5:1 BELSHAZZAR the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand. Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, might drink therein. Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone. In the same hour came forth the fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister 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 in him, and his thoughts troubled him; and the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another. The king cried aloud to bring in the enchanters, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. The king spake and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with purple, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom. Then came in all the king’s wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation. Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were perplexed. Now the queen by reason of the words of the king and his lords came into the banquet house: the queen spake and said, O king, live for ever; let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed: there is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him: and the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, I say, thy father, made him master of the magicians, enchanters, Chaldeans, and soothsayers; forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams, and shewing of dark sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar. Now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the interpretation. Then was Daniel brought in before the king. The king spake and said unto Daniel,

Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Judah? I have heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee. And now the wise men, the enchanters, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the interpretation of the thing. But I have heard of thee, that thou canst give interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with purple, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom. Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; nevertheless I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation. O thou king, the Most High God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father the kingdom, and greatness, and glory, and majesty: and because of the greatness that he gave him, all the peoples, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew, and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he raised up, and whom he would he put down. But when his heart was lifted up, and his spirit was hardened that he dealt proudly, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him: and he was driven from the sons of men; and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses; he was fed with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven: until he knew that the Most High God ruleth in the kingdom of men, and that he setteth up over it whomsoever he will. And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this; but hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; and they have brought the vessels of his house before thee, and thou and thy lords, thy wives and thy concubines, have drunk wine in them; and thou hast praised the gods of silver, and gold, of brass, iron, wood, and stone, which see not, nor hear, nor know: and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified: then was the part of the hand sent from before him, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and brought it to an end. TEKEL; thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians. Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with purple, and put a chain of gold about his neck, and made proclamation concerning him, that he should be the third ruler in the kingdom. In that night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was slain. And Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old.

FOR the twenty-three years between the accession of Evil-merodach and the fall of Babylon (B.C. 561-538) there is a gap in the Scripture history. The Book of Daniel passes at once to the capture of the city and the death of Belshazzar, who is called the son of Nebuchadnezzar; but this word need not signify more than a direct successor. Jeremiah, whose prophecies of this period are almost as definite as histories, predicts that all nations should serve Nebuchadnezzar, and his son, and his son’s son until the very time of the land came; and the Chronicles state that the Jews were servants to him and his sons until the reign of the kingdom of Persia. Our chief secular authorities for the period, Berosus, Herodotus, Ctesias, the Canon, and Josephus, amid many discrepancies of detail, yet agree sufficiently to guide us to probable conclusions, with the aid of the inscriptions on the monuments. The succession of kings seems to have been as follows:

| B.C. | Years of Reign. | | — | — | | 561. EVIL-MERODACH, the son of Nebuchadnezzar | 2 | | 559. NERIGLISSAR, sister’s husband to Evil-merodach, a usuper; perhaps the same as Nergal-sharezer, the Rab-mag (Chief of the Magi? Jer. 39: 3, 13) | 3½ | | 556. LABOROSOARCHOD, his son, killed by a conspiracy, and the family of Nebuchadnezzar restored | 6¾ | | 555. NABONADIUS, or Nabonodus (Nabu-nit) the LABYNETUS II. of Herodotus, probably the son or grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, and the last king of Babylon | 17 | | 539. (about). BELSHAZZAR (Bil-shar-uzur), son of Nabonadius, becomes his associate in the kingdom, and governor of Babylon | 2 | | 538. Babylon taken by CYRUS, and governed by DARIUS THE MEDE | 2 | | 536. Death of Darius—Cyrus reigns alone—Restoration of the Jews | | | 529. Death of Cyrus, after a reign of nine years from the taking of Babylon | 9 | | It was during the reign of Neriglissar t | | the great revolution occurred which was destined to change the fate of Western Asia and to act powerfully on Europe, the overthrow of the old dynasty in Media and the foundation of the Persian empire by Cyrus the Great. Taking the length assigned to the reign of Cyrus by Herodotus, twenty-nine years, his accession falls in n.c. 558. P. S.

