Daniel in Babylon

11. Belshazzar’s Feast

The Feast of Belshazzar is one of the best‑known incidents of scripture. This pagan orgy, interrupted at its height by the mysterious fingers of doom writing their dreaded sentence on the wall of the banqueting hall, presaging utter disaster soon to come, has gripped the imagination of men in every age and in every land to which the story has penetrated. To such an extent is this true that the expression "the writing on the wall" has passed into a popular proverb, and nowadays many use it habitually to describe the foreshadowing of events soon and certain to come perhaps without even knowing from what source the expression is derived.

The seventeenth year of the reign of Nabonidus and the twelfth year of his son Belshazzar’s joint reign with him was destined to see the end of the Babylonian empire, the "head of gold" of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream. The armies of Cyrus had been abroad in the land for six years past and were now fast closing in on the doomed city. Nearly two centuries previously the prophet Isaiah had foreseen this day and spoken of this man by name. "Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him...I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will direct all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives...he is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure..." (Isa.45:1,13 and 44:28).

Although, in the days of Babylon, Persia was still an obscure province in the powerful empire of Media and owed allegiance to the kings of the Medes, yet for twenty years before Babylon’s fall Cyrus the Persian had been steadily making himself the most powerful figure in the kingdom and by his military prowess had become in fact, if not in name, the virtual ruler of Media. The second year of Belshazzar when Daniel saw the vision of the two‑horned ram, the greater horn coming up last representing the kings of Media and Persia, commenced only a few months after Cyrus had waged successful war against Astyages the king of Media. Although Cyrus left a semblance of royalty to the defeated monarch, he was the real ruler from then on. As time passed, the victories of Cyrus reduced every country except Babylon to subjection, and the young king Belshazzar was left increasingly to guard the city of Babylon whilst his father Nabonidus led his armies in the field against the Persian invader.

Daniel lived in the city during this period but evidently no longer held any kind of official Court office or rank. He was merely a private citizen. Belshazzar, not more than twenty years of age at his accession, was surrounded by an entirely different class of advisers. Historians describe him as weak, dissolute, and licentious, and the story of the feast bears out that description. Daniel, comparing this youth’s character with that of his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar, probably realised that even from the natural viewpoint the kingly dynasty of Babylon had had its day and could not stand for much longer against the disciplined energy of the invaders. Knowing how the outcome had already been prophesied by both Isaiah and Jeremiah in past years, and revealed to himself in more recent times, he must have waited calmly for the inevitable climax.

That climax came in the year 538 B.C. The Babylonian troops in the field were defeated and Nabonidus besieged in Borsippa, fourteen miles from Babylon. One of Cyrus’ generals, Gubaru, marched swiftly to Babylon and laid siege to the city. And at that crucial time in the fortunes of the empire Belshazzar the king chose to hold a State banquet.

"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father (grandfather) Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein...they drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone." (Dan.5:1‑4).

Small wonder that Babylon fell so easily, when the man to whom had been entrusted its defence so dissipated the crucial hours. The enormous main hall of the royal palace shone with a blaze of light, the scintillating radiance from its many lamps illuminating the sculptured walls and the rich hangings. At the long tables sat the many guests, the nobility and gentry of Babylon, careless of the future, intent only on indulging themselves to the full in the encouragement offered them by the dissolute youth who was their king. Up on the dais, at the richest table of them all, sat Belshazzar himself with his Court favourites and his wives and concubines, leading the revels into ever wilder scenes of excess and debauchery. In a final gesture of profanity he ordered the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem to be brought before him, to be defiled by liquor drunk to the honour of the false gods of Babylon.

The order given; the feast proceeded. The Temple of Bel‑Marduk, the god of Babylon, in which Nebuchadnezzar had placed those vessels sixty years before, was nearly a mile from the palace and the messengers might well have had some difficulty in persuading the custodian priests to surrender their treasures. It might have been an hour later that they returned with their burden, an hour during which the silent, relentless Median soldiers steadily continued surrounding the city.

So the cups and flagons which once had ministered to the worship of God in his own Temple at Jerusalem were set out in that godless assembly and made the instruments of a wild orgy in which every false god known to the Babylonians—and they were many—was praised and venerated. The chaste craftsmanship which had been consecrated to the touch of holy priestly fingers became sullied now by the grasp of hands steeped in every kind of vice and immorality. And Heaven, looking down, uttered its decree: "This is the end."

"In the same hour, came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick (lampstand) upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote." (v.5).

The exactitude of Scripture is a constant marvel to the reverent mind. The remains of the Great Hall of the Royal Palace of Babylon are still there for anyone to inspect—ruined walls about four feet high enclosing a room a hundred and fifty feet long by fifty feet wide, the floor covered with the rubble and broken brickwork of the ruined building just as it has lain there for thousands of years—and mingled with the rubble there are pieces of white plaster, plaster which once covered those walls, the plaster mentioned in this verse, upon which those mysterious fingers wrote that fateful message. All who were present at that feast have long since returned to their dust; the empire which was theirs is no more; the glory that was Babylon has utterly passed away; but the white plaster upon which the cryptic message appeared that night in the year 538 B.C. lies still under the ruins, mute witness to the integrity and accuracy of the narrative we are following.

