Belshazzar Falls Back at the Writing on the WallBible World
5:1Daniel 5:1
Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
Belshazzar held a lavish night feast for a thousand of his nobles, drinking wine before them amid music, revelry and heavy indulgence while Babylon lay under siege yet felt secure in its defenses and supplies. Blinded by wine and pride, he lost reverence and profaned God by bringing out the consecrated gold and silver vessels from the Lord's temple to drink from, while he and his guests praised gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. God was present as an unseen Witness observing every movement and word, and at the height of the mirth a bloodless hand traced judgment on the palace wall that weighed his life and character in the balances and found him wanting. That night his guilt and that of the kingdom reached full measure, forbearance ended, and he was slain and his kingdom passed to another. Its sudden overthrow in the midst of feasting pictures the end of the world, warning that pleasure gatherings that forget God are recorded as intemperance and that the only safeguard is total abstinence and purposing not to indulge appetite.
Feast Setting and History
Belshazzar held a great, lavish feast for a thousand of his lords or nobles and drank wine openly before them. The gathering was royal revelry on a grand scale, centered on the king drinking with his court.
The banquet was filled with music and feasting, with dancing, sparkling wine, and heavy drinking as the guests reveled under wine's influence. Those present included princes and statesmen, men of learning, and beautiful women, with lords and princes gathered at the king's command. The wine beclouded reason, banished reverence, and fascinated and deluded the company.
The feast took place at night while Babylon stood under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar's successors and was nearing its fall. The city was then besieged, yet the king felt safe behind its defenses and abundant supplies and spent the time in mirth and revelry. So Babylon fell amid celebration and feasting rather than in a moment of expectation or alarm.
Pride and Reckless Security
Belshazzar held his feast while glorying in his royal power, with pride and love of pleasure and self-glorification, and with a reckless sense of security as he drank wine before his lords. He feasted in mirth and revelry though Babylon was besieged, because he felt safe behind the city's defenses and its abundant supplies. His guests were a thousand lords joined by princes and statesmen and men of learning and beautiful women, drinking heavily and reveling under the influence of wine. Despite opportunities to learn God's will and his responsibility to obey it, he neglected the truth and ignored the lessons of Nebuchadnezzar's experience.
He was a man of absolute power, holding property and lords and princes at his command, with everything to flatter pride and indulge passion. Yet he was void of self-control, hasty and violent in temper, gracious to flatterers and cruel as the grave to opposers, molded by flattery and ferocious when provoked. He was self-indulgent and gluttonous and drunken, corrupt at heart and swayed by base passions.
In their prosperity Babylon's rulers forgot God and credited human achievement with the honor and glory of the kingdom, so the kingdom passed away. Belshazzar disregarded the light God had given through Nebuchadnezzar, and refusing and failing to practice God's lessons brings judgment. His sacrilegious feast with his nobles therefore stood just before Babylon's calamity, as the fruit of neglecting truth.
Sacrilegious Revelry and Idolatry
Blinded and beclouded by wine, Belshazzar lost reverence for sacred things at his feast for a thousand lords. Intoxicated and proud of his power, he himself took the lead in riot, blasphemy and profane revelry, and fascinated and deluded the company until nothing was held sacred. The music, banqueting and wine-drinking thus became a scene of contempt for holy things.
While drinking with his princes and lords he brought out the gold and silver vessels consecrated to Jehovah and taken from the Lord's temple. He drank from them and put what had been dedicated by holy consecration to God to profane and licentious purposes. In this sacrilegious mirth he and his guests made light of what God had chosen as sacred to Himself.
With those vessels in their hands the guests praised gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. In doing so they forgot God while drinking wine from His temple's sacred vessels. Their idolatrous sacrifice rose as insult and defiance to heaven.
The revelry was sacrilegious, licentious and sensual, marked by indulgence of appetite, gluttony and drunkenness that dishonored God and His name. Its glee, dancing, singing and sensual indulgence dulled the senses of the guests. They spent money freely, indulged appetite, profaned sacred things and uttered God-dishonoring words, and with worldly entertainments and company were led into forgetfulness of God.
That gluttony and drunkenness at Babylon's great feast and drinking with his lords is what God ascribes as the foundation and cause of Babylon's wickedness, sins and fall.
