ch.
5
BELSHAZZAR’S FEAST (vs. 1-31)
In regard to this chapter the
peculiar state of the Septuagint text has to be
noted. At the beginning of the chapter there are three verses
which seem to
be
either variant versions of the Septuagint text, or versions of a text which
was
different from that from which the Septuagint has been drawn.
Throughout the chapter, further,
there are traces of doublets. Most of these
variations occur in the Syriac of Paulus Tellensis.
1 “Belshazzar
the king made a great feast to a thousand of his
lords, and drank wine before the thousand.” As we have just indicated,
there are two versions in the Septuagint of several verses in
this chapter,
and
the verse before us is one of these. The first of these is “Baltasar
the
king made a great feast on the day of the dedication of his palace, and
invited from his lords two thousand men.” The other reading, which
appears to have formed the text, is, “Baltasar
the king made a great feast
for
his companions.” The first version seems to have read the dual instead
of
the singular — a proof of the state of the language, for the dual has
practically disappeared in the Targums. The
second version has evidently
read ˆ הברין instead
of רברבין.
Theodotion reads, “Baltasar the king
made a great feast to thousands of his lords, and drank wine before the
thousands.” The Peshitta agrees with the Massoretic text. The numeral is
thus omitted in the text of the Septuagint,inserted
in the dual in the margin,
and
appears in Theodotion in the plural. As the shortest
text is also the
oldest, and omits the numeral, we feel inclined to do so also,
the more so
as
the numeral may have resulted from אַעּלּפ (aluph) being put as the
interpretation of רברב (rabrab). The clause in the marginal version,
“on
the
day of the dedication of his palace,” or, as it is rendered by Paulus
Telleusis, “in the day of the dedication of the house of his
kingdom,” is
worthy of notice. From the fact that early in his reign every Ninevite king
seems to have begun a palace, this statement has a great deal of
verisimilitude. The clause in the Massoretic
text, “and drank wine before
the
thousand,” is meaningless, unless as a rhetorical amplification. From
the
fact that only the first clause appears in the text of the Septuagint, the
authenticity of the rest of the verse is rendered doubtful; the more so
that
קובלא (<ARAMAIC>) means “a feast” in Eastern Aramaic, though
not in
Western. It is a possible solution of the presence of the clause
that קבל,
excluded from the text and its place supplied by לחם, was placed in the
margin. לקבל, however, means “before.” If there was also in the margin
אלפא, “thousands,” in the emphatic state; as the translation
into Hebrew
of
רברב (Genesis
36:17, 15 Onkelos). If, further, ˆ
חברין,
“companion,”
appeared as a various reading for רברבין, that would easily
be
read חמר, “wine;” the verb “to drink” would be added to complete
the
sense. We have thus all the elements to produce the different
versions of
the
story of the feast. The fact that in what we regard as the marginal
reading the clause appears quite differently rendered, confirms us
in our
suspicion that the Massoretic text
presents a case of a “doublet.” The
reading which begins the chapter in the Septuagint may be due to
regarding
קבל as the verb “to receive.” The name Belshazzar has been the
occasion
of much controversy. It was regarded as one of the proofs of the non-historicity
of
Daniel that this name occurred at all. We were told
that the last King of Babylon
was
Nabunahid, not Belshazzar.
The
name, however, has turned up in the Mugheir
inscription as the son of Nabunahid, and not
only so, but in a connection that implies
he
was
associated in the government. From the annals
of Nabunahid (2 col.; vide ‘
Beitrage zur As-syriologie,’
Delitzsch and Haupt,
1891-92, pp. 218-221)
we
find that from his seventh to his eleventh year, if not from an earlier to a
later date, Nabunahid was in
retirement in Tema, and “came not to Babil,”
and
the king’s son (Mar Sarri) was with the nobles
(rabuti) snd the
army.
Even when the king’s mother
died, the mourning was carried on by the
king’s sou, Belshazzar.
Dr. Hugo Winckler (‘Geschichte Babyloniens
u.
Assuriens,’ pp. 315, 316) says Nabunahid
remained intentionally far from
the
capital, and abode continually in Tema, a city
otherwise unknown. Not
once at the new year’s feast, where his personal presence was
indispensable, did he come to
but it appears as if he had devoted himself to some kind of
solitary life, and
would not disturb himself with the business of government.
Not once while
Cyrus was marching against
things to take their course. The government appears to have
been carried
on by his son, Bel-shar-utzur,
for while Nabunahid lived in Tema
in
retirement, it is mentioned that his son, with the
dignitaries, managed
affairs in
the concluding prayer, he is named along with his father,
while it is usually
the name of the king that is there mentioned. Belshazzar is, then, no mere
luxurious despot, like the Nabeandel
of Josephus, no incapable youth
flushed with the unexpected dignity of government in the
city of
while his father was shut up in Borsippa;
he is a bold capable warrior.
Tyrannical and imperious he may
be, yet faithful to his father, as had
Nebuchadnezzar been to Nabopolassar his father.
We need not even look
at the identifications of Belshazzar
with Evil-Merodach, with Labasimarduk,
or with Nabunahid. The name Bel-shar-utzur means “Bel
protects
the king,” and is rendered in the Greek versions “Baltasar,” and in the
Vulgate “Baltassar,”
and identical with the name given to Daniel, as we
have remarked elsewhere. In the Peshitta
the name here is rendered “Belitshazar,”
while Daniel’s Babylonian name is “Beletshazzar.”
We do not
know when this feast took place. If we take the Septuagint text
here as our
guide, it did not take place at the capture of the city by
Cyrus. If for five,
six, or seven years he was practically king, Belshazzar may have built a
palace, and the feast may have been held at its dedication.
We knew that
the Babylonians were notorious for their banquets —
banquets that not
infrcquently ended in drunkenness. Although the number of the guests is
doubtful from diplomatic reasons, the number itself is not
excessive. We
read of Alexander the Great having ten thousand guests.
2 “Belshazzar,
whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring
the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had
taken out of the temple which was in
princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.”
The
Septuagint has included the last
clause of the Massoretic recension
of the
first verse, “And he drank wine, and his heart was lifted
up, and he
commanded to bring the vessels of gold and of silver of the
house of God,
which Nebuchadnezzar his father
had brought from
out wine in them for those companions of his (ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς ἑταίροις –
en autois tois hetarois – might
drink from them).” The translator
seems to have regarded the first syllable of the name Belshazzar as a separate
word, and has translated it according to the meaning the word has in Eastern
Aramaic, “heart” (Exodus 12:23, Peshitta). After
this initial mistake — if mistake
it was — the remaining change
was easy. The syntax here, according to the
Massoretic text, is different from what
we should expect. אמר (‘amar), “to say,”
is translated “command” in eight cases in this book, and in
every other case it is
followed immediately by the infinitive’ of the action
commanded. Hence
we are inclined, with the Septuagint, to omit “whiles he
tasted the wine.” While
the Septuagint Aramaic seems to have בהין, “in them,” it has not had “king,”
“wives,” or “concubines.” As the
Septuagint is the shorter, on the whole,
we prefer it, though we maintain the Massoretic
reading of “in them,”
referring to the vessels. Theodotion
and the Peshitta follow the Massoretic
reading. Whether or not the libation offered to the gods
was in the mind of
the writer, the mere fact that
the sacred vessels were used for the purposes
of a common feast was desecration. The addition of the “wives” and
“concubines” adds at once to the degradation in the eyes of
an Eastern, and
to the stately rhetorical cadence of the verse. This
renders all the stronger
the suspicion engendered by the omission of these features
in the
Septuagint. It is to be observed
that the Septuagint translator must have
had an Eastern Aramaic manuscript before him, or he could
never have
translated bal “heart.” At the same time, the
presence of women at
Babylonian feasts was not so uncommon as it was in the rest
of the East, as
we learn from the Ninevite
remains. Certainly Quintus Curtius mentions
this in connection with Alexander’s visit to
obscure Jew likely to know this in
writing in a different age to keep strictly to
verisimilitude in these matters.
Even a contemporary may make a
blunder in writing, not a novel, but a
biography, as Froude, in his
‘Life of Carlyle,’ declares he was “quietly
married in the parish
church in any part of
a contradiction in terms. Yet Froude
had often been in
Carlyle well. Could a Jew living in
as to note every varying feature which distinguished the
habits of
from those of the rest of the East? The question may be
asked why were
the vessels of the Lord in
common use? It might, of course, be that the sacred vessels
of the temples
of the gods of all conquered nationalities were brought in,
and thus that the
singling out of the Jewish sacred vessels was due, not to
the preference of
the Babylonian monarch, but to the Jew, who saw only those.
We think
this can scarcely be. It was certainly the policy of Nabunahid to draw all
worship to
Akkad, which Nabunabid had brought to
their city”). But this would lead him to avoid anything
that would savor of
disrespect to these gods whom he had brought to dwell in
not think it would have been merely the beauty of those
vessels that led to
their desecration, for the temple at
plunderings before the capture of the city, and the period between the
age
of Hezekiah and Zedekiah was not one in which wealth and
artistic talent
were likely to increase. Some suspicion must have reached
the court of
the second Isaiah had reached the knowledge of the
Babylonian police. If
so, the act of Belshazzar was an
act of defiance against Jehovah of Israel.
3 “Then they brought the
golden vessels that were taken
out of the temple of the house of God which was at
king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank
in them.
4 They drank
wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass,
of iron, of wood, and of stone.” The corresponding verses in the
Septuagint differ in several
points from those above; the Septuagint third
verse contains, condensed, the Massoretic
third and fourth verses, but adds
new matter in its fourth verse: “(3) And they were brought,
and they drank
in them, and blessed their idols made with hands; (4) and
the God the
eternal, who hath dominion over their spirit (‘breath,’ πνεῦμα - pneuma),
they did not bless.” In the introductory portion, which
contains, as we think,
marginal readings, we have the second and fourth verses
brought into
connection, “In that day Baltasar,
being uplifted with wine, and boasting
himself, praised in his drink all the gods of the nations,
the molten and the
carved, but to God the
Highest he gave not praise.” The
reading of the
latter portion of this seems better than the text, as it is
briefer; the
description of God as He that has power “over their
breath,” is a
preparation for what we find in v. 23, “and thy breath is in His hand.”
Theodotion is, as usual, much nearer the Massoretic
text, but while the
Massoretic only mentions the “golden” vessels being brought, Theodotion
mentions the silver also, and the verb hanpiqoo
is translated singular, as if
it were hanpayq, and “Nebuchadnezzar” understood. A various reading
adds, “and the God of eternity, who hath power of their
breath, did they
not bless,” according to the Alexandrine and
cases Jerome follows Theodotion.
The Peshitta agrees only in the latter,
putting the verb in the singular. Modern translators, as
Luther and Ewald,
the Authorized and Revised English Versions, retain the
plural, but make
the verb passive, as if it were written honpaqoo.
Calvin alone preserves
both number and voice. The French Version, which makes it
impersonal, is
probably as good as any. It is, however, not impossible
that the true
reading is huphal; that seems
better than Calvin’s suggestion, that what
Nebuchadnezzar had done is now transferred to all the Babylonians. The
praises of the gods being sung was especially natural, if
this were a
dedication of a palace. In such a case the various
elemental deities would
be invoked to bless the residence of the king. The fact that the vessels
belonging to the temple of the God of the Jews were brought
forward from
the treasury of Bel would afford
an occasion for praising Bel, the god who
had given them the victory. While they praised these god,
of the nations,
they did not even mention Jehovah — an addition in the text
of Theodotion
and the Septuagint, both text and margin, and therefore one
that, we think,
ought, in some form, to lie in the text. It is singular
that in the Cyrus Cylinder, 17,
the overthrow of Nabunahid is
attributed to Marduk, “whom Nabunahid
did not
fear.” The reason of Belshazzar
thus ostentatiously praising the gods might be to
get over the reputation of unfaithfulness to the gods,
which was weakening them,
father and son, in their struggle with Cyrus. Belshazzar most likely was, at this
very time, carrying on war against Cyrus. The object of
this festive gathering of his
nobles might be to hearten them in their struggle against
the King of Persia.
