Belshazzar’s Feast and the Writing
However, no such precaution was thought of in the proud, wicked city. “Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.” Then he called for the sacred vessels of Jehovah, which his grandfather had brought from the house of God in Jerusalem; “and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines drank in them.” “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. 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 king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and show me 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.”