Daniel 5

mine eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned unto me, &c. At the end of seven years (see ver. 16.) I recovered the use of my reason, (yer. 36.) and became sensible of my dependance upon God, and lifted up mine eyes to heaven* in a devout acknowledgment of his sovereign majesty, whose dominion alone is unchangeable, and endures for over. Ajudgment is denounced against Belshazzar, for his sacrilege, by a hand-writing upon the wall, which Daniel reads: importing the downfall of the Babylonish monarchy, and translating the empire to the Medes and Persians: which sentence is fulfilled the same night. And shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.] One of the three principal rulers. (See vi. 2.)

Daniel 5:1

BELSHAZZAR the king. This was the last king of the Babylonish race, and therefore must be the same who is called Nabonnedus byBerosus, and Naboandelus by Josephus, Antiq.lib. x. cap. 11. (See this clearly proved by Dr. Prideaux, Script. Connex. par. i. p. 114.) Made a feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.] The king made a great feast to the principal officers and great men of his eourty and was himself present at it. This feast was made at a time of public rejoicing, being an annual festival, when the whole night was spent in revelling: which season Cyrus took the advantage of to make himself master of the city, as Herodotus, lib. i. and Xenophon, lib. vii. relate, and was foretold by Jeremy, li. 39. 57.

Daniel 5:2

Belshazzar commanded to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem. These vessels were carried by Nebuchadnezzar into the temple of his own god, (i. 2.) and set apart, as it seems, for religious uses. So this farther profanation of them was contrary to the rules of their own religion, and may be supposed to have been done out of a drunken frolic by Belshazzar. Without question the vessels and other furniture with which Solomon adorned the temple were extraordinarily magnificent: since Nebuchadnezzar thought them worth carrying to Babylon, to furnish the temple he had built there for his god Belus, a structure that might be esteemed one of the wonders of the world. (See Dr. Prideaux, ttbi supra, p. 98.) Some of these vessels were afterward carried in triumph to Rome by Titus, after he had conquered Jerusalem, as Josephus, an eye-witness, asserts: (Bell.Jud. lib. vii. fp. 1306. edit. Oxon.) afterward, when GiserieuS sacked Rome, he carried these away with the rest of his booty; but when Justinian conquered Africa, he recovered them again, and sent them for a present to the church of Jerusalem. (Sec Evagrius, lib. iv. cap. 17.) Which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken.] Nebuchadnezzar was in truth his grandfather; for he was the son of Evil-Merodach by Nitocris his queen: so he was grandson to Nebuchadnezzar: and thus the prophecy of Jeremy was fulfilled, that all nations should seme Nebuchadnezzar, and his son, and his son’s son, Jer. xxvii. 7. It is usual in Scripture to call the grandfather by the name of father. (See 2 Sam. ix. 7. 2 Kings viii. 26. compared with ver. 18.; 2 Chron.‘xv. 16. compared with xi. 20.; Zech. i. 1. with Ezra vi. 14.)

Daniel 5:4

They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and of silver, &c. They sang praises to their false gods, who were fitly represented by senseless images; and this they did by way of triumph over the God of Israel, the vessels of whose temple they brought forth as so many trophies of their victory. (Sec ver. 23.)

Daniel 5:5

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand. Next to murder, no sin is so remarkably punished in this world as that of sacrilege, as appears by innumerable instances taken out of the histories of all ages, of heathens and infidels, as well as Jews and Christians. For to profess a religion to be true, and yet to ofFer violence to the places and utensils dedicated to the service of that religion, is downright impiety, and argues a contempt of all religion. Remarkable examples of this kind in the heathen story are, the miserable end of the Phoceans, who robbed the temple of Delphos, and were the occasion of that war, which was called from thence the holy war; an account of which may be seen in Petavius, Rationar. Temporum, par. i. p. 113.; the destruction of the Gauls in their attempt upon the same temple; and of Crassus, who plundered the temple of Jerusalem, and that of the Syrian goddess: these two last stories are very particularly related by Dr. Prideaux, par. ii. p. 26. 202. Grotius’s note upon this place is worth observing: " The heathens thought it a great impiety to convert sacred things to common uses; but now-a-days neither princes nor people think there is any harm in it: and can we expect that God should not visit for these things?’’ And wrote over against the candlestick.] The feast was continued till late in the night, according to custom. (Soe the note upon ver. 1.)

Daniel 5:6

Then the king’s countenance was changed — so that the joints of his loins were loosed, &c. He discovered the disorder of his mind, by the shaking and trembling which seized his whole body. (Compare Psal. lxix. 23.)

Daniel 5:7

Hie king cried aloud. Discovering thereby great fear and impatience. To bring in the astrologers, &c] Sec the note upon i. 20. ii. 2. iv. 6.

Daniel 5:8

Then came in all the king’s wise men, but they could not read the writing. It was probably writ in the old Hebrew letters, now called the Samaritan character, which the Chaldeans were ignorant of.

Daniel 5:10

Now the queen, by reason of the words of the king and his lords, came into the banqiiet-house. The king’s wives and concubines sat with him at the feast, ver. 2. So the person here mentioned must be the queen-mother Nitocris; a lady famous for her wisdom, who had the chief management of the public affairs, and so is called the queen, by way of eminence. (See Dr. Prideaux, par. i. p. 122.)