Till the last few years we had in the accounts of the fall of Babylon one of the most hopeless and irreconcilable discrepancies between Holy Scripture and profane history. The Bible represents Belshazzar as king of Babylon, and says that the city was captured during a festival by an unexpected entry of the Persians within the walls at night, and that the king was slain in the midst of his carousals. Berosus says that the last king was Nabonnedus; that he retired to Borsippa, was there blockaded, but that on his surrender his life was spared by Cyrus, who granted him a principality in Carmania, where he spent the rest of his days. With much of this Herodotus agrees, only he calls the king Labynetus. Thus the Bible and profane history seemed at hopeless variance; but in 1854 Sir H. Rawlinson deciphered some cylinders discovered among the ruins of the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, and found that Nabonnedus had an eldest son, named Bel-shar-ezar, whom he admitted to a share in the government. All is now clear. The father commanded the forces in the field; the son took charge of the capital and its garrison. He perished in the night attack; while his father, defeated in his attempt to relieve the city, withdrew to Borsippa, and being no longer formidable, now that Babylon had been captured, obtained from Cyrus honorable terms. R. P. S.

The most important facts, however, which the cylinders disclose are that the eldest son of Nabonnedus was named Bel shar-ezar, and that he was admitted by his father to a share in the government. This name is undoubtedly the Belshazzar of Daniel, and thus furnishes a key to the explanation of that great historical problem which has hitherto defied solution. We can now understand how Belshazzar, as joint king with his father, may have been governor of Babylon when the city was attacked by the combined forces of the Medes and Persians, and may have perished in the assault which followed; while Nabonnedus, leading a force to the relief of the place, was defeated and obliged to take refuge in the neighboring town of Borsippa (or Birs-i-Nimrud), capitulating after a short resistance, and being subsequently assigned, according to Berosus, an honorable retirement in Carmania. By the discovery, indeed, of the name Bel-shar-ezar, as appertaining to the son of Nabonnedus, we are for the first time enabled to reconcile authentic history (such as it is related by Herodotus and Berosus, and not as we find it in the romances of Xenophon or the fables of Ctesias) with the inspired record of Daniel, one of the bulwarks of our religion. H. Rawlinson.

Chap. 5. This chapter presents Belshazzar in his revelries and blasphemy; the awful hand that wrote his doom upon the palace wall; the utter failure of his astrologers to read and interpret the writing; how Daniel read and interpreted, and how it was fulfilled in that eventful night. H. C.

1-5. For nearly two years Cyrus, king of the Medes and Persians, had been encamped around Babylon. In a great battle outside the city, Nabonadius was defeated and compelled to find refuge at a distance from Babylon. Belshazzar therefore remained sole monarch in the city during the siege. But little care was felt by the king and people concerning the siege by Cyrus. Their situation seemed impregnable, since the walls of the city were of such prodigious height and thickness, and the number of their defenders was so great. More than this, the capital had been stored with sufficient provision to sustain the multitudes within its walls for many years. Under these circumstances it was that Belshazzar made a great feast to a thousand of his lords. While at the banquet, under the excitement of the wine-cup, the young king directed that the golden and silver vessels from the temple at Jerusalem should be brought from the treasure house, in which they had been stored by Nebuchadnezzar. Out of these sacred vessels the king and his princes dared to drink in praise of their gods of gold and silver, of wood and stone. And it was in the self-same hour of this desecration of vessels sanctified to Jehovah’s worship that there came forth fingers of a man’s hand, which, visibly to the king, traced certain letters upon the wall. B.

4. Praised the gods of gold. As they drank their wine in these once hallowed vessels, they triumphed over that God, to whom they had been consecrated; and magnified the power of their idols of gold and silver, etc., as if by their might these victories had been achieved, and these rich spoils obtained. Bp. Hall.—Such a wanton and sacrilegious insult deserved and called for exemplary punishment. Wintle.

5,6. Belshazzar might well stand aghast to find himself thus confronted face to face with the dread Jehovah whom he is purposely insulting. He has a sense of a present Power, more than human, in that strange hand, writing unknown words on his palace wall, and a guilty conscience helps him to forecast some fearful doom. The brightness of his countenance is gone (so the original imports); his mind is fearfully agitated; his knees smite against each other. How changed the scene from the glee of his blasphemous revelry to this paleness of cheek, convulsion of frame, remorse of conscience, and dread foreboding of doom! Many a sinner has had a like experience, and other thousands must have it! H. C.