Unseen Witness and Judgment
Belshazzar did not know it, but heaven was present in his banquet hall as an unseen Witness and Watcher, a messenger observing every movement of the king and his lords. While they drank wine and indulged appetite in lavish, sacrilegious revelry, profaning the gold and silver vessels consecrated to Jehovah and praising gods of gold and silver, God saw the desecration, heard the idolatrous praise and God-dishonoring words, and made a history to testify to the close of time. He traced the king's destiny even as the company, their reason beclouded and reverence banished, held nothing sacred and forgot God.
At the height of the mirth, in the very midst of the unholy scene of defiance, a bloodless hand appeared and traced mysterious, unintelligible characters on the palace wall. The writing announced their doom, and the king and his courtiers, filled with terror, heard it pronounced by the servant of the Most High. The same hand keeps faithful record of every act of injustice or oppression, so that slander against Christ's servants profanes not soulless vessels but characters purchased by His blood.
The characters weighed his motives, character, life, soul and true character in the balances of the sanctuary and pronounced him wanting. Deeds are recorded in heaven, and careless persistence in sin is weighed and judged there, to stand when the books are opened. Neglect of God-given duties is seen by the same Watcher, and receiving praise and glory that belong to God alone is the offense that brings the verdict of wanting.
That feast was the final night of his folly, when he and his lords brought their guilt, and the guilt of the Chaldean kingdom, to its full measure. By presumption and defiance amid mirth and forgetfulness of God he passed the limits of divine forbearance, so protection and shielding were taken away and restraining power no longer warded off evil from him. No worldly wealth or selfish security could shut out judgment: enemy armies reached the palace, he was slain that night, his body fell, and his kingdom passed into other hands to an alien king upon the throne.
End-Time Warning and Parallels
Babylon fell in a night and at an hour of feasting and reveling, not in a moment of expectation or alarm but amid celebration while the king and his court were given to indulgence. That sudden overthrow in the midst of indulgence pictures how it will be at the end of the world, with the fall of ancient Babylon serving as the parallel. The sacrilegious feast was marked by revelry, glee, dancing, singing, and sensual indulgence that carried the guests into a state that dulled their senses and dishonored God. Its shameful reveling resembles Israel's reveling around the golden calf and warns against being led into sin when God is forgotten.
Belshazzar's night feast of mirth and revelry is the pattern for false worshippers who claim to be Christians while their hearts are set on worldly pleasure and worldly gain and they indulge a false hope. God is present as a witness in all such scenes, and in a moment He can change the features of the scene and bring sudden punishment, even as He did on that night. There are continual repetitions of Belshazzar's feast and Belshazzar's worship whenever the heart God requires in pure devotion is turned to a woman, to a man, or to any earthly thing. The same repetition occurs when God-given powers solemnly consecrated to sacred service are turned to unholy lust and human worship, with praise and adoration belonging alone to God uttered toward a sinful human being. At the great feast the gold and silver vessels dedicated by holy consecration to God were put to profane and licentious purposes amid idolatrous desecration, while Belshazzar did not know he had uninvited guests, for the God of heaven was present as witness hearing the praises and seeing the desecration, and that same Witness is present still. Those living in these last days, upon whom the ends of the world are come, who repeat that turning aside are far more guilty than was Belshazzar.
Temperance and Present Duty
Daniel 5:1 exposes an idolatrous feast led by a man of absolute power with property, lords and princes at his command and everything to flatter pride and indulge passion, yet void of self-control, hasty and violent in temper, gracious to flatterers and cruel as the grave to opposers, molded by flattery and ferocious when provoked, self-indulgent, gluttonous, drunken, corrupt at heart and swayed by base passions. The nobles gathered in music, dancing, sparkling wine, blasphemy and idolatrous sacrifice rising in insult to heaven, where wine beclouded reason, banished reverence, fascinated and deluded the company until nothing was held sacred, with the king taking the lead in riot and blasphemous presumption. While drinking with his princes he profaned God by using vessels consecrated to Jehovah and praising gods of gold and silver and forgetting God, and God was present as an unseen witness in the palace, making a history to testify to the close of time, tracing the king's destiny in unintelligible characters over against the wall, weighing his motives, character, life and soul in the balances of the sanctuary and pronouncing him wanting, a record to stand when the books of heaven are opened. The same spirit acts whenever drinkers under Satan's leading praise sparkling wine as all the Christ they want, and indulgence in wine and tobacco shuts away reason and prepares the way for every excess of wild license, so the only safeguard for youth and mature age is total abstinence and purposing like Daniel not to taste luxuries and wines, making God their strength.
