mene – God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end”).

Daniel 5:29. Then by command of Belshazzar, Daniel was clothed in purple, a chain of gold was put about his neck, and a proclamation was made about him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. Despite the terrible prediction, Belshazzar fulfills his promise, rewards the prophet, perhaps hoping thereby to earn God’s forgiveness through him, or at least to postpone the impending punishment (John Chrysostom, Ephrem the Syrian). Daniel now accepts the reward (cf. Dan 5:17), something he had refused earlier. St. Jerome explains this by saying that the prophet wanted to become known through it to Belshazzar’s successor and thus be more useful to his people.

Daniel 5:31. and Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being sixty-two years old. See Dan 6:1