7. Shall be the third ruler. Interpreters have found it difficult to explain why the proposal should have been made in this form instead of offering the second position in the kingdom, that which was next to the king himself, as was accorded to Joseph by Pharaoh. The discovery of the fact, however, that Belshazzar was at this time reigning conjointly with his father, Nabonned, solves the mystery at once; the next in authority after the two kings would be the third ruler in the kingdom. This incidental expression shows of itself, what appears more fully from this entire narrative, that the writer had an acquaintance with the state of things in Babylon at that time such as was possessed by no ancient historian that has come down to us. His statements find full confirmation and illustration in the monuments that have been but recently exhumed. It is just such a narrative as we might expect from Daniel, who was at this time within the walls, and was familiar with all the affairs of the government. To impute such an account to a Jew in the time of the Maccabees, as is done by those who deny the genuineness of this book, is simply preposterous.

8. They could not read the writing. This, coupled with the fact that the writing was promptly read by Daniel, has been thought to imply that the characters were Jewish, and as such not recognizable by the Babylonian wise men. Whether from this or from some other cause, they could gather no inkling of its meaning. They could not make out the words, and they could attribute to them no intelligible sense.

9. This confessed failure of his wise men increased the agitation and terror of the king and the perplexity of his lords.

10. The queen. Wife of Nabonned, mother of Belshazzar, and daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. Her calm self-possession and dignified bearing, together with the respect that she evidently commanded, show that she was a person of high character and marked ability. Many have supposed that she is to be identified with Queen Nitocris, of whom Herodotus speaks in such exalted praise, and to whom he attributes structures which bear the name of Nebuchadnezzar, as well as others which bear the name of Nabonned. Came into the banquet house. She now first entered the dining hall, having esteemed it unbecoming to participate in the entertainment in the absence of her royal husband, of whose fate she was probably ignorant. W. H. G.

13-16. The sacred record throws no light on the history of Daniel during the period since the death of Nebuchadnezzar. The fact that Belshazzar knows him only by report and tradition implies that he had retired from public office some years before; very probably at the death of Nebuchadnezzar. Evil-merodach, his son and successor, changed the policy of his father in some respects certainly—e.g., in taking Jehoiachin from prison to his favor and table. (See 2 K. 25: 27-30; Jer. 52: 31-34.) Berosus says of him, “This man, having used his authority in a lawless and dissolute manner, was slain by conspirators.” He reigned but two years. Such revolutions in government would naturally have the effect of displacing Daniel. H. C.

16. Doubts. A man who gives way to doubt in Divine things, and suffers himself to be mastered by it, acts more like an insane person than a rational creature. He rejects clear and positive evidence, unanswerable argument, and permits his conduct to be determined by doubt. To escape from such an inveterate obliquity of mind, a man should fix his attention on positive acknowledged truth, and entrench himself behind it. There is acknowledged and undoubted truth enough to save him, and put a complete end to his doubts, if he will throw himself behind the truth; but if he neglect the truth and follow the doubts, he will wander in a wilderness of nettles till he come to the congregation of the dead. G. B. C.

Doubters never can dissolve or extirpate their doubts by any kind of speculative endeavor. They must never go after the truth to merely find it, but to practise it and live by it. There is no fit search after truth which does not, first of all, begin to live the truth it knows. Say nothing of investigation till you have made sure of being grounded everlastingly, and with a completely whole intent in the principle of right doing as a principle. Be right—that is, first of all, in what you know, and your soul will be faithfully chiming with all you ought to know. All evidences are with you then, and you with them. Even if they seem to be hid, they will shortly appear and bring you their light. But this being right implies a great deal, observe, and especially these two things: first, that you pray for all the help you can get; for without this you cannot believe or feel that you truly want to be right. Secondly, that you consent in advance to begin a religious life, fulfilling all the sacrifices of such a life, provided you may find it necessary to do so in order to carry out and justify yourself in acting up to the principle you have accepted. Bushnell.

In the progress of a soul there comes a point where arguments and evidences both external and internal have, for the time, no more force of a progressive kind. They make certain things clear, produce certain convictions, and then await the touch of new vitalities, which come only of personal communications. The needed Gospel is no longer—certain things are true—but—the Lord lives, and I may come to Him! and tell Him of all my doubts, and of my half-beliefs, and of all my flickering fears, and of all my cleaving sins, and of all my rising hopes and unquenchable aspirations. Reverently, then, yet urgently, press into His very presence and find some way to lay upon His heart your life’s unanswered questions. And in no long time the answer will be so complete and so satisfying as to settle and extinguish the question forever in your heart, and to raise up in its stead this clear, joyful testimony of your faith and love: “Lord, to whom shall I go but unto Thee, for Thou hast the words of eternal life?” A. Raleigh.