What deathly hush must have silenced that riotous assembly as the eyes of all present followed the king’s terrified gaze to the point high up on the wall where those fingers from another world deliberately traced their message. The brightly burning lamps cast the full brilliancy of their light upon the spot; this was no optical illusion, no trick of shadow and flickering flame. This was reality; there really was something up there, inscribing words of mysterious import. What could it mean? What strange intervention of the gods was this? Faces that a few moments ago had been flushed with wine now took on an unnatural pallor. Women who had been impudently flaunting their charms now drew their robes tightly around them and shivered. And still the hand wrote on.

"MENE; MENE; TEKEL; U‑PHARSIN." The strange inscription stood revealed in its entirety. The hand was gone, but the characters remained, incised deeply into the plaster, written in the wedge‑shaped cuneiform characters of Babylon. "Numbered; Numbered; Weighed; Divided." The words themselves were simple, everyday words; it was the circumstances of their appearance which affected the superstitious pagan king so that his "countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another." (v.6) Perhaps, at last, he had been told of the marvellous happenings that had taken place in the days of his royal grandfather, when the Most High God intervened to save his servants from the fiery furnace, and made the proud king like unto a beast, and restored him again a chastened man. Perhaps, too late, he thought of the Median army outside the city, and of his own father in their power. He looked again at the mystic writing, and shivered.

The customary routine was put into operation. Before long, that motley assembly, the astrologers, the wise men, the soothsayers, were all trooping into the hall to go through the familiar rigmarole. This particular problem should have been well within their province; the explanation of a few words that no one else present could understand would normally have been easy work for these gentlemen. But on this occasion the usual glib exposition was not forthcoming. Verse 8 says that "they could not read the writing," but this can hardly mean that they failed to comprehend a few Babylonian words written in Aramaic. Their normal educational level would have been quite equal to that. What is more likely the meaning of the phrase is that they could "make no sense" of the words themselves and, feeling that there was something behind this occurrence beyond their own understanding, preferred to have nothing to do with the matter. And that put King Belshazzar into a greater panic than he was in before.

It would seem that the hubbub and confusion into which the feast had degenerated came to the ears of the queen, and she made it her business to come in person to the banqueting hall. (v.10). This queen was the wife of Nabonidus, who was the true king at the time, their son Belshazzar having been associated with his father twelve years earlier and given the title of joint king. Nitocris was the younger daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, and it was by reason of her marriage to Nabonidus, who was not of royal blood, that the latter became king. In the days of her childhood she would of course have been closely acquainted with Daniel, some fifteen years her senior, as he attended on her royal father, and the glowing eulogy of Daniel’s wisdom and understanding which is accredited to her in verses 11 and 12 indicates that Nitocris had by no means lost her esteem and respect for her father’s one‑time Chief Minister.

Belshazzar eagerly accepted his mother’s advice, and Daniel was summoned to the palace. For more than twenty years he had been out of public life, and by now was evidently quite unknown at Court. This much is evident by the form of the king’s greeting to Daniel when the aged prophet—now about eighty‑four years of age—at length entered his presence. The first panic had probably subsided, but there would certainly be considerable anxiety mingled with the interest with which the assembled company looked upon this grave and dignified man of God, now standing in their midst.

Did Daniel’s mind go back to that other scene in this same hall, nearly forty years earlier, when it had been his stern duty to proclaim the imminent judgment of God upon a previous king of Babylon; to interpret Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the tree, followed by his royal master’s seven years of madness? But that judgment had been lifted and the king restored to his former glory. This time there would be no restoration; the disease was incurable; this was the end. The hour of doom had struck, and Babylon must surely fall.

The king offered honours to Daniel if he could interpret the writing; he should be "the third ruler in the kingdom." (v.16). This is another unwitting testimony of the accuracy of the narrative, for Nabonidus was first and Belshazzar second in the kingdom, so that to be the third was the highest honour Belshazzar could offer. Quietly and respectfully Daniel indicated that he did not need gifts and rewards as inducement; he would, unconditionally, make known the interpretation. But before doing so, Daniel had something else to say.

"O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father (grandfather) a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour..." (v.18) In measured tones the prophet recapitulated the glory and power that had come to King Nebuchadnezzar, and then told how that when his heart was lifted up in pride, he was deposed, and driven from among men and made to dwell with the beasts, until he learned his lesson and knew that the Most High is the ruler of men and disposer of the affairs of nations. Then came the tremendous accusation "and thou, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this..." (v.22) There was no excuse of ignorance; Daniel found no redeeming feature in the position. The king was guilty, and it remained but to pass sentence. It is significant that when Daniel interpreted the dream of the tree to Nebuchadnezzar he put in a plea for repentance and change of conduct; "it may be a lengthening of thy tranquillity;" (Dan.4:27) but to Belshazzar he addressed no word of hope or advice. He knew that the Divine decree had gone forth and could not be recalled, and he spoke in the light of that knowledge.