Pleasure gatherings of merriment and feasting and indulgence in the wine cup are recorded by God as intemperance. At Belshazzar's feast of feasting and wine drinking an unseen Witness from the invisible world was present, and the same is true at all such pleasure gatherings centered on food, drink, merriment and hilarity. Christ, the center of the world's hope, is present though put out of thought and out of mind, grieved to see men absorbed in the pleasures of the table and in hilarity and witticism. Such scenes do not blend with eternal realities and cannot be set beside the sacred hour of divine worship. Fascination with clubrooms, suppers, and world-loving company has the same effect of forgetting God and dishonoring His name as Belshazzar's feast as an example of worldly pleasure.
A wealthy man drinking wine at a feast behaves like Belshazzar by loudly demanding more wine and making a boastful, irreverent claim about Christ. The same unseen Witness present at Belshazzar's feast is present at all such scenes, and God as a silent witness sees hidden wrongdoing so that people remain accountable before Him, with the divine hand writing judgment on the wall against a godless, sacrilegious feast. Angels were present at the idolatrous revelry, and angels also stand beside careless professed keepers of God's commandments who dishonor Christ through vain thoughts, unkind words, and selfish acts, grieving and turning away as these people crucify Christ afresh and put Him to open shame.
The sacrilegious mirth with his thousand lords that made light of what God had chosen as sacred to Himself warns that neglect of God-given duties is seen and recorded, and those who fail their obligations will be found wanting as Belshazzar's blasphemy brought divine judgment. Profaning the golden vessels of Jehovah and praising the idols of Babylon in defiance of God, while God witnessed the unholy scene and a bloodless hand traced mysterious characters on the palace wall filling the king and courtiers with terror as their doom was pronounced by the servant of the Most High, warns those who speak calumny and falsehood against the servants of Christ that their slanderous touch profanes not soulless vessels but the characters of those whom Christ purchased by His blood. The same hand that wrote on Belshazzar's wall keeps faithful record of every act of injustice or oppression committed against God's people. The scene of nobles praising vessels of silver and gold while a mysterious hand wrote on the wall and frightened the king illustrates the offense of receiving praise and glory that belong to God.
Belshazzar held a lavish night feast for a thousand of his nobles, drinking wine before them amid music, revelry and heavy indulgence while Babylon lay under siege yet felt secure in its defenses and supplies. Blinded by wine and pride, he lost reverence and profaned God by bringing out the consecrated gold and silver vessels from the Lord's temple to drink from, while he and his guests praised gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. God was present as an unseen Witness observing every movement and word, and at the height of the mirth a bloodless hand traced judgment on the palace wall that weighed his life and character in the balances and found him wanting. That night his guilt and that of the kingdom reached full measure, forbearance ended, and he was slain and his kingdom passed to another. Its sudden overthrow in the midst of feasting pictures the end of the world, warning that pleasure gatherings that forget God are recorded as intemperance and that the only safeguard is total abstinence and purposing not to indulge appetite.
Feast Setting and History
Belshazzar held a great, lavish feast for a thousand of his lords or nobles and drank wine openly before them. The gathering was royal revelry on a grand scale, centered on the king drinking with his court.
The banquet was filled with music and feasting, with dancing, sparkling wine, and heavy drinking as the guests reveled under wine's influence. Those present included princes and statesmen, men of learning, and beautiful women, with lords and princes gathered at the king's command. The wine beclouded reason, banished reverence, and fascinated and deluded the company.
The feast took place at night while Babylon stood under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar's successors and was nearing its fall. The city was then besieged, yet the king felt safe behind its defenses and abundant supplies and spent the time in mirth and revelry. So Babylon fell amid celebration and feasting rather than in a moment of expectation or alarm.
Pride and Reckless Security
Belshazzar held his feast while glorying in his royal power, with pride and love of pleasure and self-glorification, and with a reckless sense of security as he drank wine before his lords. He feasted in mirth and revelry though Babylon was besieged, because he felt safe behind the city's defenses and its abundant supplies. His guests were a thousand lords joined by princes and statesmen and men of learning and beautiful women, drinking heavily and reveling under the influence of wine. Despite opportunities to learn God's will and his responsibility to obey it, he neglected the truth and ignored the lessons of Nebuchadnezzar's experience.