The Downward Road (vs. 1-4)
“Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his
lords, and
drank wine before the thousand “(v. 1). The history of the fall of
must form the background of any homiletical
treatment of this chapter (see
the histories; and the Exposition above). The clearing up
of the difficulty of
this portion of Scripture, of the seeming discrepancy
between Daniel’s
statements and the records of secular history, by the
discovery of clay
cylinders, simultaneously by M. Oppert
and Sir Henry Rawlinson in 1854,
is one of the most interesting episodes in the history of
Christian
apologetics; and is eminently suggestive in that line of
things, showing
particularly how easily Biblical mists would be cleared
away if only we
could have at hand all the facts. But we turn here
to the bearing of the
passage on the ordinary life of man.
knowledge. What were the king’s
opportunities of knowing the will of
God? They were more than some
may think, such as ought to have
saved
him from the
degradations of that night. The
parallel with our own position
is clear. Though our advantages
are in degree greater. For Belshazzar there
was:
Ø the witness
of creation.
Ø the open
page of providence. (See v. 22.)
Ø
the voice of that moral nature which is common to
every man.
Ø
the interpretation
of them by the high Chaldean culture; e.g. the
revelation of the glory of God
in the stars of heaven was one that
shone with special clearness on
the Chaldean plain (see Sir G. C.
Lewis’ ‘Astronomy of the
Ancients,’ ch. 5.).
Ø
Special Divine revelations; e.g.:
o
in the interpretation
of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (he had not
been dead twenty-three
years);
o
in the deliverance of
the heroic three, by the presence of the
Saviour in the
fire;
o
by the insanity and
recovery of the king.
Nor must we forget that Belshazzar was not further away from the Divine
than a modern worldling; for in his own realm lived the Church, with
whom lay the oracles of God.
Compare Louis XIV. and the Huguenots.
And enough had been done to
draw attention to these.
that practical atheism (vs. 22-23) which so
often shows itself callously
indifferent to all those serious
considerations which even people of
ordinary prudence entertain
(note: the city at the moment in a state of
siege); and which usually is
associated with epicurean life.
in every other career. The steps
may be different with different sinners; but
there is a gradual descent with all, though it must be admitted that on “that
night” some were taken by the king at lightning speed. The king:
Ø
Ignored all the circumstances of his position. This was indeed
terrible.
For long the Persian lines had
been drawn round the city; engineers had
been turning the river from its
bed. At this hour things were becoming
critical. Facts are stubborn
things, which even a heathen might note.
Ø
Defied
authorities of
neglect of her borders in the
current illegal immigration threat! –
CY – 2014) A false security
THE PRESAGE OF RUIN!
Ø
Sacrificed his own dignity. As king — as man. Not
usual for Babylonian
kings to make themselves the
boon companions of their subjects — even
the highest. We owe respect to
men, as made in the image of God —
rational, moral, immortal, etc.;
but not the less to ourselves.
Ø
Plunged into drunkenness. The lightning leaps
which immediately follow
are to be distinctly assigned to
the drunken condition of the king. Much
may and should be here said on the
intimate relation existing between
moral and spiritual
degradation generally and ALCOHOL, and also on
the close
connection between alcohol and many forms of vice. It is the
root of many vices. (The
writer of these notes feels that educated men
are still the children of
many illusions concerning this powerful chemical
agent; (not to mention drugs! –
CY – 2014)
Ø
Jested with things sacred. Sure mark of a “fool”
in the Bible sense.
“Holy vessels will we have for
such delicious wine,” may the king be
supposed to say. (Matthew Henry
is full and good on this.)
Ø
Violated the decencies of domestic life. The bringing the
harem into the
banquet-chamber was a gross offence against even the Oriental idea
Ø
Insulted God. Drank they out of vessels sacred to Him, unto other gods.
So the indifference of a passive
practical atheism culminates in open defiant
antagonism against God.
Many things will need to be
looked at ere the final ruin of the night comes
up for consideration; but this
is the place specially to observe that it was
the king’s own sin and folly
of that very hour that led STRAIGHT
TO
RUIN! Had the
king and “the lords” been on the alert, not even the
turning of the river from its
bed had laid them at the mercy of the besiegers.
But the revelry incapacitated
them. Sin is its own avenger!
5 “In the same hour came
forth fingers of a man’s hand, and
wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the
wall of the
king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that
wrote.” The
two versions given in the Septuagint here do not seriously
differ from each
other or from the Massoretic
text, only that they both omit “the part of,”
and represent the king as seeing the hand. Theodotion has ajstraga>louv –
astragalous - which maybe rendered finger-joints;
otherwise this version is
very like both the Massoretic and the Septuagint. The Peshitta
presents no point
of remark. The word translated “lamp” (nebhrashta)
became in Talmudic
times the equivalent of menoorah,
“the golden candlestick.” From this it
has been supposed that “the candlestick” was the golden
candlestick which
later proved the crowining glory
of Titus’s triumph, and is still to be seen
carved on his arch. When the other vessels of the house of
the Lord were
brought to deck the table of the monarch, it would not be
unnatural that
the golden candlestick should also be brought. In the great
hall in which a
thousand guests were accommodated, more lamps than one
would be
required. The Septuagint (text) adds, “over against the
king:” this would
individualize the lamp referred to; but there does not seem
to be any
support for this reading, which may be due to the desire to
explain the
satatus emphaticus. Gesenius derives the word נֶבְרַשְׁתָּא from נור, “light,”
and אש, “flame.” As ו as a
consonant was unused in Assyrian, this
derivation is by no means impossible We know that the Ninevite monarchs
surrounded the great halls of their palaces with bas-reliefs
of their
victories. The remains of
gypsum slabs of Kouyounjik. Yet
the Babylonian monarchs not unlikely
followed the same practices as those of
plastered, and then the slabs were moved up to them. In the
case of
Belshazzar, the palace walls might well be fresh; no gypsum slabs had
yet
recorded his prowess. As he looks to the white plaster, the
fingers of a
hand come out of the darkness, and write opposite him. “The
king,” thus it
is in the Massoretic text, saw
the “part”
of the hand that wrote. Pas is the
word. Furst renders it “wrist;” Gesenius, “the extremity;” Winer,
vola
manus,” the hollow of
the hand;” with this Buxtorf agrees. The balance of
meanings seems to be in favor of “hollow of the hand,” only
it is difficult
to understand the position of the hand relatively to the
king when he saw
the hollow of the hand. The smoke from the numerous lamps
would
obscure the roof of the hall of the palace; however
numerous the lamps,
their light would be unable to pierce the darkness, so out
of the darkness
came the hand.
The Writing on the Wall (v. 5)
We have here a declaration of
judgment, the circumstances, form, and
effects of which are full of significance.
JUDGMENT.
Ø
It was in the king’s palace. The guards who may keep off the human
intruder cannot shut out the Divine messenger. Judgment may find
a man in his own home (ch. 4:29; Isaiah 37:38; Luke 12:16-21).
Ø
It was at a time
of pleasure. The intoxication of
pleasure may blind us to
approaching judgment, but cannot stay it. It is foolish to rest our security
on our experience of present
enjoyment. The moment of greatest pleasure
may bring us to the brink of the
deepest ruin.
Ø
It was in the midst of
sinful revelry. Drunkenness, profligacy, and
profanity were rioting at the
feast when the judgment came. So the
sinner is sometimes summoned to judgment in the midst of his sins.
It is a delusion to suppose that
all of us will have good warning and
time for repentance, before we
are called to meet the Judge.
Ø
It was under
circumstances of gross negligence. The enemy was at the
gates; yet the king was reveling in effeminate orgies. Negligence as to
the danger into which our sins
have brought us is itself a sin, and one
which wilt meet with certain,
merited punishment (Jeremiah 6:14;
Matthew 24:38-39).
Ø
It was public. The message was
not given to the king privately. It was
written up on the wall of his
banquet-chamber, in the presence of his
courtiers. Sin may be secret;
but judgment will be public (Luke 12:3;
I Corinthians 4:5).
Ø
It was silent. There was no
awakening trumpet-blast, but a silent hand
writing on the wall. God often
speaks quietly (l Kings 19:11-12). This
method is often the more
impressive to the observing; and until we are
observing, no method is of much
use. It is most fitting in the solemn
declaration of judgment. In
speaking of future punishment, it is most
seemly not to indulge in noisy
declamation, but to use quiet, weighty
words, bordering on awestruck
silence.
Ø
It was decisive. Written words
are more decisive than spoken words.
They are generally more weighed.
They are more enduring. They admit
of more study. Illustrate this
by Pilate’s reference to the superscription
on the cross (John 19:22). Apply
it:
o
to the written Bible;
o
to the written book of
judgment;
o
to the written names
in heaven.
Ø
It was mysterious. The king and
his courtiers and his wise men could
not read the writing. ALL
DOOM is mysterious till it falls. Scriptural
intimations of doom are
generally vague, though terrible. Note in
particular:
o
sinful
indulgence blunts the spiritual sense for discerning
DIVINE
TRUTH;
o
the language of
heaven is an unknown tongue to
THE
GODLESS MAN;
o
God’s revelations to
the heathen need interpretation by His
clearer revelations to His
prophets and apostles.
Ø
It produced terror. The mystery and
supernatural character of the event
alarmed the king and his
courtiers (vs. 6-9).
o
Here is an instance of
the common human weakness in
presence of what appears to
be supernatural — a weakness
which is as
great in the proudest monarch as in the lowest
slave. Before the unseen we are level in our common humanity.
o
The terror was augmented
by guilt. Sin fears to meet the
Spiritual world. (The devils coming out of the tombs asked
Jesus “Art thou come hither to torment
us before the time?”
Matthew 8:29 – CY – 2014)
o
It was deepened by the
surprise of unfamiliarity with the unseen.
Daniel was in frequent
converse with the other world, and could
meet its messages with
calmness. Belshazzar was
buried in
sensuality, and felt the first touch of the spiritual with the
shrinking of
startled horror. What alarm and confusion the
engrossed sensualist will
experience, when AFTER DEATH,
he wakes to his first vision of the spiritual!
Ø
It led to the
introduction of the best counsellor. Daniel
had been
neglected by the dissolute king
in favor of more congenial company.
Now he is sent for. Trouble is
good if it leads to wisdom. Though the
wisdom which comes too late may
only deepen the consciousness of
one’s punishment, it must be
better to meet this intelligently, than with
the blindness of a brute. (II Peter 2:12)
6 “Then the king’s
countenance was changed, and his
thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were
loosed, and
his knees smote one against another.” The Septuagint differs in a
somewhat important degree from the Massoretic
text, “And his
countenance was changed, and fears and thoughts troubled
him.” In this
clause not improbably φόβοι – phoboi – fear - and ὑπόνοιαι – huponoiai -
thoughts - are double
renderings of ˆ רעין. “And the king hasted and rose up, and
looked at that writing, and his
companions round about him (κύκλῳ αὐτοῦ
~ –
kuklo autou – around him)
boasted.” It is clear that the text from which
the
Septuagint had repeated the verb בֶהַל, (bebal), which means
originally “to hasten,”
and had the word “king “after it, if the Septuagint Aramaic were the original, we
can easily understand how the word
repeated might be omitted by bomoioteleutoa.