Daniel 5:11

There is a man in thy kingdom in whom is the spirit of the holy Gods. See the note upon iv. 8. And in the days of thy father.] i. e. Thy grandfather Nebuchadnezzar. (See ver. 2.)

Daniel 5:13

Art thou that Daniel? &c. Though his grandfather had advanced Daniel to considerable places of honour, (ver. 11.) yet Belshazzar knew nothing of him; which argues him to have been a weak and vicious prince, according to the character historians give of him, and that he left the care of the public affairs -to his mother, minding nothing but his pleasures.

Daniel 5:17

Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy reward to another. The prophet was not willing to receive any reward for interpreting a writing, which was to receive its accomplishment in the destruction of the king and the government.

Daniel 5:19

And, for the majesty that he gave him, alt people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him. See ii. 37, 38.

Daniel 5:20

But when his heart was lifted up, &c. See iv. 30. And they took his glory from him.] Or, His glory was taken from him: the verb transitive being often used for the impersonal. (See the note upon ii. 30.)

Daniel 5:23

But hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven, &c. Seethe note upon ver. 4. And the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all. thy ways, hast thou not glorified.] Thou hast not given due honour to that supreme Being, who hath an absolute disposal, not only of thy affairs, (compare Jer. x. 23.) but oven of thy life itself. Ver. 2G. Mkne; God Irnth numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.] 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 which he cannot pass, Job xiv. 5. The word Mene is doubled in the foregoing verse, to shew that the thing is certain, and established by God, as Joseph tells Pharaoh in a like case, Gen. xli. 32.

Daniel 5:27

Tkkel; thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting. Wicked men are often compared to silver adulterated, and alloyed with baser metals, which makes it too light when weighed in the balances. (See Jer. vi. 30. Ezek. xxii.18.) Such was Belshazzar when weighed in the scales of Divine justice. (Compare Job xxxi. 6. Psal. xlii. 10.) The same comparison is used by Homer, when Hector’s fatal day approaches, Iliad, xxii. and by Virgil at the death of Turnus, iEneid. xii.

Daniel 5:28

Peres; thy kingdom is divided and given to tJie Medes and Persians. The verb Paras, from whence Peres is derived, as an appellative, signifies to divide, or break: it is likewise the proper name of the. Persians, who were to be sharers in the division of the Babylonish empire. Upharsin, in the. twenty-fifth verse, is a particle of the verb Paras; it literally signifies, And they divide it.

Daniel 5:29

Then commanded Belshazzar, and they clothed Daniel with scarlet; &c. The king thought himself bound in honour to perform the promise he had made, ver. 1G. which yet it is likely could not take effect at that unseasonable time of night: so the words might better be thus translated; Tlien commanded Belshazzar, that they should clothe Daniel with scarlet — and should make a proclamation concerning him, &c. The particle vau is often put for the. conjunction that: (see Noldius, p. 312.) so it is used in the second verse of this chapter.

Daniel 5:30

In that night was Belshazzar king of the Chaldeans slain. He and all his nobles were slain together in the midst of their feasting and revelling, as Herodotus (lib.i.) and Xenophon inform us: the latter relates the story thus: (Cyropaed. lib. vii.) “That two deserters, Gadata and Gobryas, having assisted some of the Persian army to kill the guards, and seize upon the palace, they entered into the room where the king was, whom they found standing up in a posture of defence; but they soon dispatched him, and those that were with him.” Thus the prophecy of Jeremy was accomplished, that Babylon should be taken, at the time of a public feast, while her princes and great men, her captains, her rulers, and mighty men, should be drunken, and should sleep a perpetual sleep, and not awaken; (li. 39. 57.)

Daniel 5:31

And Darius the Median took the kingdom. This Darius is said to be of the seed of the Medes: (ix. 1.) and is supposed by the most judicious chronologcrs to be the same with Cyaxares, the son of Astyagcs: him Cyrus made king of the Chaldeans, as being his uncle by the mother’s side, and his partner in carrying on the war against the Babylonians, and left him the palace of the king of Babylon, to live there whenever he pleased, as Xenophon relates, Cyropsed. lib. viii. Darius succeeding in the empire, being Cyrus’s gift, Ptolemy’s Canon supposes Cyrus to be the immediate successor of Nabonnedus, or Belshazzar, and allots nine years to his reign: whereas Xenophon reckons two of these years to Darius, and seven to Cyrus: ubi supra. The Chaldee phrase rendered here, took the kingdom, is translated possessed the kingdom, vii. 18. and means the same with succeeding in the kingdom.

And all the inhabitants of the world are reputed as nothing, &c. The greatest inonarchs, as well as persons of an inferior rank, arc as nothing in his sight: and he disposes all tilings in heaven and earth by an irresistible power and authority. (Compare Isa. xl. 15. 17. xlv. 9.)

And, for the glory of my kingdom, mine honour and brightness returned to me. Or, The glory of my kingdom, (for the particle in the word likar is used for the nominative case, sec Noldius,*p. 463.) mine honour, and countenance, or comeliness, returned to me. The word ziv is translated countenance, v. 6. vii. 28. I recovered my former looks, was possessed of the same outward glory and majesty, and was honoured with the same attendance and retinue as I was before.

All whose works are truth, and his ways judgment. Who governs the world with equity and justice. (Compare Rev.xv. 3.xvi. 7.) And those who walk in pride he is able to abase.’] Of which Nebuchadnezzar himself was a remarkable instance, ver. 30, 31. and v. 20.