19-21 is an interesting summary of the life and character of Nebuchadnezzar by one who knew him and appreciated him. Words could not have described more graphically than is done in verse 19 the mightiness of the great king of Babylon and the power he was allowed to have possessed. B. C.

The language which describes the sin of Nebuchadnezzar is specially forcible. “When his heart was lifted up and his mind hardened in pride,” etc. The terrible influence of power in the hands of depraved men, reacting on the heart, has rarely been portrayed more justly. The perpetual incense of flattery, coupled with the daily experience of being dependent on no one and of having every one dependent on himself, tempts an absolute monarch to feel himself almost a god. Under such influences the moral sensibilities become fearfully hardened against all sense of obligation whether to God or to man. When any man has reached this moral state, what can remain for him but a fall? H. C.

22-24. From whom, and wherefore, the writing was sent. It was from the God of heaven, who had so often and so marvellously interposed with the proof of His Deity during the reign of the great Nebuchadnezzar. The aged prophet reminded the youthful king of the deposition of his grandfather and of his humiliation among beasts, because of his pride and contempt of the true God who had given him power and honor. He reminded him of Nebuchadnezzar’s humble acknowledgment of the true God, and of his consequent restoration to reason and return to his throne. Then the prophet sharply charges Belshazzar with the repetition of the sin of his grandfather. Though he knew what the God of heaven had done to the great monarch and how that monarch had recognized Jehovah, he, Belshazzar, had dared to lift up himself in his inexperience and pride against the Lord of heaven. He had dared to desecrate the vessels of His house by praising in them the gods which see not, nor hear, nor know. Thus he had defied in his folly the God in whose disposal was his throne and his life. B.

23. Grand old words have taught us long ago “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” Yes, he who lives for God has taken that for his aim which all his nature and all his relations prescribe, he is doing what he was made and meant to do; and however incomplete may be its attainments, the lowest form of a God-fearing, God-obeying life is higher and more nearly “perfect” than the fairest career or character against which, as a blight on all its beauty, the damning accusation may be brought, “The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, thou hast not glorified.” A. M.

The clause, “whose are all thy ways,” follows in the same line of thought with the preceding, “in whose hand thy breath is,” and affirms that all his goings, all that made up his life and destiny, were dependent on God—a truth which this king had most wickedly ignored. H. C.

25-28. The writing upon the wall. The words are in the ancient Hebrew characters. The inability of the Chaldean scholars to understand them may have arisen from the difference between the two forms, the Hebrew and Chaldean. If they could understand the letters, they could not apprehend their designed meaning. This perhaps was the point of their difficulty. The first word, MENE twice recorded to give greater intensity and effect to the announcement, contained in it a Divine declaration that the days of the Babylonian kingdom were now numbered and ended. TEKEL, the second word, meaning weighed and found light, referred by Daniel to Belshazzar himself, but including the Babylonian people of whom he was the representative, intimated God’s reason for the doom of king and kingdom, which was that night to be enacted. The last word, UPHARSIN, the plural form of PERES in verse 28, with letter U (signifying and), is interpreted by Daniel to signify that the Babylonian empire is now broken, and its dominion given to the Medes and Persians. B.

26. The determinate number of years which God hath appointed for the continuance of thy reign, and the Babylonish monarchy, is finished. So God is said to number the months of man’s life, and to appoint him “bounds that he cannot pass” (Job 14:5). The word “Mene” is doubled in the foregoing verse, to show that the thing is certain, and “established by God,” as Joseph tells Pharaoh in the like case (Gen. 41:32). W. Lowth.

27. “Tekel” signifies to weigh. The meaning is that the Almighty had weighed, or made a due estimate of the conduct of Belshazzar, according to the just and impartial measures of his providence; and had found him light or deficient, a man unworthy of a kingdom and a fit object of Divine vengeance. Wintle.

The “kingdom divided and given to the Medes and Persians” predicted one of the great historic facts of the age—the fall of Babylon and the subversion of the Chaldean dynasty. It fell before Cyrus, at the head of the combined armies of the Medes and Persians. Herodotus and Xenophon, the great Greek historians of their time, have left detailed accounts of this transaction. Cyrus invested the city, turned the current of the Euphrates, and marched his army into the city by way of the river channel. Jeremiah had foretold this event with extraordinary minuteness (chaps. 50 and 51), giving, among many other things, the names of their conquerors: “Prepare against her the nations, the kings of the Medes” (chap. 51:28); the drying up of her waters (51:36); and the drunken condition of her princes at the time (chap. 51:39, 57). “In their heat I will make their feasts and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice and sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake, saith the Lord.” H. C.