While קם could
easily be read קט
after the square character
had got place, קמ could
not
in the script of the Egyptian Aramaic papyri be easily read קם consequently we
are inclined to look on the reading of the Septuagint here
as being the
primitive one. The king, according to this verse, saw the
handwriting, but
not
till he rose did he see what was written. This representation of the
succession of events is natural, whereas the statements
about his loins
being loosed is mere amplification. The last clause storms
to be a
misreading of the clause which appears in the Massoretic at the end (which
see). The first word seems to have been misread heberren, and thus a
meaning is violently given to the other parts of the
clause. The probability
is in favor of the Massoretic
reading here, Theodotion and the Peshitta
agree with the Massoretic text. The omen of a hand appearing to write on
the wall of the palace was one that might easily cause
the thoughts of the
king to trouble him. Much more was the omen of importance
when the
king saw that the hand which had appeared to write had
actually left
certain words written. It was but natural that the brightness of the king’s
countenance should depart from him when he saw the hand.
thus awfully
coming out of the darkness, and writing, and that his
knees should smite
one upon another when what was written gleamed upon him
from the wall
before him. He
might well be sure that the message so communicated
would be laden with fate. Fear is naturally the first
emotion occasioned by
any mysterious occurrence; and then
pressed by the advance of Cyrus. If he had any suspicion of
the treachery
that had sapped the power of his father, his apprehensions
would be all the
greater.
7 “The king cried aloud to
bring in the astrologers, the
Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. And the king spake,
and said to the
wise men of
the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet,
and have a
chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler
in the
kingdom.” The Septuagint here also differs from the Massoretic text, “And
the
king cried out with a great cry to call in the (ἐπαοιδοὐς – epaoidous –
enchanters) and (φαρμακοὺς – pharmakous - sorcerers), and Chaldeans, and
soothsayers, to announce to him
the interpretation of the writing, and they came
in
for inspection (ἐπὶ θεωρίαν – epi theorian – look at;
examine), to see the
writing,
And they were not able to make known to the king the interpretation of
the writing. Then the king made commandment,
saying, Any man who shall show
the interpretation of the writing,
he shall put on him a purple robe, and shall put
round his neck a golden chain, and authority shall be given him over a third
part
of the kingdom.” Theodotion is an exact rendering of the Massoretic
text in the
sense represented by the English versions, save that it
wholly omits the
conjunctions between the various classes of wise men, so that Ξαλδαίους –
Chaldaious – Chaldeans - might be
an adjective qualifying either μάγους –
magous – soothsayers or
γαξαρηνούς – gaxaraenous, and the
article is also omitted, which is represented in the Massoretic text by the
status emphaticus. The Peshitta has four classes of
wise men called in; as
the Septuagint has, otherwise it agrees with the Massoretic text. It is a
matter of some interest to observe that the position of the
Chaldeans is
somewhat precarious here, as in the second chapter. They
disappear wholly
from the list in the next verse, which really seems to be
another version of
this. It is a marginal gloss that has crept into the text.
If we accept the
reading of the Septuagint here, so far at least as to
assume the entrance of
the wise men before the king’s declaration of the reward,
the succession of
events becomes more natural. The king calls for the
presence of these
interpreters of omens, and then, when they fail to
interpret the writing to
him, he proclaims his offer of a reward to whoever can do
so. It is to be
noted that there is in the Septuagint no question of
ability to read the
writing, but simply to interpret it. It has been pointed
out to me by a friend
that if these words were written in cuneiform, the signs
that would
represent them might have a great variety of possible
sounds, and with
these differing sounds, differing meanings. Sometimes a
sign was phonetic
and a syllable, sometimes it was idiographic and might
represent a whole
word. There is this to be said for this view — the Assyrian
was the writing
expected in inscriptions. Still, from the fact that the
Septuagint omits the
demand that the inscription should be read, we may regard
the matter as
doubtful. Assuming that the wise men were required to read
the
inscription, some of the Jewish interpreters, as Jephet-ibn-Ali, think that
the letters of the word were inverted; others have it that
the letters were
arranged in columns. Even, however, if the words were
written correctly
enough as Aramaic words, it would be a difficult matter to
put any
meaning in them as they stood, as we shall see when we
consider Daniel’s
interpretation. The reward promised is of special interest.
The word
argvana, translated “scarlet,” appears in Assyrian as argmamm; hamneeka,
the word rendered “necklace,” is of doubtful origin. We
find in the
Ninevite sculptures and on the cylinders from
splendid robes (vide Rawlinson,
‘Five Great Monarchies,’ 560); the rich
necklace is also to be seen (ibid., 2. 497,499). The great
difficulty has
arisen over the rank given to Daniel, “the third ruler in
the kingdom.” The
difficulty is that the ordinal here is not in its usual
form, although
Petermann gives taltu as one
of the forms of the ordinal. There is, further,
the unusual position of the numeral in relation to the
verb, though the
abnormality is less than Professor Bevan
represents it, as the Peshitta
follows word for word the arrangement of the Massoretic text. The truth
seems to be that the word really was toolta,
as in the Syriac, and the
difficulty has risen in not recognizing the transference
from one dialect of
Aramaic to another. It is used
in the Peshitta (II Corinthians 12:2) of
the third heaven. Professor Bevan’s
interpretation, that it means “every
third day,’) may be dismissed as absurd. Ewald (in loc.) regards the title as
one of a board of three — not an impossible meaning, in the
light of what
we find in the following chapter. Yet his reasoning, that
it cannot be third
in rank, because the queen-mother could not be counted in,
is inept now,
when we learn that Belshazzar was
colleague with his father, and so the
third place was all he had to give. On this question Behrmann takes the
view discarded as impossible by Ewald,
and holds that Daniel was placed
third because of the queen-mother. It is one of the
commonplaces of the
criticism of this book that the history ascribed to Daniel
is borrowed from
the history of Joseph: why was the position offered not
made “second,” as
was that of Joseph? We have the reason in what we know of
the history of
facts, and translated as they did.
8 “Then came in all the
king’s wise men: but they could not
read the writing, nor make known to the king the
interpretation
thereof.” As we have already said, the Septuagint here repeats the
list of
wise men. and omits “the Chaldeans.”
If the word “Chaldean” had been in
the text originally, the fact that astrologers were
frequently called
Chaldeans would render it unlikely that the word should be omitted.
Whereas from this very ground it
was a word specially apt to be added on
the margin, and once on the margin it would easily drop
into the text. Even
in the case of the Massoretic
text, there seems to be a repetition here. It is
certainly more obvious in the Septuagint text. The verse
according to the
Septuagint is, “And there
entered in the enchanters, the sorcerers, and the
astrologers, and were not able to announce the
interpretation of the
writing.” Theodotion agrees here
with the received text; the Peshitta omits
“all.” The only way in which we
can escape the idea of this being a
repetition is by holding that the word “all” is emphatic. The
omission of the
word “all” from the Peshitta is
against this. It is to be observed that in the
Septuagint there is no reference
to “reading the writing;” it is only to
announce the interpretation.
9 “Then was King Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his
countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonied.” This
verse presents signs also of being a repetition. The last
clause appears to be
the original form of the mysterious clause at the end of
the sixth verse
according to the Septuagint; the word mishtabsheen,
which occurs here,
seems to have been read mishtabhareen,
from שַׁבְהַר (shab’har), “to be
glorious,” in the ittaphel; this
becomes “to boast one’s self,” as in the
Targum of Proverbs 25:14, also the Peshitta
of the same passage; also
II Corinthians 12:1. And this is the word used by Paulus Tellensis to
translate καυχῶνται – kauchontai – to boast. The
Septuagint has a verse
here that has no equivalent in the Massoretic
text, “Then the king called the
queen about the sign, and showed
her how great it was, and that no one had
been able to declare to the
king the interpretation of the writing.” This verse
avoids the repetition we
find in the Massoretic text, and explains the
presence
of the queen in a much
more plausible way than the received text does. In the
Massoretic text it is the noise and tumult that pierces the women’s
apartments, and brings out the queen-mother; though not
impossible, this is
unlikely. The action of the king, as given in the
Septuagint, is very
probable. The wise men are baffled by this mysteriously
appearing
inscription. What is to be done? Belshazzar
calls his mother, the daughter
of Nebuchadnezzar, as she at
least possibly was, to see if she knows
anything in the past that might be a guide in such a
matter. He not only
shows her the sign, the inscription, but shows how great it
was, by telling
of the hand that had come out of the darkness, and had
written it.
Theodotion and the Peshitta agree with the Massoretic text. While the
repetition is obvious, it is also true that the failure of
all the wise men in
the trouble of the king, and this trouble would naturally
spread to the
courtiers.
Blasted Merriment
(vs. 1-9)
All merriment is not forbidden. Banqueting is not in itself
a sin. Jesus
Christ Himself honored with His presence a marriage
festival, and
contributed, by miracle, the wine for the occasion. On the restoration
of
the
prodigal son, a banquet was prepared, while music and dancing were
the
fitting exponents of the father’s joy. God is not
a foe to rational
pleasure. He gives both the capacity and the occasion
for joyful hilarity.
But when excess of wine inflames the carnal passions,
when it degenerates
into sensuality, extravagance, and profanity, IT IS
A SIN!
·
ROYAL REVELRY. We are
not told what was the occasion of this
banquet. Possibly it was to celebrate the anniversary of the
king’s
accession; or else an annual festival in honor of
Ø It was an unseasonable banquet. The foe was already besieging the city.
Belshazzar
was presuming that
their
supplies could last for an indefinite period. There is a time to be
merry,
but there’s also a time for fasting and penitence. The man is a fool
who
cannot be serious at fitting times. Gravity is more seemly than gaiety
when
disaster occurs. He is a doomed man who will not listen when God
speaks
with voice of thunder. But he shall hear.
Ø The revelry proceeded to the extreme of self-abandonment. Wisdom,
dignity, good
sense, decorum, reason, were all drowned in the depths of
the wine-cup. The king led the way to extravagance, revelry, folly,
debauchry. He who should have been a guide to virtue, and a pattern of
propriety,
uses his high influence to
pervert and to pollute men. Belshazzar
alone is
mentioned as the leader of these bacchanalian orgies. All
manliness
and
nobleness were
sacrificed at that foul shrine of pleasure.
Ø Excess led to wanton profanity and sacrilege. We do not attempt to
measure
the sin of these Oriental lords by the standard of modern
refinement
or modern religious belief; but judged only by the standard of
public
conscience prevailing in that age, they
stand censured and
condemned.
The ancient nations,
however strong their attachment to their
peculiar
deities, allowed other peoples to worship their chosen gods, and
held it
to be the grossest sin to lay violent hands on. temple
furniture,
Throughout the
long reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the gold and silver
vessels
of
Jehovah’s temple had been scrupulously preserved; and the captive
Hebrews had
always cherished the hope that these precious vessels would
again
adorn the temple in
probably
eighteen years, he, too, had not ventured to secularize these
sacred
things. Nor do we think he would have done so now unless he had
been madly inflamed with wine. Sensuality is twin-sister to impiety.