He was a man of absolute power, holding property and lords and princes at his command, with everything to flatter pride and indulge passion. Yet he was void of self-control, hasty and violent in temper, gracious to flatterers and cruel as the grave to opposers, molded by flattery and ferocious when provoked. He was self-indulgent and gluttonous and drunken, corrupt at heart and swayed by base passions.
In their prosperity Babylon's rulers forgot God and credited human achievement with the honor and glory of the kingdom, so the kingdom passed away. Belshazzar disregarded the light God had given through Nebuchadnezzar, and refusing and failing to practice God's lessons brings judgment. His sacrilegious feast with his nobles therefore stood just before Babylon's calamity, as the fruit of neglecting truth.
Sacrilegious Revelry and Idolatry
Blinded and beclouded by wine, Belshazzar lost reverence for sacred things at his feast for a thousand lords. Intoxicated and proud of his power, he himself took the lead in riot, blasphemy and profane revelry, and fascinated and deluded the company until nothing was held sacred. The music, banqueting and wine-drinking thus became a scene of contempt for holy things.
While drinking with his princes and lords he brought out the gold and silver vessels consecrated to Jehovah and taken from the Lord's temple. He drank from them and put what had been dedicated by holy consecration to God to profane and licentious purposes. In this sacrilegious mirth he and his guests made light of what God had chosen as sacred to Himself.
With those vessels in their hands the guests praised gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. In doing so they forgot God while drinking wine from His temple's sacred vessels. Their idolatrous sacrifice rose as insult and defiance to heaven.
The revelry was sacrilegious, licentious and sensual, marked by indulgence of appetite, gluttony and drunkenness that dishonored God and His name. Its glee, dancing, singing and sensual indulgence dulled the senses of the guests. They spent money freely, indulged appetite, profaned sacred things and uttered God-dishonoring words, and with worldly entertainments and company were led into forgetfulness of God.
That gluttony and drunkenness at Babylon's great feast and drinking with his lords is what God ascribes as the foundation and cause of Babylon's wickedness, sins and fall.
Unseen Witness and Judgment
Belshazzar did not know it, but heaven was present in his banquet hall as an unseen Witness and Watcher, a messenger observing every movement of the king and his lords. While they drank wine and indulged appetite in lavish, sacrilegious revelry, profaning the gold and silver vessels consecrated to Jehovah and praising gods of gold and silver, God saw the desecration, heard the idolatrous praise and God-dishonoring words, and made a history to testify to the close of time. He traced the king's destiny even as the company, their reason beclouded and reverence banished, held nothing sacred and forgot God.
At the height of the mirth, in the very midst of the unholy scene of defiance, a bloodless hand appeared and traced mysterious, unintelligible characters on the palace wall. The writing announced their doom, and the king and his courtiers, filled with terror, heard it pronounced by the servant of the Most High. The same hand keeps faithful record of every act of injustice or oppression, so that slander against Christ's servants profanes not soulless vessels but characters purchased by His blood.
The characters weighed his motives, character, life, soul and true character in the balances of the sanctuary and pronounced him wanting. Deeds are recorded in heaven, and careless persistence in sin is weighed and judged there, to stand when the books are opened. Neglect of God-given duties is seen by the same Watcher, and receiving praise and glory that belong to God alone is the offense that brings the verdict of wanting.
That feast was the final night of his folly, when he and his lords brought their guilt, and the guilt of the Chaldean kingdom, to its full measure. By presumption and defiance amid mirth and forgetfulness of God he passed the limits of divine forbearance, so protection and shielding were taken away and restraining power no longer warded off evil from him. No worldly wealth or selfish security could shut out judgment: enemy armies reached the palace, he was slain that night, his body fell, and his kingdom passed into other hands to an alien king upon the throne.
End-Time Warning and Parallels
Babylon fell in a night and at an hour of feasting and reveling, not in a moment of expectation or alarm but amid celebration while the king and his court were given to indulgence. That sudden overthrow in the midst of indulgence pictures how it will be at the end of the world, with the fall of ancient Babylon serving as the parallel. The sacrilegious feast was marked by revelry, glee, dancing, singing, and sensual indulgence that carried the guests into a state that dulled their senses and dishonored God. Its shameful reveling resembles Israel's reveling around the golden calf and warns against being led into sin when God is forgotten.
