The Writing on the Wall

King Belshazzar held a great feast for a thousand of his lords in Babylon, where he ordered the gold and silver vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem to be brought so that he, his princes, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them. While they drank wine and praised gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall (Daniel 5:1-5). The king's countenance changed, and his thoughts troubled him so that his knees knocked together. He summoned astrologers and Chaldeans, promising that whoever could read the writing and explain it would be clothed in scarlet, wear a gold chain, and be the third ruler in the kingdom, but none could interpret it (Daniel 5:6-8).

At the suggestion of the queen, who remembered the wisdom of Daniel from the days of Nebuchadnezzar, the king summoned Daniel to the banquet hall. Daniel declined the king's gifts but reminded him of how Nebuchadnezzar had been humbled by God. He rebuked Belshazzar for lifting himself up against the Lord of heaven and using the sacred vessels to praise idols that do not see or hear (Daniel 5:13-23). Daniel then read the inscription: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. He explained that God had numbered the kingdom and finished it, that the king had been weighed in the balances and found wanting, and that the kingdom was divided and given to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5:25-28).

Belshazzar commanded that Daniel be clothed in scarlet and proclaimed the third ruler in the kingdom. The text does not say how the king or his guests reacted to the specific prophecy of doom beyond these immediate honors. That very night, Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain, and the kingdom was taken over (Daniel 5:29-30).