·
AN ALARMING OMEN. It
came in the form of writing. God might
have chosen other signs to betoken His displeasure. An
earthquake might
have shaken the palace to the ground, and buried these revellers in the
dust. Fire from the seven-branched candlestick might have
streamed forth,
and consumed both king and guests. A voice of thunder might
have
announced, in unmistakable tones, Jehovah’s anger. But this unveiling
of
His presence and His
indignation implies the calm and
undisturbed
patience with which God proceeds. The kings of
for writing grave decrees. God will show them that a mightier King than
they
is upon the scene, and that he too can write decrees in the
sight of all. And
there was an element of kindness mingled with this judgment. It
did not
proceed with summary and overwhelming suddenness. Though
destruction
was near at hand, there was yet time for repentance. But why
should king
and courtiers be so terrified? Why should they conclude that
the portent
was unfavorable? Perhaps it was an indication of approaching
conquest:
tidings that the siege should be raised? Why tremble? What cowardice is
here? Why
is conscience lashing them with thongs, and afflicting them with
such strange alarms? They have just been praising their gods of
silver and
stone. Will not these protect them now, and recompense
their homage with
good things? Alas! a
sense of sin has fastened itself on them. Self-accusation
has sent its fangs into their inmost souls. In a moment they
are
like dead men. After all, justice slumbereth
not. “Verily,
there is a God in
the earth!”
·
IMPOTENT PRIESTCRAFT.
The astrologers and soothsayers are
summoned to the scene. These were the royal counselors in matters
of
religion, and professed to know the secrets of the gods. They had
been
maintained at the king’s expense, and surely should render some
proper
service in return. But in the hour of urgent need these false
supports fail.
Ah! better
not to lean upon a staff than to lean upon a rotten staff! Better
not to trust to a cable in a storm than to have a cable with a
faulty link!
Every scheme which the king can
devise to stimulate these men to attempt
the solution is done; but in vain. He does not upbraid them
with their
empty pretentiousness. He tempts them with fascinating bribes.
They shall
be raised to affluence and to honor if only they will relieve
the king from
this scare of terror. Yet the “oracles are dumb.” Stricken with
feebleness
and silence are all the votaries of idolatry. False religion may serve some
temporary advantage as an instrument of worldly government; but when
a
storm of Divine anger beads upon a man, no refuge nor
retreat can false
faith furnish. When sharp
disease invades the vital parts of the body, it is of
unspeakable importance that the medicine should have genuine virtue.
But
no comparison can fitly set forth the moment, the urgency of
having sterling
piety. To be deceived in matters of the soul is to IMPERIL
EVERYTHING
— is to lose body and soul
everlastingly.
10 “Now the queen, by
reason of the words of the king and
his lords, came into the banquet-house: and the queen spake and said,
O king, live for ever; let
not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy
countenance be changed:
11 There
is a man in thy kingdom in whom is
the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father
light and
understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was
found in
him; whom the King Nebuchadnezzar
thy father, the king, I say, thy
father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and
soothsayers; 12 “Forasmuch as an
excellent spirit, and knowledge, and
understanding, interpreting of dreams, and showing of hard
sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same
Daniel,
whom the king named Belteshazzar:
now let Daniel be called, and he
will show the interpretation.” No one can fail to feel the presence of
rhetoric here, especially in the last verse, which, we may
remark, has no
equivalent in the Septuagint. We see the rhetorical
character of these
verses more clearly when we consider the ineptitude of the
special powers
ascribed to Daniel to meet the present difficulty.
Interpretation of dreams
was a common attribute ascribed to wisdom in the East of
old, as it is yet.
But this was not a dream, and
therefore the qualification was not to the
purpose; still less to the purpose are the attributes that
follow. Showing of
hard
sentences. Giving riddles that nobody
could read was an evidence of
wisdom all over the East (see Josephus, 8:5. 3; besides
Talmudic stories of
Solomon). This, however, is not a case of competition in
riddles; above all,
there is no opportunity of one giving riddles in return. “Dissolving
of
doubts” is the
solving of these riddles. These qualities, which the queen-
mother, according to the Massoretic
text, ascribes to Daniel, might make
him delightful as a boon companion, but were not at all to
the purpose in
the matter troubling the king. The version of the
Septuagint is much
briefer, and, it seems to us, much more satisfactory, “Then
the queen
reminded him concerning Daniel, who was of the captivity of
said to the king, The man was understanding, wise, and
excelling all the
wise men of
the
king thy father, he showed t (ὑπέρογκα – huperogka - difficult)
interpretations to Nebuchadnezzar
thy father.” This has every sign of having
been translated; thus the phrase, Ἐμνήσθη πρὸς
αὐτὸν περὶ
τοῦ Δανιήλ –
Emnaesthae pros auton peri tou Daniael
-, which we have
rendered, reminded
him concerning Daniel. This use of πρὸς – pros –
beside;
above – after μιμνήσκω – mimnaesko – remind; put in memory - is unknown
in classic Greek. In Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ it is accusative of
person; in Plato, ‘Laches,’
200 D, it is dative of person; in ‘Legg.,’ 3:688, it is
accusative of person. It is,
however, exactly parallel with Genesis 40:14, Μνησθήσῃ περὶ
ἐμοῦ πρὸς Φαραὼ -
Mnaesthaesae peri emou pros Pharao – make mention
of me before Pharaoh. Πρὸς represents אֶל, in
the Hebrew; in the Targum of
Onkelos and in the Peshitta this is
translated by קְדָם; in Paulus Tellensis
it is
rendered
by ל. Moreover,
according to the Massoretic text, Belshazzar
asks Daniel
if he–is “that Daniel
which art of the captivity of the children of
king my father brought out of Jewry?” The queen-mother had said
nothing,
according to the verses before us as given in the Massoretic recension, of
Daniel being a Jew. According to
the Septuagint, the queen-mother tells
him whence Daniel is. Theodotion
agrees with the Massoretic text, save
that it inserts “watchfulness” instead of “light,” and
omits the repetition of
“thy father.” The Peshitta is
also substantially at one with our received text.
One of the great difficulties which commentators have found
in this part of
the incident is how Belshazzar
could be ignorant of Daniel. Various means
have been adopted to get over the difficulty. One is that
Daniel was away
from
he must have known about him. The explanation of this is as
recumbent on
the opponents of the authenticity of Daniel as on its
defenders, for they —
the latter — declare it the work of one author, and it has
had powerful
effect on people: it must be artistically written if it is
not a record of facts.
No artist in fictitious narrative
would present to his readers so obvious a
difficulty. We learn now what was the probable reason of Belshazzar’s
ignorance of Daniel. Nabunahid, a
usurper, was at variance with the whole
clergy, as we may call them, of
the others, and possibly, as far back as the revolution in
which Evil-Merodach
perished, had been away from the court. It is the height of
unfairness of any one to press the name here given to Nebuchadnezzar,
“my father.” That
title was very loosely used among the Babylonians and
Assyrians. Jehu is called “the
son of Omri,” although he had swept the race
of Omri off the face of the
earth. So Dr. hugo Winckler,
in his ‘
Untersuchungen zur Attorientalischen
Geschichte,’ p. 53, note, says, “This
word ‘son’ after the name of a Chaldean
prince, is only to be taken in the
sense of belonging to the same dynasty.” Had the phrase
used been that
“Nebuchadnezzar
slept with his fathers, and Belshazzar his son
reigned in
his stead,” something might have been said for the view
maintained by all
critics, that the author thought Belshazzar
the son of Nebuchadnezzar.
How can the critics assert this,
and yet, as does Professor Bevan, maintain
this author intimate even with the minutest portions of
Jeremiah, Kings,
and Chronicles? If so, how is it that he did not know that
both Kings and
Jeremiah asserted Nebuchadnezzar to have been succeeded by Evil-
Merodach? This information occupies too prominent a place in both
books
for him to have been ignorant of it. We can only understand
his action in
thus putting down Belshazzar as
the son of Nebuchadnezzar by assuming
his acceptance of usage. The critics cannot explain it.
Those who maintain
the traditional view may do so by saying that Daniel,
writing at the time,
knowing the real state of matters, the claim of Belshazzar to be descended
from Nebuchadnezzar, the fact
that Evil-Merodach had been killed, simply
relates facts. Had he been inventing history, and
acquainted with the holy
books, and all the information they conveyed to everybody,
he would of
necessity have spent some pains in explaining how his
history came to
differ so much from what one could draw from the Books of
Kings and
Jeremiah. The two accounts of
Saul’s meeting with David are not
comparable with this, as we find the reason of the
contradiction in the
coalescence of two different accounts.
The
Representative of God (vs. 11-12)
“There is a man in thy kingdom, in
whom is the spirit of the holy gods” (v. 11).
·
SOME OF HIS CHARACTERISTICS.
Ø
Intelligence.
“Light, understanding, wisdom” (v. 11).
Ø
Excellence of spirit. (v. 12.)
Ø
Faculty. (v. 12.)
Ø
Experience. Some achievement (v. 12).
Ø
The indwelling of the Divine Spirit. (v. 11.)
·
A POSSIBLE POSITION.
Ø
Comparative obscurity.
Ø Even after years of distinguished service.
·
THE CERTAIN CALL.
When God wants a man, He is sure to call (by
providence, by His Spirit); and when He calls, man must answer. .
13 “Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the
king spake and said unto Daniel,
Art thou that Daniel, which art of
the children of the captivity of
brought out of Jewry? 14 I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the
gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and
excellent
wisdom is found in thee.
15 And
now the wise men, the astrologers, have
been brought in before me, that they should read this
writing, and
make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but they
could not
show the interpretation of the thing; 16 And
I have heard of thee, that
thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts; now
if thou
canst read the writing, and make known to me the
interpretation
thereof, thou shalt be clothed
with scarlet, and have a chain of gold
about thy neck, and shalt be the
third ruler in the kingdom.” There is a
great deal of rhetoric in this, and the attempt to restore
the stately etiquette
of the Babylonian court. The king is represented as
repeating very much
what his mother had told him. It is to be observed that,
although the queen
mother — as the Massoretic text
records her words — has not spoken a
word of Daniel’s origin, and implies that Belshazzar knew nothing of him,
yet when he comes, Belshazzar
addresses him as knowing who and whence
he is. The suspicion that is engendered by the mere reading
of the text as
we have it is confirmed by a study of the Septuagint text,
where these four
verses shrink into very modest dimensions, “Then Daniel was
brought to
the king, and the king answered and said, O Daniel, art
thou able to show
me the interpretation of the writing? and I will clothe
thee with purple, and
put a gold chain about thy neck, and thou shalt have authority over a third
part of my kingdom.” The brevity of this, the utter want of
rhetoric, not to
speak of its dramatic verisimilitude to the speech of a man
beside himself
with terror, make it the more probable text. Condensation
was rarely the
work of a falsarius; he
might omit statements that were antagonistic to
some preconceived notion, or, if only a leaf or so remained
of a parchment
otherwise filled up, he might endeavor to utilize the space
left him by
putting down as much as he could of some work he valued.
Then, in such a
case, a copyist might really condense. But neither of these
causes can
explain the omission of the rhetorical passages here. We
are compelled,
then, to regard the text behind the Septuagint in this
place as the true
Daniel. Theodotion,
while on the whole agreeing with the text of the
Massoretes, is briefer in some respects. There is one addition, the
insertion
of “magicians” between “wise men and “astrologers. This
shows the
process of the evolution of the Massoretic
text. The Peshitta, though but
little, if at all, later than Theodotion,
is in yet closer agreement with the
text of the Massoretes. Yet the Massoretic text shows certain peculiarities.
