Daniel, Chapter 5
Handwriting on the Wall”
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e have an expression in our
language today: “He saw the handwriting
on the wall.” QUESTION: Does
anyone know what that phrase means, or would you like to take a guess? What do you think people mean when they say
“He saw the handwriting on the wall”?
ANSWER: It means someone has been given a glimpse of
the future, and what they see is bad news for them! It means a person recognizes that the end of
something is coming, and it soon will be all over.
q For
example, if a politician takes a survey a week before the election, and his
popularity has sunk to 10%, while his opponent’s poll numbers have shot up to
80%, we say “he can see the handwriting on the wall.” In other words, the politician knows he’s
going to lose the election!
q When
a pro football player is getting older and slower, and the coach stops sending
him out on the field, that player knows that he will probably won’t be
re-signed at the end of the season: he
can “see the handwriting on the wall.”
In today’s lesson we will learn that figure of speech comes
from an actual event, in which someone really
did see a hand, and it really was writing
on a wall! In Daniel 5 we will read the
story, and uncover the meaning of a mysterious message written by a
supernatural hand on the wall of the palace in Babylon.
TURN to
Daniel, Chapter 5.
BACKGROUND: Approximately 32 years have passed since
Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream of a great tree (recorded in Chapter 4). The time of the events in Chapter 5 is 539 B. C. When this book began Daniel was a young man
– now he around 81. Nebuchadnezzar is dead
and gone. After Nebuchadnezzar died, three
kings followed in rapid succession, and Verse
1 tells us that now a king named Belshazzar
(bel SHAZ uhr) is on the throne of Babylon.
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s our story begins the Babylonians are facing a critical
situation, because the Medes and the Persians have invaded their kingdom, and
in fact, the Persian army is just outside the city walls of Babylon. Belshazzar responds to this crisis in a most
unusual way: he throws the ancient
equivalent of a “beer bust”!
READ VERSES 1-5 OUR FIRST QUESTION: WHY DID THE KING STAGE THIS ELABORATE
BANQUET?
It certainly seems to be an odd time to throw a drunken party,
with their enemies just outside the gates and the city in imminent danger of
invasion. There are two possible
answers. First, the festivities may have
been a gesture of defiance, of arrogance.
After all, the huge double-walls surrounding Babylon were considered impenetrable
– ancient historians reported that the walls of Babylon were 60 miles around, 300 feet high, 80 feet
thick, and they extended some 35 feet below the ground. Holding such a banquet in the face of an
invasion may have been an indication that Belshazzar simply could not believe
any army could ever break through such massive walls.
But there is a second
explanation: perhaps the banquet was
held to reassure the citizens of Babylon,
as a sort of morale booster. Verse 1 says “The king drank wine before the thousands” – i.e., he was
deliberately attempting to set a tone of carefree casualness. The
king would have been seated on a raised platform in front of all the guests,
and court protocol dictated that everyone present had to follow the example of
the king. Belshazzar wanted to publicly
create the impression that, even with an invading army outside the walls of the
city, the Babylonians didn’t have anything to worry about.
One clue supporting this
explanation is the fact that Belshazzar called for the sacred vessels captured
from the temple of the God of Israel to be brought to the feast. The book of Daniel prepared us for this from
the very beginning! READ Chapter 1,
Verse 2 “articles from the temple of God”
Bringing such sacred objects to
a drinking party – even those captured from another nation – was not ordinarily
done. Such a thing was not considered
appropriate, even in a pagan society. If nothing else, SUPERSTITION would have
kept them from such an irreverent action.
So it seems that Belshazzar
intended to bolster the confidence of the people with this gesture: in other words, the message of his defiant,
disrespectful action was, “We did it
before, and we can do it again! See
these sacred articles we plundered from the Temple
in Jerusalem? Seventy years ago we beat the god of the Jews
– now we can whip the gods of the Persians – long live the gods of the
Babylonians!”
Verse 4 seems to support this interpretation when it says “he praised the gods of wood and stone.”
Background Note: This interpretation is also supported by Verse
23 “You set yourself up….the goblets
from his temple”
Whatever his motive – the king’s
blasphemy was a deliberate insult to the majesty of Almighty God. Up until now the Sovereign God of Israel had
been content to use Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire as His tool to
subdue the Israelites because it suited His purpose in bringing judgment on His
stubborn children.