29-31. The promotion of Daniel, the slaying of Belshazzar, and the destruction of the Babylonish monarchy. It was under circumstances of awful significance that the royal pledge was fulfilled, richly to enrobe the aged prophet and to proclaim him third ruler in the kingdom (next to Belshazzar and the absent Nabonadius). And it was but for a brief period that his honors were worn and his power possessed. Perhaps God’s purpose in Daniel’s exaltation at the last was the more effectively to commend this foreigner and Jew, manifestly favored of God, to the incoming ruler of the Median kingdom. This result, we know, was certainly attained.

30. On that night the Chaldeo-Assyrio-Babylonian empire—in which first the Chaldeans, then the Assyrians, and finally the Chaldeans again, had possessed the dominion, but which was, in reality, all one empire—after a continuance of nearly two thousand years fell to rise no more. B.

The interval of nearly fifteen years before the final conflict with Babylon was probably occupied by Cyrus in finishing the conquest of the tribes of Asia Minor, strengthening his power in Media, and subduing the more distant portion of the Babylonian empire in Upper Assyria. Nabonendus seems to have remained on the defensive, completing the great works around Babylon. At length Cyrus marched from Ecbatana, and crossed the river Gyndes by a diversion of its channel, which must have prepared his engineers for their greater operation of the same kind on the Euphrates. Nabonendus tried the fate of one battle, and, on his defeat, retired to Borsippa (Birs Nimrūd), “the Chaldean Benares, the city in which the Chaldeans had their most revered objects of religion, and where they cultivated their science.” Here he surrendered after the capture of Babylon. Cyrus spared his life, and gave him a principality in Carmania, where he died.

Meanwhile the people of Babylon remained in fancied security behind their immense fortifications. The city formed a vast square, divided diagonally and almost equally by the Euphrates. Each side of the square was about fourteen miles long. The double walls are said to have been about three hundred feet high and eighty-five feet broad; dimensions which cease to be incredible when we remember that they were vast mounds of earth and brickwork, the remains of which, and others like them, are still traced by travellers. These walls were strengthened by two hundred and fifty towers, and pierced with a hundred gateways, the lintels and side posts, as well as the gates themselves, being of brass. The river was enclosed on both banks by the quays, which were likewise protected by walls and brass gates. These walls and gates are particularly referred to in that striking prophecy of Jeremiah, which is almost a history of the siege (50 : 15 ; 51 : 53, 58). The vast area of two hundred square miles, interspersed, as is usual in Eastern cities, with large open spaces, gave opportunities for growing corn, in addition to the immense supplies of food which had been laid up for a siege of many years. The two banks of the river were connected by a stone bridge about a thousand yards in length, at each end of which stood a royal palace. The chief was that on the east, a fortress in itself, surrounded by triple walls, of which the outer had a circuit of seven miles, the middle of four and a half, and the latter of two and a half miles ; the middle wall was three hundred feet high, and its towers four hundred and twenty feet, and the inner one was higher still. Such statements may diminish our surprise at the security in which the inhabitants of the city and palace lived under their reckless young prince, Belshazzar. P. S.

Taking of the City. The Euphrates flowed through the midst of Babylon, and its banks were lined with walls pierced with many gates which afforded access to the city. The river then, as at present, overflowed all its banks in the early spring—not so much from rain, as from the melting of the snows in the regions which it traverses in its upper course. The inundation is then, in some seasons, so redundant as to prove very injurious to the buildings near the river. To avert such consequences, advantage had been taken of a spacious natural depression of the soil at some distance above Babylon, which had been artificially deepened in part, so as to form a vast reservoir, into which the waters of the river could on occasion be turned, by means of a broad canal, so as for a time almost to exhaust the stream. This great basin, which in its ordinary aspect was a morass, then became a large lake, not less, it is said, than fifty miles in circuit. Now, on this important night, Cyrus sent up a strong detachment to the head of the canal leading to this lake, with orders at a given time to break down the great bank or dam that was between the lake and the canal, and so turn the whole current of the river into the lake. At the same time, he stationed one body of troops at the point where the river entered the city, and another where it came out, ordering them to march in by the exhausted channel as soon as they should find it fordable. Toward the evening he also opened the head of the trenches on both sides of the river above the city, that the water might discharge itself into them, by which means and the breaking down of the great dam the waters in this part of the river were soon exhausted. The two bodies of troops then, according to the orders they had received, marched into the bed of the river, the water reaching no higher than their knees. The gates toward the river, from which quarter no one suspected danger, had been left open amid the riot and disorder of that night, so that the Persians were enabled to penetrate, without opposition, to the very heart of the city. The two parties met, according to agreement, at the palace, where they surprised the guards and cut them in pieces. Those who were in the palace opening the gates to learn the cause of this confusion, so unsuited to the festive night, the Persians rushed in, took the palace, and slew the king, who came out to meet them sword in hand.