The presence of נ, in the second personal pronoun, which was disappearing
from Targumic, but is regularly
found in Daniel, is to be observed. Further,
there is אב with
the suffix of the first person, which is not Targumic,
but is
found in the Sindschirli
inscription. In the Targums it is אבא,
not אבי, as
in Genesis 9:34, Onkelos. Eastern
Aramaic retained it, as may be seen
in the Peshitta Version of the
passage before us, and of that to which we
have referred. This is another of the many slight
indications which all point
to the Eastern origin of the Book or’ Daniel. It may be
observed that we
have not here תַּלְתִּי (tal’ti), but תַּלְתָּא (tal’ta). This
is regarded by
Behrmann as status empbaticus. The
king in his terror makes appeal to one
who, perhaps, had been dismissed the court on suspicion of
being opposed
to the new dynasty. That dynasty had displaced and murdered
Evil-
Merodach, the son of Daniel’s old master, and one who had shown
himself
specially favorable to the Jews. As the text of the
Septuagint gives the
narrative, we have the king eager to have his terrors laid,
and, to lead this
opponent, whom his father, if not also Neriglissatr,
had displaced, and put
in opposition to his rule, to look favorably on him, he
mentions the
reward he offers.
Good Counsel in
Perplexity (vs. 1-16)
One had abstained from that scene of insane revelry, and
she alone in the
royal household was competent to take the helm amid the
consternation
and
panic. Possibly the king had declined to invite her to the carousal; he
did
not, however, decline to receive her judicious counsel. This queen (or
queen-mother) was by far the worthier sovereign, and now
used the regal
power with regal skill.
·
TRUE WISDOM TREASURES UP THE EXPERIENCE OF THE
PAST, If we condemn the spendthrift,
who has never learned the value of
money, and only wastes it upon trifles, much more must we
condemn the
man who throws thoughtlessly away the lessons taught by history
and
experience. Whether
we know it or not, we are responsible for the right
use of the past. “A burnt child dreads the fire.” A sensible
navigator will
avoid the hidden reefs on which former mariners have suffered
shipwreck.
If our father has found a wise
and worthy friend, we shall be fools if we do
not trust him too.
·
TRUE WISDOM IS
been elevated, for his virtues, to the chief place among the
magicians; and
if, after the death of Nebuchadnezzar,
Daniel was consigned to obscurity,
we can attribute it to nothing else than sheer prejudice. He
was a foreigner
— of
the number of the Jewish captives — therefore whatever his
goodness or skill, he must be degraded. So prejudice robbed the
king of an
able and worthy statesman. But the wisdom of the queen
advocated that
the services of this injured man should again be sought. The
occasion was
precisely such a one in which his skill was priceless. No matter
what his
origin, or nationality, or outward condition, if he have superior
wisdom or
prudence, he is the man for the publie crisis.
There is a littleness and a
meanness about prejudice that genuine wisdom cannot endure.
·
TRUE WISDOM GAINS HER ENDS AT LAST. She has often to
hide her head for a time, while Folly is jingling her bells and
is making a
blustering noise; but her occasion is sure to come. Her voice will prevail at
last, and men will
chide themselves bitterly that they had not followed her
counsels at an earlier day. Wisdom is always patient, because she
knows
that, sooner or later, her presence will be sought and her
guidance
followed. Belshazzar had “sown
the wind;” now he was “reaping the
whirlwind;” and, dismayed
with the menacing storm, he became a docile
pupil of Wisdom. Without hesitation or delay, he sent for the
counselor
whom he had long neglected, and confessed his need of the
prophet’s
service. Even the king is dependent on his subjects for a thousand
things.
Supercilious pride is the sure forerunner of disaster.
The Dissolving of Doubt (v.
16)
“I have heard of
thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve
doubts,” etc. A
most important subject (not growing exegetically out of the
passage, nevertheless) is suggested by the text, which is
admirably treated
by Horace Bushnell, in ‘Sermons on Living Subjects.’ For
the sake of any
who may not have access to the book, we give a brief
outline, for the most
part in Bushnell’s words.
and illustrated at considerable
length. “Science puts everything in question,
and literature distils the
questions, making an ATMOSPHERE of them.”
(In the 21st century the media [equivalent to Belshassar’s
soothsayers,
Astrologers,
magicians, lords, etc.] is constantly STIRRING AND
CONTAMINATING this atmosphere! - CY – 2014)
but always of the
want of it.” (“Ever
learning, and never able to come
to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood
Moses, so do these
also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds,
reprobate
concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further:
for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.” -
II Timothy 3:7-9)
Ø
All the truths of religion are inherently dubitable. They are the subjects
of moral evidence, not of
absolute demonstration.
Ø We begin life
as unknowing creatures that have everything to learn.
Ø
Our faculty is itself disorder; e.g. a bent telescope; a filthy window.
hide her head for a time, while Folly is jingling her bells and is making a
blustering
noise; but her
occasion IS SURE TO COME. Her voice
will
prevail at last, and men will chide themselves
bitterly that they had not
followed her counsels at an earlier day. Wisdom is always patient, because
she knows that, sooner or later, her presence will be sought and her
guidance
followed. Belshazzar
had “sown the wind;” now he was “reaping the
whirlwind” (Hosea 8:7); and, dismayed with the menacing storm, he
became
a docile pupil of Wisdom.
Without hesitation or delay, he sent for the
counselor whom he had long
neglected, and confessed his need of the
prophet’s service. Even the king
is dependent on his subjects for a
thousand things. Supercilious pride is THE SURE FORERUNNER
OF DISASTER!
.
Ø
Counsel negative.
Not “by inquiry, search, investigation, or
any kind of
speculative endeavor. Men must
never go after the truth to merely find it,
but to practice it and live by
it.”
Ø
Counsel positive. Bushnell asserts and
illustrates at length that man has
universally the absolute idea
of right and its correlative wrong; and then
enforces, with power and
manifoldness of illumination, this: “Say nothing
of investigation till you have
made sure of being grounded everlastingly,
and’ with a completely whole
intent, in the principle of right doing as a
principle.” (No condensation can give any idea of the grasp and fullness
with which this is exhibited and
applied.)
meaning will rapidly clear all
tormenting questions and difficulties. They
are not all gone, but they
are going.” “The ship is launched; he is gone to
sea, and has the needle on
board.”
Ø Be never
afraid of doubt.
Ø Be afraid of
all sophistries and tricks and strifes of
disingenuous
argument.
Ø Getting into
any scornful way is fatal.
Ø Never settle
upon any thing as true, because it is
safer to hold it than
not.
Ø Have it as a
law never to put force on the mind or try to make it
believe. It spoils the mind’s integrity.
Ø Never be in a hurry to believe; never try to conquer doubts against
time. “One of the greatest talents in religious discovery is the
finding how
to hang up questions and let
them hang without being at all anxious about
them What seemed perfectly
insoluble will clear itself in a wondrous
revelation.” And here is a
thought: “It will not hurt you, nor hurt the truth,
if you should have some few
questions left to be carried on with you when
you go hence, for in that more
luminous state, most likely they will soon be
cleared, only a thousand
others will be springing up even there, and you
will go on dissolving still your
new sets of questions, and growing mightier
and more
deep-seeing for eternal ages.”
17 “Then Daniel answered
and said before the king, Let
thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another;
yet I will read
the writing unto the king, and make known to him the
interpretation.”
The Crisis of Waking (vs.
5-17)
“Then was Daniel
brought in before the king” (v. 13).
In introducing the
present subject the following features and incidents of the
history need
vivid and powerful setting: suddenness of the apparition —
only fingers
writing — in ancient Hebrew characters (same as those of the two Sinaitic
tables) — on the
plain plaster over against the candlestick — seen by its
light — the effect upon the king, pale, trembling, sobered
(he will not die
drunk) — a great cry for help — why “third ruler”? (Belshazzar co-regent
with his father Nabonadius) —
inability of the magi — consternation and
confusion of the assembly — Daniel still in the king’s
employ, but probably
in some obscure position (ch.
8:1, 27) — appearance of the queen
mother on the scene — Daniel called — the advent of the
seer, now more
than eighty — had been
sixty-eight years in
tremendous scene, with a background of night, through which
seen
obscurely the action of the besieging army.
somewhat hazardous to make a
universal affirmative; but all we know of
God and his dealings with men justifies
us in asserting that, sooner or later,
God effectually awakens every
sinner to his own condition and the Divine
claim. (“For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared
to all men.” - Titus 2:11)
Ø The means.
o
Words from God. Give
breadth to the contents of this phrase, whilst
insisting on the fact that God
oft appeals to sinners by giving a new
setting and power to Scripture
words. The truth is to be impressed
that He speaks variously to men
— by aspects of nature, providence, etc.
o
Accompanied by some evidence of the Divine. Along with the mystic
characters the king saw “the
fingers,” but only the fingers.
o
But not all that
would be possible. The hand, the arm, the whole form
of the agent writing might have
been discovered. The effect over-
whelming. But, no! This ever like God in all His
dealings. No evidence
of the Divine so overpowering as
to shut the mind up to one irresistible
conclusion. Nothing like mathematical demonstration. If
so, where were
the moral elements? This is
nevertheless what sinners ask, and what God
will not, cannot (respecting man’s moral nature) grant.
o
Coming with
impressive undemonstrativeness. No vain show, or
noise,
or thunder, or lightning; no
flaming sword! Only writing! “A still, small
voice!” (I
Kings 19:12)
Ø
The immediate effect. Note:
o
What it was. Terror.
o
Why it was. Nothing in the writing to alarm, so long as uninterpreted.
The reason lay there in the
king’s own conscience. God set His own
thoughts against the king.
o
The final end. Not necessarily judgment; the rather mercy. Nor do we
know the warning wasted. Many
who began the night in revelry may have
been awed to penitence and
prayer ere they slept the sleep that knows no
waking.
INCOMPETENT. To look at matters in the light of modern experience,
we may observe that the king
fled for help to the scientists real or
pretended. The following
propositions may well be insisted on in our time:
o
Scientists fall into three classes.
§
Those acquainted
with things material.
§
Mental — things of the ψυχή - psuchae (psyche).
§
Moral, spiritual — things of the πνεῦμα – pneuma - spirit.
This
classification may not be philosophically perfect, but can be
understood by the people;”
and is sufficient.
o
A false science is useless. Such was much of the
magian learning.
o
A true science avails only in its own sphere. A competent leader
in
natural philosophy or in
psychology may be of no use in dealing with a
conscience
awakened and alarmed. Disregard of this
in our modern life.
Scientists of the first class
(see above) dogmatizing in both metaphysics
and theology (“Let
no man beguile you…….intruding into those
things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed
up by his fleshly mind.”-
Colossians 2:18 – “…....profane
and vain babblings and oppositions
Of science falsely
so called” – I Timothy 6:20).
o
Man needs one who knows the moral nature, and its relation to God,
and both lighted by special revelations. Such was Daniel — the
Christ in
Daniel (John 1:9; I Peter 1:11)
— the Christ of all the ages, and they
who have His Spirit.
was constrained to seek unto God
in the presence of his representative
Daniel.
