Dan 5:1-4 | KD | STEP | The verses describe the progress of Belshazzar’s magnifying himself against the living Do, whereby the judgment threatened came upon him and his kingdom. A great feast, which the king gave to his officers of state and to his wives, furnished the occasion for this. The name of the king, בּלשׁאצּר, contains in it the two component parts of the name which Daniel had received ( ), but without the interposed E, whereby it is distinguished from it. This distinction is not to be overlooked, although the lxx have done so, and have written the two names, as if they were identical, Balta'sar. The meaning of the name is as yet unknown. לחם, meal-time, the festival . The invitation to a thousand officers of state corresponds to the magnificence of Oriental kings. According to Ctesias ( Athen. Deipnos . iv. 146), 15, 000 men dined daily from the table of the Persian king (cf. ). To account for this large number of guests, it is not necessary to suppose that during the siege of Babylon by Cyrus a multitude of great officers from all parts of the kingdom had fled for refuge to Babylon. The number specified is evidently a round number, i.e., the number of the guests amounted to about a thousand. The words, he drank wine before the thousand (great officers), are not, with Hävernick, to be explained of drinking first, or of preceding them in drinking, or of drinking a toast to them, but are to be understood according to the Oriental custom, by which at great festivals the king sat at a separate table on an elevated place, so that he had the guests before him or opposite to him. The drinking of wine is particularly noticed as the immediate occasion of the wickedness which followed.

‏ Daniel 5:1-4

The verses describe the progress of Belshazzar’s magnifying himself against the living Do, whereby the judgment threatened came upon him and his kingdom. A great feast, which the king gave to his officers of state and to his wives, furnished the occasion for this.

The name of the king, בּלשׁאצּר, contains in it the two component parts of the name which Daniel had received (Dan 1:7), but without the interposed E, whereby it is distinguished from it. This distinction is not to be overlooked, although the lxx have done so, and have written the two names, as if they were identical, Balta'sar. The meaning of the name is as yet unknown. לחם, meal-time, the festival. The invitation to a thousand officers of state corresponds to the magnificence of Oriental kings. According to Ctesias (Athen. Deipnos. iv. 146), 15, 000 men dined daily from the table of the Persian king (cf. Est 1:4). To account for this large number of guests, it is not necessary to suppose that during the siege of Babylon by Cyrus a multitude of great officers from all parts of the kingdom had fled for refuge to Babylon. The number specified is evidently a round number, i.e., the number of the guests amounted to about a thousand. The words, he drank wine before the thousand (great officers), are not, with Hävernick, to be explained of drinking first, or of preceding them in drinking, or of drinking a toast to them, but are to be understood according to the Oriental custom, by which at great festivals the king sat at a separate table on an elevated place, so that he had the guests before him or opposite to him. The drinking of wine is particularly noticed as the immediate occasion of the wickedness which followed. Dan 5:2 חמרא בּטעם, while he tasted the wine, i.e., when the wine was relished by him; thus “in the wanton madness of one excited by wine, Pro 20:1” (Hitz.). From these words it appears that Belshazzar commanded the temple vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem to be brought, not, as Hävernick thinks, for the purpose of seeking, in his anxiety on account of the siege of the city, the favour of the God of the Jews, but to insult this God in the presence of his own gods. The supposition of anxiety on account of the siege does not at all harmonize with the celebration of so riotous a festival. Besides, the vessels are not brought for the purpose of making libations in order to propitiate the God to whom they were consecrated, but, according to the obvious statement of the text, only to drink out of them from the madness of lust. וישׁתּון, that they may drink; before the imperf. expresses the design of the bringing of the vessels. ב שׁתה, to drink out of, as Gen 44:5; Amo 6:6. שׁגלן, the wives of the king; cf. Neh 2:6 with Psa 45:10. לחנן, concubines; this word stands in the Targg. for the Hebr. פּלּגשׁ. The lxx have here, and also at Dan 5:23, omitted mention of the women, according to the custom of the Macedonians, Greeks, and Romans (cf. Herod. Ch. 5:18; Corn. Nep. proem. §6); but Xenophon (Cyr. v. 2. 28) and Curtius (v. 1. 38) expressly declare that among the Babylonians the wives also were present at festivals. Dan 5:3 היכלא denotes the holy place of the temple, the inner apartment of the temple, as at 1Ki 6:3; Eze 41:1. אשׁתּיו for שׁתיו, with אprosthet., cf. Winer, chald. Gr. §23, 1. Dan 5:4

In this verse the expression they drank wine is repeated for the purpose of making manifest the connection between the drinking and the praising of the gods. The wickedness lay in this, that they drank out of the holy vessels of the temple of the God of Israel to glorify (שׁבּח, to praise by the singing of songs) their heathen gods in songs of praise. In doing this they did not only place “Jehovah on a perfect level with their gods” (Hävernick), but raised them above the Lord of heaven, as Daniel (Dan 5:23) charged the king. The carrying away of the temple vessels to Babylon and placing them in the temple of Bel was a sign of the defeat of the God to whom these vessels were consecrated (see under Dan 1:2); the use of these vessels in the drinking of wine at a festival, amid the singing of songs in praise of the gods, was accordingly a celebrating of these gods as victorious over the God of Israel. And it was not a spirit of hostility aroused against the Jews which gave occasion, as Kranichfeld has well remarked, to this celebration of the victory of his god; but, as the narrative informs us, it was the reckless madness of the drunken king and of his drunken guests (cf. Dan 5:2) during the festival which led them to think of the God of the Jews, whom they supposed they had subdued along with His people, although He had by repeated miracles forced the heathen world-rulers to recognise His omnipotence (cf. Dan 2:47; 3:32f., 4:14 [Dan 4:17], 31 [34], 34 [37]). In the disregard of these revelations consisted, as Daniel represents to Belshazzar (cf. Dan 5:18), the dishonour done to the Lord of heaven, although these vessels of the sanctuary might have been profaned merely by using them as common drinking vessels, or they might have been used also in religious libations as vessels consecrated to the gods, of which the text makes no mention, although the singing of songs to the praise of the gods along with the drinking makes the offering of libations very probable. The six predicates of the gods are divided by the copula וinto two classes: gold and silver - brass, iron, wood and stone, in order to represent before the eyes in an advancing degree the vanity of these gods.The warning signs, the astonishment of Belshazzar, the inability of the wise men to give counsel, and the advice of the queen. Dan 5:4

Unexpectedly and suddenly the wanton mad revelry of the king and his guests was brought to a close amid terror by means of a warning sign. The king saw the finger of a man’s hand writing on the plaster of the wall of the festival chamber, and he was so alarmed that his whole body shook. The בּהּ־שׁעתא places the sign in immediate connection with the drinking and the praising of the gods. The translation, in the self-same hour, is already shown to be inadmissible (see under Dan 3:6). The Kethiv נפקוּ (came forth) is not to be rejected as the indefinite determination of the subject, because the subject follows after it; the Keri נפקה is to be rejected, because, though it suits the gender, it does not in respect of number accord with the subject following. The king does not see the whole hand, but only ידא פּס, the end of the hand, that is, the fingers which write. This immediately awakened the thought that the writing was by a supernatural being, and alarmed the king out of his intoxication. The fingers wrote on the plaster of the wall over against the candlestick which stood on the table at which the king sat, and which reflected its light perceptibly on the white wall opposite, so that the fingers writing could be distinctly seen. The feast had been prolonged into the darkness of the night, and the wall of the chamber was not wainscotted, but only plastered with lime, as such chambers are found in the palaces of Nimrud and Khorsabad covered over only with mortar (cf. Layard’s Nineveh and Babylon).