Cyrus then sent bodies of horse through the city, to clear the streets and to proclaim to the inhabitants that they were to keep within doors on pain of death. The next day those who held the forts, perceiving that the city was in fact taken and that the king was dead, gave up the strongholds, of which Cyrus immediately took possession, and garrisoned them with his own troops. It was then proclaimed by the heralds throughout the city that all the inhabitants who possessed arms were to bring them forth and deliver them up, and that the inhabitants of any house in which arms were afterward found should be put to death. The order was obeyed. And thus the great city, so strongly fortified, so rich, so populous, and so abundantly provisioned, fell, almost without a blow, into the hands of the Persians. It will be seen that there were many special and singular incidents in this siege. It is one to the description of which no vague generalities could be applicable. It is, therefore, well calculated to strengthen any wavering faith in the glorious prophecies of the Old Testament—to point out how exactly the most minute and remarkable incidents of this transaction were foretold, long before their occurrence, by more than one prophet of the Lord. Kitto.

Cyrus waited for some great festival when the attention of the Babylonian soldiers and citizens should be diverted from the works of his sappers. On the occasion of the “feast” described in this chapter, everything happened as the conqueror expected. Belshazzar forgot his enemies or left the care of them to others. He gave himself to the excesses of the banquet at which his “thousand lords” were gathered. The people imitated their betters: feasting and dancing, drunken riot and boastful security took possession of all. The very sentries forgot their duties and neglected to close the water-gates. “In that night” the dikes were cut, the canals carried off the water, and the Medes and Persians passed up to the river walls. Without a struggle Babylon fell into the hands of her enemies. In the massacre which followed, “Belshazzar was slain,” death following speedily on that news which runners brought: “show the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end, that the passages are stopped, the reeds burned with fire, and the men of war affrighted” (Jer. 51: 31, 32).

Cyrus pressed on to Borsippa, but Nabonadius, broken-hearted and sensible of the folly of resistance, surrendered at once. The conqueror was merciful, and not only spared his life, but made him governor of Carmania. He extended his mercy to the city he had lately gained. It was not his policy to expose to any invader what could be easily kept as a support of his own power. He therefore contented himself with ordering the dismantling of parts of the wall. It was a more important point to determine whom he should set over it as a governor. He chose “Darius the Mede,” a man of about “three-score and two years old.”

Darius the Mede.

The scriptural description of this prince is brief, but very distinct. He was the son of Ahasuerus, and of the seed of the Medes. He succeeded Belshazzar at the age of sixty-two years (5: 31; 9: 1; 11: 1). If, as is most natural, that succession was immediate, a Babylonian was replaced by a Median dynasty. And this fact is attested by Josephus (Antiq. x. 2/5 11. 4) and Xenophon (Cyrop. i. 2/5 5. 2). According to these historians, Cyrus conquered Babylon for his father-in-law, Cyaxares II., the son of Astyages, and did not come to the throne of Babylon as an independent prince till after his death. Josephus mentions that Darius was known to the Greeks by another name; and this, it has been concluded, was “Cyaxares,” the name given to him by Xenophon. This identification is apparently supported by the indication in Daniel (5: 31; 6: 28), that first of all a Median and then a Persian dynasty succeeded the Babylonian. And it agrees with the age attributed to Darius by the prophet. From Xenophon it appears that he was an old man at the time of the capture of the city, too old to have an heir. When he gave his daughter in marriage to Cyrus, and with her Media as a dowry, he observed that he had no son born in marriage.