18 “O thou king, the most
high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a
kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honor: 19 and
for the majesty
that He gave him, all people, nations, and languages,
trembled and
feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would
he
kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would
he put
down. 20 But when his heart was
lifted up, and his mind hardened in
pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took
his glory
from him: 21 And he was driven from
the sons of men; and his heart was
made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild
asses: they
fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the
dew of
heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the
kingdom of
men, and that He appointeth over
it whomsoever He will. 22 And thou his
son, O Belshazzar, hast not humblet thine heart, though thou knewest
all this; 23 But hast lifted up
thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they
have brought the vessels of His house before thee, and
thou, and thy
lords, thy wives, and thy concubines, have drunk wine in
them; and
thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass,
iron, wood,
and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God
in whose
hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou
not
glorified.” We have gathered these verses together, as they all relate
to one
matter and come under one condemnation. Long ago yon Lengerke, and
more recently Hitzig, have shown
that such an insulting speech as Daniel
addressed to Belshazzar would
certainly be visited with punishment. The
king had no guarantee that the promised interpretation of
the writing on
the wall would be true, especially when the interpreter had
such an animus
against him. Then the fact in the twenty-ninth verse, that
Daniel received
the gifts he had rejected, makes his conduct here all the
more
extraordinary. A writer of fiction, of even moderate skill,
would not make
the blunder here made. It could easily be made by a falsarius interpolating
a speech he thought suitable to a Jewish prophet in the
presence of a
heathen king, who had dishonored the sacred vessels by
drinking wine in
them himself, and his wives, and his concubines. It is to
be noted that the
princes are omitted from the enumeration here. In proof
that our
contention is correct, we find the mass of this entirely
omitted from the
Septuagint. There are signs of
confusion, and coalescence of different
readings in the text of the Septuagint, yet we have no
hesitation in claiming
that it represents a much earlier state of the text than we
find in our
Hebrew Bibles, “Then Daniel
stood before the writing, and read, and thus
answered the king: This is the writing: It hath been
numbered; it was
reckoned; it has been removed.” The marginal reading which
we find in the
beginning of this chapter has, Mane, Phares, Thekel. The
interpretation
here follows a different succession, “And the hand which
wrote stood” —
a phrase that seems to be a mistaken rendering of the
latter clause of the
twenty-fourth verse as we find it in the Massoretic text. It seems difficult
to
imagine what Aramaic word has been translated ἔστη – estae. Paulus Tel-lensis
has
<ARAMAIC> (קמת, q’math), which
may have been mistaken for
sheliach, though it is not easy to see how. The clause is, at all
events,
misplaced. The following clause also is misplaced, and is a
doublet of the
first clause of the twenty-sixth verse. The twenty-third
verse seems to be
the nucleus of the speech ascribed to Daniel, “O king, thou madest
a feast
to thy friends,
and thou drankest wine, and the vessels of the house
of the
living God were
brought, and ye drank in them, thou and thy nobles, and
praised all the
idols made with the bands of men, and the living God ye did
not bless, and thy
breath is in His hand, and He gave thee thy kingdom, and
thou didst not
bless Him, neither praise Him.” The wives
and concubines are
not
mentioned here. There is no word of the madness of Nebuchadnezzar.
Although from the disturbed
state of the text in the immediate
neighborhood one is inclined to suspect the authenticity of
this twenty-third
verse, given in the Septuagint, yet there is nothing that
contradicts the
position created by the two early decrees of Nebuchadnezzar, which placed
Jehovah the God of the Jews on a
par with the great gods of
whom, though no worship was decreed, at all events no
dishonor was to
be done. Belshazzar is not so
much blamed for praising the gods of wood
and stone as for omitting to praise Jehovah. Belshazzar had dishonored
Jehovah, and therefore this
ominous message had come forth. The first
clause here seems the primitive text. What was more natural
than that
Daniel, coming into the presence
of the king, should go and stand before
the mysterious writing, and then, having read it himself,
turn to the king
and address him? The words of the Massoretic
and of the text behind the
Septuagint differ very
considerably, but not so much but that the former
may have grown out of the latter by expansion, and the insertion
of
paraphrastic additions. A peculiarity to be observed in the Massoretic text
(v. 17) is לְהֵוְיָן (lehayvyan), the third
plural imperfect of היא, “to be.”
It is difficult to understand
this form of the third person, save on the
supposition that Daniel was written in a region where ל was the
preformative. This preformative along with נ was used in
as the period of the Babylonian Talmud. Theodotion
and the Peshitta
practically agree with the Massoretic
text. Even when we omit all the
insulting elements, we have Daniel’s speech to Belshazzar
as we find it in
the
Massoretic text; no reader can fail to notice the
difference of Daniel’s
demeanor towards Belshazzar as
narrated here, from that towards
Nebuchadnezzar as narrated in the preceding chapter. When he learns the
disaster that impends on the destroyer of his city and the
conqueror of his
nation, Daniel is astonied and
silent, and bursts out from his silence, “The
dream be upon thine enemies, and the interpretation thereof upon them
that
hate thee.” He shows no sign of sorrow when he learns the fate
impending
on Belshazzar. We can understand
this, if we regard Daniel’s love for the
splendid conqueror making him feel the blood of his
murdered
descendants, Evil-Merodach and Labasi-Marduk called for vengeance. So
far as we can make out from external history, Belshazzar was a gallant
young prince, who seemed to be able to maintain himself
against Cyrus,
while his father lived in retirement in Tema;
but the judgment of God often
falls on those who are not worse than their predecessors,
only guilt has
accumulated and ripened. Louis XVI. was not worse than, but
really
greatly superior to, his two immediate predecessors, yet on
him, not on
them, broke the vengeance of the French Revolution. There
probably was,
as said above under v. 2, a special defiance of Jehovah,
which therefore
merited special punishment.
Natural Religion (v. 23 – last
clause)
though we had no relations with God
but those we voluntarily assume in
religious worship, so that if we chose we could have nothing to do
with
God. THIS IS A GROSS DELUSION! . We
have relations with God:
o
apart from our will;
and
o
apart from our
consciousness, dependent upon our very
nature and existence in the
world.
Ø
Our life is dependent on God. In his hand our “breath
is.” He is the First
Cause — the Origin of life
(Genesis 1:24-27). He is also the constant
Sustainer of life, and without
Him we could not continue to exist for one
moment, any more than we could
live without the air we breathe (Job 12:10;
Acts 17:25). Therefore the
existence and the continuance of our
life depend on His will (Numbers
16:22). These facts are not affected
by our ideas about God. If they are
facts, they apply as much to the
atheist as to the believer, and to the most godless as to the most devout.
Ø
Our destiny is shaped by God. “Whose are all our ways.”
We think to
carve out our own career, and no
doubt it is largely dependent on our
conduct; but it is subject to
numberless apparent accidents, which are
really governed by the providence of God
(James 4:14-15).
TO GLORIFY HIM. As
our primary relations with God are not dependent
on our own will, so our
obligations toward God cannot be regulated by our
free choice. Religious
obligations are not simply determined by our
“profession,” nor can they be
discarded by our renunciation of any
connection with religious
worship, Church relationship, etc. We are all
subjects of
God’s spiritual kingdom, WHETHER WE WILL OR
NO.
The man who refuses to submit to
its laws is not to be regarded as an alien,
but as a deserter and a rebel. Therefore, though Belshazzar had never
professed obedience to God, he was
not exonerated from blame when he
failed to render it.
Ø
The universal human
duty of glorifying God is determined by the fact
that we are all enjoying life
and its advantages simply as the fruits of the
goodness of God.
Ø It may be enforced by the reflection that since we are entirely in
the
hands of God, no attempt to rebel against Him can ultimately succeed
(Isaiah 40:15).
ROOT OF ALL SIN, This is
the one sin to which Daniel calls attention,
although Belshazzar
was guilty of all kinds of wickedness. So long as we
live in the effort to honor and
serve God, our conscience will be kept
pure; but when God is dethroned from the shrine of our hearts, all
forms of
evil take his place. Idolatry, the worship
of false gods, is only possible
when the worship of the true God is
neglected. Profanity is the direct
opposite of the reverence which
glorifies God. Indulgence in sinful
pleasures is only possible when
the pure pleasures of Divine things are lost.
Thus the
special sins seen in Belshazzar
in the incident of his feast are all
connected with the
neglect of the honor and service of God.
Note:
Ø
The very blessings
which are proofs of the goodness of God are often
used as temptations to
allure us from our duty to glorify Him.
Ø
Godlessness may
bring present delights, but it must ensure
FUTURE RUIN!
24 “Then was the part of
the hand sent from Him; and this
writing was written.”
As we have seen, the real
equivalent of this verse in
the Septuagint is a clause in v. 17, “And the hand which
had written
(γράφασα – graphasa) stood.” If
we take this to mean that the hand now “ceased
to
write,” then the original text might be פְסִאָק יָדִא
כְתָבָא, the verb being
written fleaum, in Mandaean manner. Then it would easily happen
that ק
(in the
older script <ARAMAIC> and <ARAMAIC>) was resolved into ד
(in the older script
<ARAMAIC> and <ARAMAIC>). In support of this, it
may be observed that while in the fifth verse the older
construction of
construct state and status emphalicus
is used to exhibit the genitival
connection, in the present case the relative די is used as a sign of the
genitive. Starting with this, it is easy to see how the Massoretic text arose;
but, on the other hand, it is difficult to see the sense of
the reading of the
Septuagint, unless this fiery hand is to be imagined as
tracing and retracing
the characters on the wall of the palace, and that the hand
only ceased
when Daniel stood before the inscription to read. Theodotion differs very
little from the Massoretic text,
and the Peshitta coincides with it. The word
for
“writing,” רְשִׁים (resheem), is really
“engraving,” and therefore
peculiarly descriptive of the Assyrian mode of impressing on clay
tablets or
incising in stone the thing to be preserved.
25 “And this is the
writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL,
UPHARSIN. 26 This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God
hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. 27 TEKEL; Thou art
weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. 28 PERES;
Thy kingdom is divided, and
given to the Medes and Persian.” The
Septuagint has two versions of
this passage, one m the text, the other in
the portion at the beginning, which we think is really
composed of marginal
readings. In the text the Aramaic is not given at all. As
we have already
seen, the verse which corresponds to v. 25 here is really
the latter part of
v. 17 of the Septuagint, “This is the writing: It hath been
numbered; it is
reckoned; it has been carried away.” In the verses which
are appended to
the beginning of the chapter, we have the Aramaic words,
but given in a
different order, and without the repetition of the first
word: “MANE,
PHARES, THEKEL. MANE, It has
been numbered; PHARES, It is
carried away; THEKEL, It has been set up.” Here not only is
the order
different, but the meaning assigned to phares
is singular. פְרַס means in
Syriac, “spread out.” It would seem that ἐξαίρω – exairo - meant stretched out
as well as “carried
away.” It is still more difficult to understand how thekel
can
mean “set up,” unless the words, ἐν ζυγῷ – en zugo - on the balance,
are understood. The Septuagint of the best version is
briefer than the
Massoretic, though less so than it is in some of the other passages,
“Numbered is the time of thy
kingdom; ceases thy kingdom; cut short and
ended has been thy kingdom; to the Medes and the Persians
has it been
given.” The word interpreted is not repeated as in the Massoretic text, and
תְקִל is
derived from קְלַל, which in some of the conjugations means
“destroyed,” whereas in v. 17 it
is rendered κατελογίσθη – katelogisthae –
it is reckoned - a rendering of תְקִל which
makes it mean “weigh.” The
Septuagint rendering of the
first clause is an evident attempt at explaining
the numbering implied. The Massoretic
reading involves a pun in both the
last words; there is a play between תְקִל (teqel), “to weigh,” and קְלַל
(qelal), “to be light,” although the introduction
of שכח rather conceals
this. In the last the play is between פרס, “to divide,” and פדס, “a
Persian.” Theodotion
avoids the repetition of the first word, otherwise he
is
in somewhat close agreement with the Massoretic text,
“MANE, God
hath measured thy kingdom; THEKEL, It is set on
the balance, and found
wanting; PHARES,
Thy kingdom is cut asunder, and given to the
Medes
and the Persians.”