Now he turned to the mystic words, still showing up sharp and clear in the lamplight. He needed no supernatural guidance to understand their import and he did not have to retire to prayer to ask for the interpretation. Daniel’s vision of the four world empires pictured by four wild beasts was twelve years in the past and during all those twelve years he had seen the enemy pressing more and more heavily upon Babylon. He knew the inherent weakness and corruption of Babylon and that Nabonidus, a rather indecisive man of over eighty years of age, and Belshazzar, a weak and dissolute monarch, were incapable of defending the empire against the active and war‑like Cyrus. He knew that the enemy troops were outside the city, and the mysterious words glowed with meaning as he looked upon them.

MENE—measured. "God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it." (Dan.5:26) The word in Babylonian commercial usage meant to measure an article and cut it off to a determined length or size, or to measure out an agreed sum of money to conclude a bargain. Here, on this fateful night, the empire of Babylon, the "head of gold" of the image, had run full length and was to be cut off without compunction.

TEKEL—weighed. "Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting." (v.27) A personal word to the king. Daniel had only to look around him at the evidence of the orgy which had been so abruptly interrupted, and reflect that this man should by right have been actively engaged in the defence of his city, to find the right words which fitted this part of the inscription.

PERES. Most readers are puzzled by the appearance of "peres" as the fourth word in v.28 when in v.25 it is given as "upharsin." The explanation is that "peres" is the singular form of the word of which "pharsin" is the plural. The "U" in front of "pharsin" is the conjunction "and" so that the inscription literally read "Numbered, Weighed and Divided." The word "peres" means "division" and the plural from "pharsin" by a play on similar sounding words could be made to sound like the word for "Persians." Hence Daniel was able to say on the basis of this word "Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians." (v.28)

It was probably pure superstition which led Belshazzar immediately to honour his pledge to make Daniel the third ruler in the kingdom. He had flouted and dishonoured the Most High God and now that very God had caused this message to be sent him, this message of immediate and irretrievable disaster. Perhaps if he honoured the prophet of that God and restored him to the position he had occupied in the days of Babylon’s glory, when all the nations rendered submission and tribute, the threatened disaster might even yet be averted. It might be that something of that nature was in the king’s mind. We do not know. We only know that even while these things were being done and said in that brightly lit magnificent palace, the warriors of Media and Persia had gained access to the city in the darkness and were making their way through the streets, ruthlessly beating down such feeble resistance as was being offered by the citizens.

It is said by some scholars that the Hebrew expression in v.30, "In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain" does not demand that his death occurred on the same night as the feast, but only that it was at a time not too far remote. On the other hand, Herodotus and other historians declare that Babylon was captured at a time when the city was given over to feasting, and that Gubaru, the general who actually captured the city—for Cyrus was some distance away at the time—made his way to the palace and slew the king with many of his courtiers. It is very probable therefore that after Daniel had retired from the banqueting hall, and the company had begun to disperse, a swarm of armed men burst in and the last scene of the drama was played out to the end.

It was a long time before Babylon perished altogether. Daniel was yet to serve first a Median and then a Persian king for a few brief years before he was in his turn gathered to his fathers. He was yet to have the joy of seeing his countrymen leave for Judea to restore their native land. Some twenty years later, long after Daniel’s death, Babylon made a final bid for independence under Belshazzar’s younger brother, named Nebuchadnezzar after his illustrious grandfather, but Darius Hystaspes the Persian king laid siege to the city and this time destroyed the towering walls which had been the city’s pride and confidence. Thus were fulfilled the words of Jeremiah, "The broad walls of Babylon shall be utterly broken, and her high gates shall be burned with fire." (Jer.51:58). The river Euphrates changed its course and silted up, and the seagoing merchant vessels could no longer reach the city; two centuries later Seleucus the Greek king built his new city of Seleucia on the Tigris and the commercial importance of Babylon vanished; the citizens gradually drifted away to other homes and by the second century of the Christian era the great city which had called itself "the lady of kingdoms" was reduced to a barren waste of derelict and decaying buildings, the homes of jackals and owls.

"How is the hammer of the whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is Babylon become a desolation among the nations!" (Jer.50:23)

(To be continued) AOH

Note by author, about the Great Hall of the Royal Palace of Babylon

During the period 1970‑1990 the Iraqi authorities at the instigation of Iraqi’s ruler, Saddam Hussein, had been restoring some of the ruins of Babylon to create a tourist attraction; the main hall in which Daniel stood now exists more or less as it was in his day—but without the writing on the wall.