Daniel 5:17, commentary and pictures

Daniel's answer to Belshazzar joins two things together: a refusal to keep the king's gifts and rewards for himself, telling the king to keep them or give them to another, and a promise that he will still read the writing to the king and make known its interpretation. The refusal is absolute, yet the service is freely offered, for he will read and explain what God has written.

He stands before the king as a servant of God and of the Most High, speaking with quiet dignity. He is unmoved by royal promises and offers of favor, and he is not intimidated by the king. He gives no flattery but speaks plainly, holding the king accountable for his sin and for failing to learn from the history of Nebuchadnezzar. In that plainness he pronounces doom upon Belshazzar and his thousand lords.

His place in Babylon is most critical and trying, for he does his assigned work faithfully as a statesman while plainly refusing any work that would militate against God or cheapen mind and character. That faithful course provokes discussion, and by God's providence always at work in human affairs it brings him into reasoning relation with the king of Babylon to present the light God has for him. What he brings is reading in the light of the living oracles rather than dreams and fancies, concerning prophecies against Babylon and other kingdoms, with light that exalts Jehovah as more powerful than any other kingdom.

The setting of this witness is Belshazzar's wine-besotted idolatrous feast and revelry with his thousand lords, when wine has beclouded reason, and the fall of Babylon comes in that very hour of feasting and revelry. In that feast the king forgets God and makes light of what God chose as sacred by profaning the consecrated golden vessels of Jehovah, praising the idols and gods of silver and gold. God as an unseen witness observes the desecration and the unholy scene, though the revelers do not know He is there. In the midst of sacrilegious mirth a bloodless hand traces mysterious characters on the palace wall over against the wall, unintelligible to the revelers. The terrified king and courtiers then hear their doom as Daniel reads the writing in the light of the living oracles rather than dreams and fancies.

The interpretation is a message of doom: God has numbered Belshazzar's kingdom and brought it to an end, has weighed his motives, character, life and soul in the balances of His sanctuary and found him wanting, and has divided his kingdom between the Medes and Persians, a record that will stand when the books of heaven are opened. Daniel's reading thus exalts Jehovah as more powerful than any other kingdom. It shows Babylon's coming calamity and fall resulted from disregard of heaven-sent light, including the light given to Nebuchadnezzar, because its rulers forgot God and credited human achievement with the kingdom's honor and glory.

God gives such lessons to lead people to reform, and neglecting and failing to practice them brings judgment. In presumption and defiance people may go beyond the limits of God's forbearance, until blasphemy and disobedience exhaust His patience and bring divine intervention. Daniel could speak for God as an unseen witness in that hour because he had purposed not to eat luxuries or taste wine at fashionable resorts, making God his strength through total abstinence. The same hand that wrote on Belshazzar's wall keeps faithful record of every act of injustice or oppression committed against God's people, so tracing words of calumny and falsehood against the servants Christ purchased by His blood is a worse profanation than profaning soulless vessels, and God witnesses it. As Babylon's fall came at an hour of feasting and reveling, so will it be at the end of the world, when only the wise virgins with oil in their vessels with their lamps will be prepared to meet the Bridegroom.