The Peshitta is in close agreement with the Massoretic
text. The actual meaning of the words, taking them as they
appear in the
Massoretictext, as Aramaic words, is, to give English equivalents, “a
pound, a pound, an ounce, and quarters;” hence the
impossibility of
interpreting the words. We find all these words, mena, teqel (shekel),
pares, in the Ninevite inscriptions. As the words are interpreted, we
cannot
fail to be impressed with the peremptory style of the
inscription, as Hitzig
has it. Zockler refers to the sculpturesque style (lapidarstil).
This brevity
rendered it difficult for the soothsayers to put any
meaning into the words
at all. In all the versions the fact that the kingdom is to
be given to the
Medes and Persians is
emphasized, but, moreover, the play on words in the
last clause implies the Persians as the prominent
assailants of the
Babylonian power, but really
that the two powers were united. It seems
extraordinary that any one, in the face of this, should
maintain that the
author of Daniel separated the two powers, and thought the
Median power
succeeded the Babylonian, and then that the Persian
succeeded the Median.
We know now that Herodotus’s
representation of the history of Media and
Found Wanting (vs. 25-28)
The mysterious writing on the wall of Belshazzar’s
palace is a revelation of
the judgment which must certainly follow all misuse of the
talents and
opportunities of life. It brings vividly before us:
o
the summons,
o
the trial, and
o
the sentence
which awaits every one who neglects and abuses his mission
in the world.
Babylonian supremacy are
numbered, and the days of the life of King
Belshazzar are numbered; their end has come, and now he and his nation
are called to
give account of their stewardship.
Ø
Every life has its limit. God gives us all
sufficient time and opportunity
for the work which He requires
of us, and, conversely, He requires no
more of us than our faculties
are equal to. Therefore we have no reason to
murmur at the brevity of life,
and no excuse for neglecting our proper
duties on account of it. But
there is a limit to our opportunities. We
have
not the leisure
of eternity before us. We cannot postpone the work of
today till to-morrow, without
interfering with the work of the morrow
(John 9:4). The time draws on
apace when the end will come to all
these opportunities of
doing our work in the world. How foolish not to
consider what our position will be
at “the
end of the days”! How vain to be
satisfied with present ease,
since these days of sinful idleness are few and
shortening! Who of us will be
able to say at the end of life, like Christ,
“It is finished”? (Ibid. ch. 19:30)
Ø
Abuse of opportunities will lead to the loss of them. The kingdom
appears to be “numbered and
finished,” swiftly, abruptly, and in judgment.
Both king and people might
have been spared longer, if they had
lived
better. Time is a talent which is justly taken from those who do
not make a
good use of it (Psalm 37:9;
Matthew 25:28-29). This applies with
special force to kingdoms — the
judgment of which belongs to this world
(Isaiah 14:22).
mean that Belshazzar
and his kingdom have been “weighed in the balances,
and found
wanting.”
Ø
There is a judgment awaiting us all. Our future will not
be determined
by chance, or fate, or easy
indifference. It will depend on OUR PAST!
This will be revealed, examined,
proved, tested, weighed in every thought
and word and deed, for every
moment of life. None
can expect to escape
this trial. The greatest king is here subjected to its searching
scrutiny.
Ø
This judgment will
be effected by weighing our conduct,
and testing it
BY A DIVINE
STANDARD! We shall be weighed in the balances.
On Egyptian mummy-cases there
may be seen representations of the soul
weighed in scales with truth as
a counterpoise. The truth or ideal conduct
by which we shall be tested may
be variously viewed as
o
absolute right;
o
God’s will;
o
God’s idea of our
life;
o
duty and
vocation;
these being shaped and modified according
to our powers, our opportunities,
and our light (Romans 2:6-12).
Ø
The ground of
condemnation will be to be “found
wanting.” As darkness
is the absence of light, so evil
is the absence of good. We can only keep out
sin by being filled with
holiness Romans 12:21). To be “wanting”
in
truth, or purity, or love, is
the essence of sin. More particularly we shall be
judged by our defection of duty,
not merely by our commission of offences.
(“To him that knoweth
to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” -
James 4:17) Mere negative harmlessness will be of no
avail if we have
failed in our positive service
(Matthew 25:42-45).
that the Babylonian “kingdom
is divided, and given to Media and
Ø After a verdict of “guilty,” there must be a sentence of punishment.
Whatever be the nature of future
punishment, justice, present analogies,
and revelation concur in
pointing to the certainty of its execution. For
individuals this is mostly
reserved to the future world; but for kingdoms,
which remain in this world for
successive generations, allowing time for
moral laws to work out their
ends here, it is executed on earth and is
witnessed by history.
Ø The most natural punishment is the loss of the honors and powers
which have been
abused. The kingdom is taken away. The unused
talent is taken away (as above -
Matthew 25:28-29).
Ø
The worst form of
punishment is DEATH! The kingdom is to be divided —
to die as a kingdom. Corruption,
disintegration, dissolution, spiritual death
in outer darkness, are the awful
mysterious doom of sin unrepented and
persisted, in to the end (James
1:15),
29 “Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel
with scarlet, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and
made a
proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third
ruler in the
kingdom.” The
Septuagint runs thus: “Then Baltasar the king clothed
Daniel in purple, and put on him a golden necklace, and
gave authority to
him over a third part of his kingdom.” The only difference
here is that there
is no word of a proclamation. Theodotion
and the Peshitta agree with the
Massoretic text. We have תַּלְתָא here
instead of תַּלְתִּי. The presence of
the haphel form instead of the aphel, is to be noted. No reader whose
attention is directed to it can fail to be struck with the magnanimity
of
Belshazzar; he had promised that whoever would interpret the
inscription
should be clothed in purple and gold, and be made third
ruler of the
kingdom. Had he been a mean man, he might have higgled (wrangled) about
the matter; he might have declared an uncertainty as to
whether Daniel did not,
out of his spite against the murderers of the son of Nebuchadnezzar, invent
the evil interpretation. The treatment Ahab meted out to Micaiah the son of
Imlah shows the way a tyrannical monarch may act towards one who
has
uttered unpalatable prophecies against him (I Kings
22:26-27). He might,
according to the Persian story, have proclaimed Daniel
exalted to all the
promised honors, and then instantly had him executed. But,
no; in noble
simplicity he fulfils his promise to the last letter,
without any apparent
afterthought of vengeance.
The Value of a Good Man (vs.
17-29)
The value to a community of a wise and good man is not to
be measured by rubies.
The safety, welfare, and happiness of society hang upon
him.
refuse to come when sent for in
haste by the king He might have taken
occasion, from the fright of the
king, to remind him of past neglect. He
might have accused the king of
selfish inconsistency, in that he had
dishonored Daniel in the days of
kingly prosperity, but was prompt to use
him in the hour of dire
adversity. But Daniel was too noble a man on such
an occasion to think of himself.
He speaks not of his good services to the
king’s grandsire, nor mentions
the ill requital he had received. Nor will he
permit the king to imagine that
he is now moved to render fresh service by
any prospect of reward. This
very offer of royal reward had stung the mind
of the prophet with pain. Pride and mercenary selfishness were ingrained in
the nature of the king, or he
would not, on an occasion like this, have
spoken of rewards. His vile,
base nature could not appreciate the generous
nature of his Jewish subject. So Daniel declined the king’s proposal with
high disdain. They who are employed in the service of God are content
with the rewards
which their own Master gives. It would
savor of treason
if an ambassador from the
British court should take the pay of a foreign
empire. (Article I – Section 9 – Clause 8 of the
forbids foreign emoluments. Bribery should have no place in society! -
CY – 2014)
foreign court will be forward to
present his credentials, and will take every
public opportunity of
maintaining the rights of his sovereign. So, in the
very preface of his address, Daniel requires recognition of the supreme
authority of
God. He reminds Belshazzar
of the majesty and glory and
dominion which Nebuchadnezzar enjoyed before him — a degree of power
far superior to that wielded by Belshazzar — but even Nebuchadnezzar
had been compelled to admit that
this extensive sovereignty was but a
grant from God — a trust delegated by the Most High. Even
Nebuchadnezzar was but a vassal prince, and was required to bring his
tribute to the supreme Monarch
of the skies. To reject the jurisdiction of
God is contemptible folly and
weakness.
effect of God’s judgments on Nebuchadnezzar ought to have been the
exhibition of pious humility in Belshazzar. God’s chastisement of a father is
intended to benefit a son, and
God’s intentions cannot be frustrated with
impunity. To despise the lessons of the past is wanton sin and
irreparable
loss. If Belshazzar’s pride had only
been equal to that of his grandsire, the
guilt would have been greater,
because he had inherited all the warnings of
the past. In proportion to men’s advantages are their responsibilities.
Daniel, though a subject and a
captive, does not spare his monarch’s sins.
No prospect of
preferment, no fear of disfavor, weakens the severity of
his reproofs. He charges the
monarch with his haughty pride, with his
blatant atheism, his sacrilegious
profanation of sacred things, his insane
trust in graven images. He arraigns his monarch, as if he were a prisoner at
the bar brought up to receive
sentence for his crimes. He accuses him of
ingratitude to the God who had daily sustained him; accuses him of a
wanton misuse of power; accuses
him of a flagrant abuse of the gift of life.
Now the edifice of his guilt has
been crowned! Now the last element of
aggravation has been added! God’s sacred vessels have been desecrated for
human debauchery. The die is cast; the hour has struck. “Because judgment
against an evil
work is not executed speedily,
therefore the hearts of the
sons of men are
fully set in them to do evil.” (Ecclesiastes 8:11)
FUTURE. God is not so
highly exalted that He cannot see what occurs
upon the earth; nor is He so
indifferent to human actions that He will pass
by any sin with impunity. The
hand that wrote the ten commandments on
stony tablets — the hand that wrote
Belshazzar’s doom upon the palace
wall — records all our
misdemeanors also. Never still is that Divine hand.
The Chaldean
monarch’s days were all exactly numbered; the sands had
nearly run out; there was but an
hour or two for repentance. The Orientals
had a belief in future rewards
and punishments, and were accustomed to
represent the supreme Judge as
weighing, in the separate scales of a
balance, men’s good actions, and
the bad. Here God accommodated
himself to this prevalent
belief, and represented himself as weighing in his
balances the character of the
king. Daniel plainly announced the result,
“Thou art weighed,
and” — oh! dread conclusion — “thou art found
wanting.” The final stroke was near and overwhelming. The
thunder-cloud
was, even then, gathering under
the dark covert of night, and was about to
discharge its fatal contents
over the doomed city. Not another sun should
rise upon Belshazzar’s
earthly life. His course was run; and in his
ruin ten
thousand others
would be involved. We cannot sin alone; we entice others
into the fatal way. We cannot
suffer alone; we drag others into the
whirlpool of destruction. “In
that night was Belshazzar, King of the
Chaldeans, slain”
30 “In that night was Belshazzar the King of the Chaldeans
slain.”
