King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. 2While Belshazzar was drinking his wine, he gave orders to bring in the gold and silver goblets that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines might drink from them. 3So they brought in the gold goblets that had been taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines drank from them. 4As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood and stone.
This chapter takes us to a time some 30 years after the incident recorded in the previous chapter. It introduces us to a new Babylonian king, Belshazzar. Since for many years the only references to Belshazzar were in the book of Daniel and in the Apocrypha, down through the years many Bible scholars have denied his existence. About a century ago, however, a stone cylinder bearing Belshazzar’s name was uncovered in the ruins of ancient Babylon. Today we have evidence from a number of sources identifying Belshazzar as the son and coregent of King Nabonidus of Babylon.
Several times in this chapter Belshazzar is called the son of Nebuchadnezzar. The reader should remember that the Bible often uses the title “son” in the sense of “descendant” or “successor.” Genesis 28:13, for instance, refers to Jacob’s grandfather Abraham as his “father.” It is possible that through his mother, Nitocris, Belshazzar was the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar.
Babylonian names, like Hebrew names, often contain the name of the culture’s deity. Bel, also known as Marduk, was the chief god of Babylon. The name Belshazzar probably means “May Bel protect the king.”
Belshazzar’s father Nabonidus was more interested in excavating and rebuilding ancient temples than he was in being king. And so in the year 553 B.C. he installed his oldest son, Belshazzar, as coruler, while he himself moved to Arabia. This coregency lasted until 539 B.C., when Babylon fell before the attack of Medo-Persian armies under King Cyrus. It was in the year 539 B.C., the year Babylon fell, that Belshazzar gave the great banquet described here.
Ancient historians tell us that royal feasts were often huge, corresponding to the magnificence of Asian kings. There are five references in the first four verses here to the drinking at the banquet Belshazzar arranged. One gets the distinct impression that drinking wine was an important part of the activity for the more than one thousand guests. According to one writer, “In such feasts the drinking of wine was the predominant element” (Young, The Prophecy of Daniel, page 119). The drinking of wine is mentioned as the immediate trigger for the wickedness that followed.
Daniel informs us that Belshazzar drank wine “with them,” (literally, “in front of them”). It was customary at royal feasts in the ancient Near East for the king to sit at a separate table on a raised platform, where he could not only observe the goings-on but actually set the tone and tempo for the banquet. Even though the city of Babylon had been invaded some weeks earlier, and even though Medo-Persian armies were at the moment outside Babylon’s city walls, the nobles, their ladies, and even the king’s harem girls saw their king drink wine. Although city and empire were in mortal danger, the king adopted a confident and carefree attitude at the banquet. A century later, Greek historians would record that drunken feasting was going on in Babylon the night the city fell.
Belshazzar’s banquet, however, was more than a social event; it had religious overtones. The guests at the banquet praised their gods of gold and silver, of brass and iron, of wood and stone. Martin Luther once said, “The human heart is an idol factory.” This can be seen clearly in ancient Babylon. Many gods were worshiped—so many that it would be impossible to count them all. Bel-Marduk, the father of the gods, was given credit for creating the world. Ishtar was the great mother-goddess. Besides these two chief gods, the Babylonians worshiped the sun god and the moon god. An important god was the fertility god, who made agriculture possible. The list of Babylonian gods actually contains thousands of names. An important part of the activities planned for Belshazzar’s dinner was to pay tribute to the gods who had made Babylon the great nation that it was. This was especially important, since all the guests knew that MedoPersian armies were camped outside the walls of the city.
The king must have begun to feel the influence of the wine, because he lost all sense of decency and decided to desecrate the vessels captured from God’s temple in Jerusalem. Chapter 1 records the fact that a half-century earlier, when Nebuchadnezzar returned home with the plunder of Jerusalem and its temple, he placed the sacred temple vessels into the house of his god (verse 2). Now Belshazzar ordered those goblets of gold and silver to be brought to the banquet hall, so that he and his nobles, his wives and concubines could use them as wine glasses.
The temple at Jerusalem was the place where the true God had established his earthly dwelling. There he spoke to people through his Word; there he met people with his mercy. There his people approached him with their confession of sin and with their plea for forgiveness. At this temple God’s people brought blood sacrifices, through which God assured them of forgiveness and through which they dedicated their lives to him. The temple in Jerusalem and every piece of its equipment had been dedicated to Yahweh, set aside for his holy purposes. In his prayer to God on the day of dedication, King Solomon had clearly stated the purpose of the temple and everything associated with its worship: “that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you” (1 Kings 8:43).
For Belshazzar now to use these sacred vessels to give praise to the gods of Babylon was evidence of his devotion to false gods. But it was worse than that. It was a calculated insult to the true God. Belshazzar was publicly poking fun at Israel’s God, a God who claimed to be the only true God but who apparently was helpless to prevent his people from being crushed in battle, and his temple from being robbed and destroyed by the armies of Babylon. Belshazzar conveniently forgot that God had repeatedly performed miracles in Babylon (2:47; 3:28; 4:33), miracles which had forced King Nebuchadnezzar to recognize God’s almighty power.