Chapter 85

¹ Let us see, then, what the Scripture says: “King Belshazzar made a great feast for his thousand nobles, and over against them was the wine; and as he drank, Belshazzar gave orders, in the tasting of the wine, to bring in the vessels of gold and silver which his father Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from the temple in Jerusalem, that the king and his nobles and his concubines and his consorts might drink from them. So the vessels of gold and silver were brought, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles and his concubines and his consorts drank from them. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver and bronze and iron and wood and stone. In that very hour there came forth fingers of a man’s hand and wrote, over against the lamp, upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s house; and the king watched the knuckles of the hand that wrote. Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, and the joints of his loins were loosened, and his knees knocked together. And the king cried out mightily to bring in the magicians, the Chaldeans, the soothsayers; and he said to the wise men of Babylon: Whoever shall read this writing and make known to me its interpretation shall be clothed in purple, and the golden chain shall be upon his neck, and he shall rule as third in my kingdom. And all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing nor make known its interpretation to the king. And Belshazzar was troubled, and his countenance was changed, and his nobles were thrown into confusion.”