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Good Thursday to you my ‘Walking with Jesus” friends,
I wonder if you’ve ever experienced being in a courtroom when the judge pronounces the verdict and drops the gavel declaring the decision final and the case closed? Depending on the severity of the case the words of the judge and the sound of the gavel can be chilling, sending a shiver up your spine.
That is exactly the scene I left you in yesterday, but it wasn’t a courtroom, it was a large banquet hall in or near the palace in Babylon 2500 years ago. King Belshazzar and his 1000 guests were terrified by seeing a disembodied hand appear in the air and write some words on the banquet hall wall. (Daniel 5:1-6) Only Daniel was able to read the words and explain to the king and his royal guests what it all meant. Remember what we’ve learned from Daniel in this shocking experience thus far?
The hand was a miracle of God sending a message of verdict to King Belshazzar and his royal guests. (Daniel 5:10-22) The party the king had thrown had become a symbol of the arrogance and debauchery of the city, the leaders and the people of Babylon. Daniel had been summoned, at the advice of the queen mother, since evidently King Belshazzar did not even know who Daniel was or what his remarkable role in the royal court had been in the past, especially during the reign of Belshazzar’s grandfather, King Nebuchadnezzar.
Upon arriving in the banquet hall and seeing the writing on the wall, Daniel spoke these challenging words to King Belshazzar: “You have set yourself up against the LORD of heaven. You had the goblets from His temple brought to you and you and your nobles drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in His hand your very life and all your ways. Therefore, God sent the hand that wrote the inscription…” (Daniel 5:23,24)
I’m sure Belshazzar had never been spoken to like this, but he also knew it was true and terrified as he was by what he had seen, all he could do was listen and hope Daniel could help him in response to the significance of this message from God.
Daniel then explained the three words on the wall: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin”. The language was unknown to Belshazzar and everyone else in the room. Scholars believe it was Aramaic, a dialect spoken in the Galilee region of Israel. Then, as led by the Holy Spirit of God, Daniel explained the meaning of the words:
“Mene’: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.” Daniel was proclaiming the unimaginable. The great Babylonian empire and the reign of King Belshazzar would soon come to an end. No one in that room could even imagine such a possibility! The repetition of “Mene” suggests that it was an absolute certainty and would happen very soon.
“Tekel’: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” God was judging the moral corruption and spiritual failure of Belshazzar and his royal officials who had turned far away from what King Nebuchadnezzar had experienced with God and the proclamations the great Nebuchadnezzar had made about Almighty God only a little more than 20 years before. (Daniel 4:34-37)
“Parsin’: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians” (Daniel 5:28) And with those words a hush swept across the great banquet room I have no doubt. God, the great judge, had just dropped His divine gavel and pronounced final judgment on King Belshazzar and the world dominating Babylonian empire!
Belshazzar and others in that banquet hall knew of these two other growing political and military powers, the Medes and the Persians. Belshazzar’s father was even now out with the Babylonian armies making sure those two forces were kept far away and minimized in their potential threat.
Daniel’s record of that evening gives us no details of how that room full of dignitaries responded to God’s judgmental declarations, but King Belshazzar made good on his promise by commanding that a purple robe of royalty be placed on Daniel and a gold chain of honor be hung around his neck. King Belshazzar also proclaimed Daniel would be elevated in authority to the third highest ranking person in all the Babylonian empire, second only to King Belshazzar himself!
We can presume the music resumed, the banquet tables were replenished with food, the servers brought more wine and before long the frivolities of the party ignored the writing which remained on the wall: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin”. However, God, the ultimate Judge, had spoken His verdict and no party could annul or delay the consequences of God’s decision.
Historians tell us that as the party resumed with increased intensity, perhaps as a way of rejecting Daniel’s somber warnings of God’s judgment, Babylon was unaware that a genius military plan was underway outside the high walls of Babylon. Well upstream the great river Euphrates, which ran through the city as a major lifeline for Babylon, was being diverted, and as the water level of the river lowered, the enemy Medes army, under the cover of night, was able to enter the city through the riverbed, under the protective gates, and before the watchmen on Babylon’s walls could rally the defensive warriors the enemy army was upon them inside the great, impregnable city of Babylon!
The battle was fierce inside Babylon but did not last all that long. Daniel records it with these few words: “That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom at the age of 62.” (Daniel 5:30) One simple, short sentence describes the collapse of the great city of Babylon and the Babylonian empire as the judgment of God, proclaimed by Daniel at the party, was executed that very night!!
Apparently, King Belshazzar, and we presume most of those 1000 nobles, did not make it out of the great banquet hall alive. Daniel did, however, for the next chapter of his book gives us a famous account in Daniel’s life as he served Darius the Mede, one of two great kings over the combined Medo-Persian empire, which dominated the world from that night in 539bc until the armies of Alexander the Great conquered them 200 years later!
I think friends, we need to pause here and ponder. What does it mean when God declares His judgment? How close is our world today, or the place where you and I live, to the judgment of God? And here’s a worship song to help us consider these great truths today and I’ll meet you right back here tomorrow.
Today’s Scripture: Daniel 5:25-30.
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Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
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Pastor Doug Anderson
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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