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From: Daniel 5:1-6, 13-14, 16-17, 23-28

The Hand Writing on the Wall

[1] King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank
wine in front of the thousand.

[2] Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold
and of silver which Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Je-
rusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines
might drink from them. [3] Then they brought in the golden and silver vessels
which had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem; and
the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. [4] They
drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and
stone.

[5] Immediately the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of
the wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand; and the king saw the hand
as it wrote. [6] Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his
limbs gave way, and his knees knocked together.

Daniel interprets the handwriting

[13] Then Daniel was brought in before the king. The king said to Daniel, “You
are that Daniel one of the exiles of Judah, whom the king my father brought from
Judah. [14] I have heard of you that the spirit of the holy gods is in you, and that
light and understanding and excellent wisdom are found in you. [16] But I have
heard that you can give interpretations and solve 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.”

[17] Then Daniel answered 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. [...] [23] But you have lifted up yourself
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, of 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.

[24] “Then from his presence the hand was sent and this writing was inscribed.
[25] And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PAR-
SIN. [26] This is the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the
days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; [27] TEKEL, you have been
weighed in the balances and found wanting; [28] PERES, your kingdom is divi-
ded and given to the Medes and Persians.”

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Commentary:

5:1-30. The structure here is similar to that of chapters 1 and 2, which focused
on Daniel as an interpreter of dreams; here it is not a dream but a vision. First
comes an account of the king’s vision (vv. 1-12), then Daniel’s interpretation (vv.
13-28), and finally the king’s reaction, and the events that prove Daniel right. The
author uses considerable artistic licence in his references to the historical con-
text: Belshazzar was not Nebuchadnezzar’s son (v. 11), nor did Darius the Mede
succeed Belshazzar (6:1); cf. “Introduction”, pp. 794f, above. But by depicting
Belshazzar as Nebuchadnezzar’s son, the sacred writer creates a link with the
previous chapter and is able to explain the disappearance, by divine decree, of
the empire, that is, the statue’s golden head (cf. 2:38). The dependence of this
on the previous chapter, to which it refers (cf. 4:5 and 5:11-12, 18-21), suggests
that it is designed to round off the earlier one by showing Daniel’s connection
with the last king of Babylon (according to the book itself, that is—not in real life).
The story illustrates, also, what was said in 1:17—that Daniel “had understanding
in all visions and dreams”. It is a gift that he makes available to the sacrilegious
king, in the hope of changing his heart.

5:1-12. The sacrilege committed by the king and his court, and their idolatry, too,
make this Belshazzar a sort of symbol of Antiochus Epiphanes, the king who
sacked the temple and looted its sacred vessels (cf. 1 Mac 1:20-24; 2 Mac 5:11-
16). The hand that writes on the wall, a sign of the living God (vv. 4-5), is some-
thing quite different from the pagan idols, which are incapable of movement. It is
surprising that the king did not consult Daniel earlier (vv. 7-8), given that he was
the official chief astrologer (v. 11). However, the sacred writer tells the story as
he does, in order to highlight, once again, the superiority of Daniel’s wisdom over
that of all the wise men of Babylon and all their magic arts. Daniel’s gift is seen
by this polytheistic people as a spirit of a god which makes Daniel like the gods.

5:13-28. The king is ready to believe in Daniel’s supernatural powers, and offers
him great rewards to use them on his behalf (vv. 14-16); but Daniel makes it clear
that he never acts for personal gain. He is ready to interpret the writing on the wall,
but he wants the king to acknowledge the Most High God, as his father had to do
when misfortune overtook him (vv. 18-21). Therefore, he plainly tells the king what
his sin has been (vv. 22-23) and reveals to him the sentence that God has passed
— in other words, the meaning of the writing on the wall (vv. 24-28).

Four words were written by the mysterious hand according to the Masoretic text
(which repeats the first word). They are the names of Eastern measures and coins
— the mina, the shekel and the half-mina or “paras”. In his interpretation, Daniel
links them to three verbs that sound like them—the verb “manah”, meaning to mea-
sure; “saqal”, to weigh; and “paras”, to divide. The last of the words in the Maso-
retic text is the plural (”parsim”), so that it sounds like “Persians” in Aramaic.
And so, by this play on words, the end of the Babylonian empire and the arrival
of the Persians is announced.

This sentence is passed on Belshazzar not only because he failed to glorify the
God who gave him life (v. 23) but because he showed him disrespect through the
sacrilegious use of the sacred vessels. Theodoret of Cyrus, commenting on v. 23,
points out that Daniel “teaches them that they should worship the Lord God, not
the things that they can see. Therefore, he denounces the vanity of the king, and
tells him that the invisible God holds the high heavens in his sway. ‘You,’ he says
to the king, ‘you have not humbled your heart, nor seen the greatness of the heart
of heaven, who is God and Lord of everything that is. If you had not been blinded
by your pride, you would not have taken the vessels of the Lord from his temple’”
“Interpretatio in Danielem”, 5, 23).

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Source: “The Navarre Bible: Text and Commentaries”. Biblical text from the
Revised Standard Version and New Vulgate. Commentaries by members of
the Faculty of Theology, University of Navarre, Spain.

Published by Four Courts Press, Kill Lane, Blackrock, Co. Dublin, Ireland, and
by Scepter Publishers in the United States.