The Septuagint is
here very different, “And the interpretation came upon
Belshazzar the king, and the kingdom was taken from the Chaldeans, and given
to the Medes and the Persians. There seems no
possibility of connecting these two
readings so that either should be shown to have come
from the other. The
Massoretic text, which is here supported by Theodotion
and the Peshitta, is the
shorter; but in this instance, as neither can have sprung
from the other, Brevity has
less probative force. If we look at the probability of the
situation, we are
compelled to accept the Septuagint reading. If the Massoretic reading had
been the original, the dramatic completeness of the
disaster, following with
such rapidity on the back of the prophecy, would certainly
have been
preserved in every translation. Whereas the desire for this
dramatic
completeness might lead to the Massoretic
verse being fabricated. Further,
when we look at the events of the night, it seems
impossible to place all of
them in the short interval of one night. The feast had
begun after sundown,
for the lamps were lighted. It had already gone on some
time ere
Belshazzar thought of the vessels of the house of God. Then, in contempt
of Jehovah, the guests sang praises to the gods of
this that the writing appears. There is next the calling
of the wise men, who
were in the vicinity of the palace. On their failure to
explain the writing, the
other wise men are summoned by proclamation; they assemble,
essay the
reading, and fail. The queen-mother comes — either is
called, or, hearing
the tumult, comes in herself — and tells Belshazzar of Daniel. Daniel is
summoned, and reads the writing. Even if we maintain —
although it does
not seem the natural reading of the passage — that the
proclamation of a
reward to him who could read the writing followed
immediately on the
order to call in the astrologers and other wise men, still,
it is difficult to
imagine all the events, especially the summoning of all the
wise men in
the court, taking place in one night, and that in that very
night was
Belshazzar slain. On the other hand, the Septuagint makes no such
demand
on our belief. According to it, the prophecy was not so
closely connected
with its fulfillment. The feast recorded here may have
taken place six, eight,
or ten years before the actual fall of
seventh year till some time between his eleventh and seventeenth
year
Nahunahid was in Tema. This feast might be
the inauguration of
Belshazzar’s viceroyalty; in that case it would be nearly ten years
before
the capture of
between this verse and ch. 8:1
vanishes. We need only look at the
various theories of who Belshazzar
was. Niebuhr assumes it as a second
name for Evil-Merodach — a view
for which Keil has some sympathy.
Niebuhr ingeniously combines the statement from Berosus, that his reign
was
ἀνόμως καὶ ἀσελγῶς – anomos kai aselgos
– lawless and
licentious.
This, however, might mean a favor for the
Jews, shown by the
special honor given to Jehoiachin
— a thing which would be readily
regarded by the Babylonians as “lawless and outrageous.”
He maintains that the change of dynasty implied in
assumption of the supremacy by Astyages
the Mede, who, according to
Niebuhr, is Darius the Mede. After one year’s personal reign, he
placed
Neriglissar on the throne. This view is definitely contradicted by the
contract tables, which have no reference to a reign between
Evil-Merodach
and Neriglissar. The other theory
is that he is Labasi-Marduk. This view is
maintained by Delitzsch and Ebrard. All of them assume the murder of the
king the very night of the feast — a thing which is in the
teeth of
probability, and not supported by the Septuagint reading.
31 “And Darius the Median
took the kingdom, being about
three score and two years old.” It is probable that the Massoretic
division
of the chapters here is to be preferred. According to it,
this verse is
assigned to the begining of the
next chapter, but most of the more ancient
versions, Theodotion, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate, agree with our English
arrangement. The Septuagint, like the Massoretic
text, assigns this verse to
the sixth chapter. Its rendering manifests several striking
peculiarities,
“And Artaxerxes of the Medes (παρέλαβε – paralabe received) the kingdom,
and Darius was full of
days, and reverend (ἔνδοξος – endoxos – glorious;
renowned; honored) in old age.” This is the product of doublets ארְטַחְשַׁשְׁתְ,
Artaxerxes, being suggested by some scribe
as in his opinion a more probable
name than Darius. So the one name begins
the first clause, and the other the
second. The last clause is evidently
due to כְּבַר] (kebar), “about” (“as the son of”),
being read כַבֵר (kaber), “great,”
“multiplied” — a meaning this word has in Syriac,
but not in Chahlee (Genesis 35:11). Theodotion
and the Peshitta agree with the
Massoretic text. The uncertainty as to the name has to be noted. We shall
reserve for fuller discussion the question of Darius the
Mede, only we
would say that the name not improbably was modified from a
less-known
name to one somewhat like it but well known. We know that “Go-baru,”
or “Oybaru” — “Gobryas,” in Greek — was appointed governor by Cyrus
when he conquered
monuments, Gobryas,
<ARAMAIC> or <ARAMAIC>. is not unlike
Darius. One point to
be noted is the fact that the verb used is wrongly
translated “took.” <ARAMAIC>really means “received.”
When this is said,
we naturally expect some one, either God or man, from whom
he has
received this honor. If this purported to be a history of
might be reasoned that the implied source from whom the
kingdom was
received was God; in such a case קבל would
be used of one who
succeeded to the kingdom by inheritance; this cannot be the
meaning here.
In this passage it is merely incidentally mentioned in
order to explain the
events that immediately follow. The more natural interpretation is that he
was put on the throne by another person, his superior.
At the Bar of God (vs. 17-31)
“The God in whose
hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast
thou not glorified”
(v. 23). In this tremendous scene Daniel may be
regarded as counsel for the crown — for the everlasting
crown, for the
throne of eternal righteousness, against the unhappy
prisoner placed by
these awful events at the bar. As such he is the
representative of all earnest
preachers of righteousness. He was marked by zeal for
the right of the
crown; fidelity to the position; sympathy for
the arraigned (this may be
argued from what we know and have seen of Daniel); fearlessness;
and
absolute disinterestedness (v. 17, Any honors given
and received might
have been recognized by any new king). All these should
make every one
that pleads with man or against man (ultimately to win the
man to the right
side) for God.
will be better to formulate the
indictment in the most general way.
Belshazzar’s particular sins may not be just ours; but he and we both
commit sins that
fall under like categories.
Ø
Infidelity to accorded revelations. (v. 22.)
Ø
Substituting shadows for God. (v. 23.) In the
king’s case there had
been inflation of himself
against God; sacrilege; indecency;
drunkenness; prostration before
idols, which are “nothing in the world.”
(I Corinthians 8:4) The inflations, profanities, improprieties, sensualisms,
and idolatries of the
twenty-first century differ in form, but are quite as
real as those of Belshazzar.
Ø
Failure in man’s prime
duty; viz. to
glorify God.
o
The duty. To honor God. We put
the highest honor on Him when
we repeat His likeness. To glorify God
is
to REFLECT GOD,
as
the lake does the heaven above with all
its light. This the
final
end of our
creation.
o
Its ground. Our complete dependence. That dependent life should
be a devoted life is a
truth of natural religion (see v. 23).
o
The default is so general and notorious as to require no proof
(“For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God.” –
Romans 3:23).
aggravated by what he had been
permitted to see of the way of the Divine
mercy and of the Divine
judgment.
Ø The vision of
the Divine goodness, in his
grandfather’s prosperity.
(vs. 18-19.)
Ø
The vision of sin, in
his grandfather’s misuse of position. (v. 20.)
Ø
The vision of judgment, in
his grandfather’s punishment. (v. 21.)
Ø
The vision of mercy,
in his grandfather’s restoration. (v. 21.)
Note:
o For every
sinner a vision of the great realities of the moral world.
o
Coming oft in very affecting forms, as here, through the
experience
of the near and dear.
No defense possible. Judgment
goes by default. There is no counsel for
defense; for there is no defense. Sentence
must pass. The only thing that
can be done IS TO BE
DONE NOW! There is a free pardon through
JESUS
CHRIST! “Today
is the DAY OF SALVATION” –
See How to Be Saved - # 5 – This website – CY – 2014)
court of heaven — the judgment
of God against the sinner; in this case
written with the very finger of
God — the same finger which traced ages
before “the Law of the ten words.”
In the “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin,”
read these permanent truths:
Ø
The day of probation is limited. “Numbered!” and numbered to the end!
Ø
The character of the probationer is exactly estimated. “Weighed!” Yes,
and found light. God does as perfectly know a man’s true character as the
goldsmith knows the weight of
that which he has weighed in the nicest
scales. Note the moral import of
phrases like this: “a man of weight
and
character; .... a light and
frivolous man.”
Ø Deprivation of
endowment is the punishment of infidelity to trust.
“Divided!” Given away (see parable of the talents - Matthew 25:14-30).
Ø
Swift upon the climax of a life of sin. “In that night.”
Ø
Sure. By an agent long prepared (Isaiah 14:1-6).
Ø
Sudden. Utterly unexpected.
way in which he received the
awful words of Daniel look very like it
(v. 29). A star of hope shines
above the dark cloud in the horizon.
The Word of God Verified (vs.
30-31)
It is not often that the word of
Divine warning is so swiftly and so visibly
accomplished as it was here. Frequently God allows time
(according to
human calculation) to intervene. Yet, in every case, the
agency is set in
motion, so soon as the purpose is formed, and that agency,
whether it
moves slowly or swiftly, moves surely to its end.
But the idea of time is
human. The structure of the human mind compels us to
introduce the
element of duration. But God is superior to this
limitation. “With him a
thousand years are as one day,” and vice versa (II Peter 3:8)
sacrilege and self-debauchery is
the only event in Belshazzar’s life which is
recorded in the page of sacred
history, we are warranted in the conclusion
that his public life, and
probably his earlier private life, were series of guilty
and impious acts. No
man reaches great excesses of sin at a single step. In
all likelihood God had
condescended to warn and counsel Belshazzar again
and yet again, and this last daring act of defiance was the CLIMAX OF
HIS DEGENERATE
COURSE! This
was Belshazzar’s reply to God’s
Patient expostulations, and
sudden
destruction was the most fitting penalty.
We are surprised, not at the
rapid execution of God’s warnings, but at His
unparalleled
forbearance.
Daniel the minute steps of the
royal overthrow; but possibly Belslhazzar
had retired to rest, little
supposing that retribution was at his very door.
It
may be that his senses had
been overcome by wine and fear; that deep
stupor succeeded, as the
natural reaction of his sensual excess; and. that
the noise of the city’s capture did not reach his ear. Very likely he heard no
rumor of alarm until some bold
and reckless besiegers gained the palace,
and slew the king in his bed. In
this case he scarcely woke to die. It is not
an uncommon thing for punishment to come on the ungodly at last,
suddenly, as “A THIEF IN THE NIGHT!” (This will be the
scenario
at the end of time!
(I Thessalonians 5:2; II Peter 3:10).
At the moment
when Daniel
declared the heavenly Monarch’s will, AMENDMENT
WAS TOO LATE! The
king was not in possession of his faculties.
He had drowned them in the
wine-cup; and, before the fumes of his
intoxication had worn off, HE
WAS A CORPSE! Our sin
ofttimes DISABLES US FOR TRUE
REPENTANCE! (Like
Esau, who forsook his birthright, No
place for repentance was found,
though he and we seek it carefully, and with tears. (Hebrews 12:17)
disaster, such as the infliction
of disease or the loss of his crown; not such
a disaster as might yet be
repaired by reformation or obedience. It was:
Ø
complete,
Ø
final, and
Ø
irreparable.
In a moment every
possession he held ceased. His sovereign
power, his
worldly possessions, his health,
his life, his hope, — all were destroyed
at a single blow. The stroke was
overwhelming. Nothing was left behind
but an obnoxious reputation —
a beacon to future voyagers. No human
mind can estimate the extent of
that calamity. What blacker hell
can there
be than for a man to
awake to consciousness in the next life with a sense
that HE HAS LOST ALL? He had a splendid opportunity,
but he wasted it! He might have
gained heaven, but he has irretrievably
failed. Existence has become intolerable misery. (“What shall it profit
a man to gain the whole world and to lose his own soul?” - Matthew
16:26; Mark 8:36; Luke
9:25) Now
he is compelled to hear this knell of
doom, “He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.” (Revelation 22:11)
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