But now, when Belshazzar and
these drunken unbelievers toasted their pagan idols with the sacred Temple vessels, vessels
which had originally been dedicated to Him, the Babylonians had crossed over a
line! God’s wrath was provoked, and the Lord
decided it is time to teach the Babylonians a lesson!
READ
VERSES
5-6, 25 THE
HANDWRITING ON THE WALL
The false bravado instantly vanishes
when this ghostly apparition appears in mid-air and writes four words on the
plaster wall! QUESTION: How do you think YOU would feel if you were
at a party and you saw a hand appear and write on the wall?
My guess is that there was an abrupt
change in tone as the boisterous party screeched to an abrupt stop and the
drunken revelers suddenly sobered up!
Background Note: According to
Burton Coffman’s commentary, excavations at Babylon have uncovered just such a large
banqueting hall, 50’ by 160’, with walls of white plaster, which would make an
ideal surface on which such a message could be written.
Unlike the dreams of
Nebuchadnezzar, which the king experienced privately and then announced publicly,
this miraculous intervention was a shared public experience. That is, EVERYONE at the party saw the disembodied
hand materialize in thin air, EVERYONE watched the words being eerily written
on the wall!
And once the fingers disappeared,
there remained the Aramaic words, staring them all in the face:
MENE. . . . . . MENE. . . . . .
TEKEL . . . . . . PARSIN
This mysterious message is eerie
enough because of the strange way in which it is delivered, but it becomes even
more unsettling when no one can explain what it means!
READ VERSES
7-9 The fact that none of
the Babylonian wise men can interpret the handwriting on the wall makes the king
plunge deeper and deeper into terror and despair.
READ VERSES
10-12 DANIEL REMEMBERED
This word “queen” probably means
“queen mother.” She would have been the
widow of Nebuchadnezzar, who we know from historical accounts was a woman named
Nitocris. If so, that explains why she
remembers Daniel, and the fact that he has the gift of understanding such
mysteries!
READ VERSES
13-17 DANIEL IS SUMMONED.
Belshazzar appears not to know
Daniel personally, which is not surprising:
- By now Daniel was in his 80’s
- Several kings had come and gone
- Daniel had predicted Nebuchadnezzar’s lunacy, and Belshazzar might well have avoided Daniel out of fear Daniel would make some threatening prediction about HIM!
READ VERSES
18-21 THE HUMBLING OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR
By the way, archaeology has
demonstrated that the city really was quite impressive! The hanging gardens of Babylon built by Nebuchadnezzar for his wife
were one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and even today the ruins of
the city are massive!
NOTE THE KEY VERSE: Verse 21 “the Most High God is sovereign
over the kingdoms of men and sets over them anyone he wishes” (And also see the very last verse of
Chapter 4!). This is the theme of
the book of Daniel.
QUESTION: We often read words in the Bible without
thinking about exactly what they mean.
Can anyone tell me what the word “Sovereign” means?
ANSWER: In the ancient world a “Sovereign” was a monarch
or king. Today we are led by a
President, who has to be elected and/or re-elected. Back then a king answered to no one – he had
absolute power.
When the Bible says that God is
“Sovereign” it means that He is absolutely in control, that he has all
authority and power. You cannot fight
God, because if He has decided something will happen, it will happen!
Pagan kings like Nebuchadnezzar
and Belshazzar tended to be arrogant and puffed up, because of their great
authority and power – but EVERYONE needs to learn to be humble before the power
of Almighty God! 1 Timothy 6:15 calls God
“the blessed and only Ruler, the King of
kings and Lord of Lords”!
READ VERSES
22-24 THE ARROGANCE OF BELSHAZZAR
Consider the courage it took to
deliver this message! Once again Daniel
finds himself in the uncomfortable position of speaking truth to power, and
once again he acts with integrity.
One of the really impressive
things about Daniel is the consistency of his character: we have seen his character as a young man,
uprooted from his home and plunked down in the might and splendor of an enemy’s
capital; now we are seeing him in action
as an old man, who has spent decades serving in a foreign court. And the elderly Daniel is just like the teenaged
Daniel: he puts God first!
