Daniel 5:1-4
The vessels out of the temple
A thousand lords, the wives and the concubines, and the gold vessels brought out deliberately. They drink and praise gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood and stone.
People of the Bible
Belshazzar
Threw a feast with the vessels taken out of the temple, and was dead before morning.
Belshazzar holds a feast for a thousand of his lords while the Medes and Persians are outside the walls. He sends for the gold and silver vessels his father had taken from the house in Jerusalem, and the whole company drinks from them and praises the gods of gold and silver, brass, iron, wood and stone. In the same hour fingers appear and write on the plaster of the wall opposite the lampstand, and his knees knock together. The wise men cannot read it, and the queen remembers a man.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Belshazzar
- 01
- 02
Daniel 5:5-9
Fingers on the plaster
A hand writes opposite the candlestick on the wall of the king’s palace, and he sees the part of the hand that wrote. His countenance changes, his thoughts trouble him, and his knees smite one against another.
- 03
Daniel 5:13-23
You knew all this
Daniel refuses the gifts and then recounts the humbling of Nebuchadnezzar at length before laying the charge: you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven, and the God in whose hand your breath is you have not glorified.
- 04
Daniel 5:24-31
Numbered, weighed, divided
Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin. He is clothed with scarlet and a chain of gold and proclaimed third ruler, and in that night he is slain and Darius takes the kingdom.
Why it matters
The charge against him is not ignorance but refusal to learn from what he already knew. Daniel spends most of his reply on Nebuchadnezzar, the pride, the sentence, the grass, the restoration, and then says you knew all this and have not humbled your heart. Four words are weighed, counted, divided, and the same night he is slain. It is the shortest distance in Scripture between a banquet and an ending.
2 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