But, on the other hand, it is remarkable that Herodotus (i. 130), Ctesias, and Isaiah (44, 45) know nothing of a second Cyaxares between Astyages and Cyrus. In the tradition followed by Herodotus, who adds parenthetically that he was acquainted with two other versions of the story, the Persian tribes are represented as subject to the Medes, till Cyrus, a bold Achaemenian adventurer, threw off the yoke, and deposed the Median king, Astyages, his grandfather on his mother’s side. Astyages died childless, and with him ended the Median dynasty. Cyrus is, therefore, according to Herodotus, the sole and unassisted conqueror of Babylon, and the first king of the Medo-Persian dynasty. An appeal in support of this view is generally made to the opening verse of the apocryphal writing “Bel and the Dragon”: “After the death of King Astyages the kingdom came to Cyrus the Persian.”

These contradictions, real or apparent, have tested the ingenuity and scholarship of critics as fully as the sister question concerning Belshazzar. The literature of the whole subject is so immense that, as before, those views which are now either entirely surrendered or but feebly supported must be passed over with a mere allusion. In addition to the identification with Cyaxares II., Darius the Mede has been supposed the same as Neriglissar, Darius son of Hystaspes, Nabonadius, Astyages, or some Median prince otherwise almost unknown to history. Of all these identifications, the first and the last two alone retain any hold upon modern opinion. There is manliness as well as wisdom in the opinion of Quatremère and Rawlinson, that Darius the Mede is a historic character of whose existence no other record has as yet been found except that contained in Scripture.

Let it be remembered that the prophet Daniel was not writing a chronicle of his times; that he passes from the reign of one king to another without mentioning intermediate events; and that of those reigns he selects only facts here and there; and there will no longer be an outcry against this or that omission. A juster spirit will refuse to brand with fraud a writer who makes no claim to the consecutiveness and precision of a professed historian. Had this chapter proceeded from a Maccabean forger, he would not have left its concluding verses in their present terse and condensed form. Posterity would have received the record with every obscure allusion removed, every blank filled up, even if the aim of the romancer had been of an essentially parabolic character. B. C.

Practical Points.

Conscience makes cowards of the guilty when the occasion for fear comes. There is a period when mercy gives way to doom. The issue is invisible to man, but its record, entered in the Unseen Book, is Mene, tekel.

The balances of God are constantly applied to test every life. The weights appointed for these balances are truth, trust, worship, obedience, and love toward God, with unselfish helpfulness to men. If the life matches these, it is well. If it is too light, if its character, motives, and acts do not fairly balance with these—in a word, if these fruits of godly living are not found in the life, then the man is weighed and found wanting.

Evil (or sin) pursueth sinners. Be sure your sin will find you out. It is his own sin that makes sure of the sinner’s discovery, arrest and punishment; his own sin is the cause, the means, and the instrument of his ultimate doom. Both the Word and the providence of God abundantly attest, as they solemnly impress, this fearful fact of man’s self-condemnation. B.

Do not similar warnings to those given to Belshazzar come to every sinner long before the warning of his doom? If any of you are living a life of sin, have they not come to you? Have there been no dreams in the darkness? no voices in the silence? no hauntings of fear? no burdens of remorse? no memories of innocence? no aches of shame? no qualms of sickness? no echoing, as of ghostly footfalls in the far-off corridors of life? These reminders from God of truths which we have forgotten come sometimes very terribly; not whispered, but shouted—not shouted only, but cut deep—not only cut deep before the eyes, but branded in letters of fire upon the soul. When palsying sickness is the debt due from weakened manhood to sinful youth; when the loss of the last chance brings home to us the sense of the squandered opportunity; when the cold light of heaven, bursting through the drawn curtains of the hypocrite, shows him to himself and to others, not as he wished to be thought, but as he is; above all, when sin has been punished by God’s suffering us to fall into deeper and deadlier sin, and crime flings its glare of illumination on the self-deception which said of sin, “There is no harm in it”—then it is that God puts forth the fingers of a man’s hand, and His inscription, once unheeded, flashes into letters of fire. And—since be sure your sins will find you out—so must it be, sooner or later, to every sinner to whom repentance calls in vain. So that what I urge on you is to read those milder warnings, to listen to those stiller, smaller voices, which come to us, not at some terrible crisis, but at quiet moments, and ere we sleep at night, and on our knees, and when we read our Bibles, and in every blessed means of grace. For indeed those words, written once in the palace of Belshazzar, are for us written forever in the house of life; and each one of you, in your own hearts, may still read the Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, as they were left by the awful moving of the spectral hand. Farrar.