Belshazzar's night feast of mirth and revelry is the pattern for false worshippers who claim to be Christians while their hearts are set on worldly pleasure and worldly gain and they indulge a false hope. God is present as a witness in all such scenes, and in a moment He can change the features of the scene and bring sudden punishment, even as He did on that night. There are continual repetitions of Belshazzar's feast and Belshazzar's worship whenever the heart God requires in pure devotion is turned to a woman, to a man, or to any earthly thing. The same repetition occurs when God-given powers solemnly consecrated to sacred service are turned to unholy lust and human worship, with praise and adoration belonging alone to God uttered toward a sinful human being. At the great feast the gold and silver vessels dedicated by holy consecration to God were put to profane and licentious purposes amid idolatrous desecration, while Belshazzar did not know he had uninvited guests, for the God of heaven was present as witness hearing the praises and seeing the desecration, and that same Witness is present still. Those living in these last days, upon whom the ends of the world are come, who repeat that turning aside are far more guilty than was Belshazzar.
Temperance and Present Duty
Daniel 5:1 exposes an idolatrous feast led by a man of absolute power with property, lords and princes at his command and everything to flatter pride and indulge passion, yet void of self-control, hasty and violent in temper, gracious to flatterers and cruel as the grave to opposers, molded by flattery and ferocious when provoked, self-indulgent, gluttonous, drunken, corrupt at heart and swayed by base passions. The nobles gathered in music, dancing, sparkling wine, blasphemy and idolatrous sacrifice rising in insult to heaven, where wine beclouded reason, banished reverence, fascinated and deluded the company until nothing was held sacred, with the king taking the lead in riot and blasphemous presumption. While drinking with his princes he profaned God by using vessels consecrated to Jehovah and praising gods of gold and silver and forgetting God, and God was present as an unseen witness in the palace, making a history to testify to the close of time, tracing the king's destiny in unintelligible characters over against the wall, weighing his motives, character, life and soul in the balances of the sanctuary and pronouncing him wanting, a record to stand when the books of heaven are opened. The same spirit acts whenever drinkers under Satan's leading praise sparkling wine as all the Christ they want, and indulgence in wine and tobacco shuts away reason and prepares the way for every excess of wild license, so the only safeguard for youth and mature age is total abstinence and purposing like Daniel not to taste luxuries and wines, making God their strength.
Pleasure gatherings of merriment and feasting and indulgence in the wine cup are recorded by God as intemperance. At Belshazzar's feast of feasting and wine drinking an unseen Witness from the invisible world was present, and the same is true at all such pleasure gatherings centered on food, drink, merriment and hilarity. Christ, the center of the world's hope, is present though put out of thought and out of mind, grieved to see men absorbed in the pleasures of the table and in hilarity and witticism. Such scenes do not blend with eternal realities and cannot be set beside the sacred hour of divine worship. Fascination with clubrooms, suppers, and world-loving company has the same effect of forgetting God and dishonoring His name as Belshazzar's feast as an example of worldly pleasure.
A wealthy man drinking wine at a feast behaves like Belshazzar by loudly demanding more wine and making a boastful, irreverent claim about Christ. The same unseen Witness present at Belshazzar's feast is present at all such scenes, and God as a silent witness sees hidden wrongdoing so that people remain accountable before Him, with the divine hand writing judgment on the wall against a godless, sacrilegious feast. Angels were present at the idolatrous revelry, and angels also stand beside careless professed keepers of God's commandments who dishonor Christ through vain thoughts, unkind words, and selfish acts, grieving and turning away as these people crucify Christ afresh and put Him to open shame.
The sacrilegious mirth with his thousand lords that made light of what God had chosen as sacred to Himself warns that neglect of God-given duties is seen and recorded, and those who fail their obligations will be found wanting as Belshazzar's blasphemy brought divine judgment. Profaning the golden vessels of Jehovah and praising the idols of Babylon in defiance of God, while God witnessed the unholy scene and a bloodless hand traced mysterious characters on the palace wall filling the king and courtiers with terror as their doom was pronounced by the servant of the Most High, warns those who speak calumny and falsehood against the servants of Christ that their slanderous touch profanes not soulless vessels but the characters of those whom Christ purchased by His blood. The same hand that wrote on Belshazzar's wall keeps faithful record of every act of injustice or oppression committed against God's people. The scene of nobles praising vessels of silver and gold while a mysterious hand wrote on the wall and frightened the king illustrates the offense of receiving praise and glory that belong to God.