Belshazzar’s Feast
Prince Belshazzar’s disrespectful behaviour left him facing the original ‘writing on the wall’.
600 BC-560 BC
Prince Belshazzar’s disrespectful behaviour left him facing the original ‘writing on the wall’.
600 BC-560 BC
Belshazzar was a prince in Babylon (near what is now Baghdad, Iraq) in the 6th century BC. While his father King Nabonidus was away, Belshazzar had the government of the Empire in his father’s stead.
BELSHAZZAR threw a sumptuous feast for his noblemen; and being short of golden cups for his wine, he had his servants bring the sacred vessels stolen from the Temple in Jerusalem years before, and bade his lords toast their own gods from them.
At that, a ghostly hand appeared, and began writing on the wall. The terrified King could make nothing of it: it was a list of three measures of currency and weight, a mina, a shekel, and a half-mina. So he called for the Jewish prophet Daniel.
And Daniel spelt it out for him. Belshazzar had been weighed in God’s scales, and found wanting.
The days of his realm, said Daniel, were numbered, and it would be soon divided between the Medes and the Persians. And that very night, the Medes and Persians overran Babylon, and slew Belshazzar.
So it is that ‘the writing is on the wall’ means that the end is just around the corner.