Chapter 86

¹ Now after the death of Nebuchadnezzar his son Evilad Marodach succeeded to his kingdom, of whom the Scripture makes no mention—whether because he had lived a pious life, or because nothing portentous occurred in his reign.

² He reigned twelve years, and after him his brother Belshazzar, concerning whom the Scripture now makes its narrative.

³ In the fourth year of his reign this man made a great feast for his thousand nobles.

⁴ And while they were at their drinking, the king, puffed up with pride, commanded that the vessels of gold and silver which his father Nebuchadnezzar had carried off from the temple in Jerusalem be brought forth, and that his nobles and his concubines should drink from them; and the very things that had been dedicated by other kings to the glory and honor of God—these, taking them in their defiled hands, they used for libations, and they praised the lifeless and motionless idols.

⁵ When this, then, had taken place, 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.

⁶ In the case of Nebuchadnezzar it was said that “a holy one came down from heaven,” but here it says that “fingers of a hand came forth”—the Scripture signifying that the Word would in the last times be made corporeal and take upon himself the form of a man, so that he should no longer be seen as through an appearance, but, becoming man in the flesh and consorting with men, should accomplish the will of the Father;

⁷ So then, in the writing of the script upon the wall, the Scripture signified that he who here writes is the very one who on the mountain inscribed the law of God upon the tablets. As the Scripture says: “And the tablets were written by the finger of God, and the writing was the writing of God engraved upon the tablets.”

⁸ So then here also it was to the king alone that the fingers of the hand were shown, flashing over against the lamp, in order that the things written there might be reckoned to be the writing of God.

⁹ For the light of the hand, shining back against the light of the lamp, dimmed the lamp’s light, so that the fingers writing upon the wall might be seen.