READ VERSES
25-28 THE MESSAGE INTERPRETED
The key to understanding the
mysterious message is to recognize that the words are the Aramaic names of weights. (Back then a coin’s value was measured by how
much the coin weighed.)
Noun Verb
MENE Mina numbered (repeated twice for
emphasis)
TEKEL Shekel weighted/judged
PERES/ PARSIN half shared/divided
Take together the words could be
paraphrased in English as, “NUMBERED……...WEIGHED….
…..DIVIDED.”
READ VERSES 29-31 THE RESULT: Once God wrote “the handwriting on the
wall,” it didn’t matter how high or wide or deep the walls of Babylon were – once God says something will
happen, it will happen!
How did the Persian army manage
to overcome the massive walls and defenses of Babylon?
We have independent confirmation of the fall of Babylon from four separate ancient sources:
- The historical accounts of Herodotus and Xenophon (from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.)
- The cuneiform (clay) records of both Nabonidus and Cyrus
Those historical sources tell us
that the Persians devised an ingenious scheme to enter the city. The Euphrates
River ran under the western wall of Babylon and through the
city, so the invaders outside the city dug a canal and redirected the river. Once they had diverted the flow of the water
the Persians were able to walk under the wall on the dry riverbed. AND – in two ancient accounts (the Greek historians
Herodotus and Xenophon), both say that when the army of the Medes and the
Persians entered Babylon,
they found the inhabitants of the city engaged in a drunken feast!
LESSONS:
1. THE SHORT-SIGHTEDNESS / STUPIDITY OF SIN.
With their lives in mortal
danger – with their nation hanging on the edge of destruction and the enemy
literally at the gate – the Babylonians were engaged in a boisterous and
profane feast. It is in the nature of
sin to be arrogant . . . . to be short-sighted. . . to boast, “It won’t happen
to me.” That is why, when the New Testament speaks of
SIN, it so often warns “Do not be
deceived” [READ Galatians 6:7]
QUESTION: Can you think of any examples of times when sinful
people who boast “It won’t happen to me!
I can get away with it”? If so,
what is the result when people proudly refuse to submit to God’s will?
Possible Answers:
q No
dishonest person ever thinks he will get caught, but liars end up in trouble
all the time.
q No
criminal ever thinks he will end up in jail, but all the prisons are crammed
full.
q No
smoker ever thinks he will get cancer, but hundreds of thousands die every
year.
q No
one who plays around with alcohol or drugs ever think they will get addicted,
but there are millions of people who do.
[This was part of the problem with the Babylonians – once they were
drunk, they were helpless! Alcohol still
has the same effect on people today. See
Proverbs 23:29-35 for a description of the devastating effects of drunkenness.]
2. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD.
The Bible often speaks of the
awesome, absolute power of God. For
example:
q Job
42:1-2 “Then Job replied to the Lord: ‘I
know that you can do all things; no plan
of yours can be thwarted.”
q Jeremiah
31:17 “Ah, Sovereign Lord, you have made
the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you.”
q Matthew
19:26 Jesus said, “With God all things
are possible.”
QUESTION: What are some of the ways we have seen God’s
power demonstrated in the book of Daniel this week?
QUESTION: What are some things that God can do, that no
one else can?
Background Note: “Babylon” is used
throughout the Bible as a symbol of human pride – as a symbol of nations which think they can discard God,
dispense with morality, and depend upon themselves for their security and prosperity. Background Note: See Revelation 18:2 , Isaiah 13: 17-22, Jeremiah 51:37-44
3. THE CERTAINTY OF JUDGMENT.
Belshazzar was absolutely
convinced that he could withstand any attack.
But when the time comes for God’s judgment, there is nowhere to
hide! One day WE too will be counted and
weighted (READ Romans 14:10-12)!
Unbelievers often laugh at the
thought of a “Judgment Day” (see 2 Peter 3:1-10), but just as God promised the
Babylonians that judgment was coming, so Jesus has warned us that we must be
ready for that day of accounting (READ Matthew 24:36-44).
Conclusion: WE need to see “the handwriting on the wall”
and, unlike the Babylonians, be prepared for Judgment Day!
QUESTION: What do WE need to do in order to be prepared
for Judgment Day?
--Dan Williams
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