Daniel 5:25–28
“This is the inscription that was written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN.
26“This is what these words mean: Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. 27 Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. 28 Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.”
And Daniel did let God’s voice be heard. Before an unbelieving king and a whole roomful of banquet guests, with the mysterious words still illuminated by the flickering light of the lampstand, Daniel announced, “This is the inscription that is written: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN.”
After rebuking Belshazzar, Daniel pointed to the inscription and did what neither king nor wise man had been able to do: he read it. The inscription consisted of only three words, with the first one repeated.
A hush spread over the huge dining hall as Daniel explained each of the three words to the trembling king. He identified the three words as verbs, passive verbs: “numbered,” “weighed,” “divided.”
“MENE, MENE”—“Numbered, numbered.” In solemn repetition, Daniel informed Belshazzar that the Lord of nations whom he had insulted had numbered the days of his reign and considered them as having come to an end. Belshazzar was not going to have an opportunity for retirement, either. At the moment his reign came to an end, his life would too. Belshazzar had thought that the God of Israel was inferior to the gods of Babylon. But what he forgot is that the important thing in life is not what we think of God, but what God thinks of us.
“TEKEL”—“weighed.” Belshazzar may have considered himself worthy of honor. God disagreed. “You have been weighed on God’s scale, and you have been found wanting.” The people in that banquet hall looked up to Belshazzar as their leader; God looked down on Belshazzar as a sinner totally lacking in moral worth. He had not measured up to what God expects of all his human creatures, let alone to what God expects of a man in such a position of responsibility and trust.
“PERES”—“divided.” Belshazzar’s kingdom would not remain intact but would be broken up and given to the Medes and Persians, whose armies were even then at the city gates of Babylon.
This was the news Belshazzar was dreading to hear. The judgment God had pronounced on him was much more severe than the judgment God had pronounced on Nebuchadnezzar 50 years earlier (4:31,32). The enemy outside the city gates would be victorious. Great Babylon was about to fall.
Notice that Daniel interprets the third word (“PERES”) as having a double meaning. “PARSIN” can also mean “Persians.” We see, therefore, that the mysterious writing on the wall was in part a play on words, a pun.
Another play on words may have added to the king’s difficulty in reading and understanding the inscription. One Aramaic grammar note (Rosenthal, A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic, page 58) points out that the three words may also refer to monetary units: mina (50 shekels), shekel, and half-shekel. “The three terms would then seem to bear the names of three coins, a fact that would, indeed, add to the perplexity of the reader” (Leupold, Exposition of Daniel, page 236). This would have been especially true if that reader had already had too much to drink. What sense could he possibly make out of an inscription that seemed to say: “Mina, mina, shekel, half-shekels?”
Let us put the play on words into the form of a table:
1 2 3
MENE numbered mina
TEKEL weighed shekel
PERES/PARSIN divided half-shekel(s) Persians
It is strange that the Babylonian wise men had not even been able to read these words, since they were probably rather common Aramaic terms. But God had allowed them neither to read nor understand the message. He left it for his servant Daniel.
The nation that brought about the downfall of the Babylonian Empire was actually a merger of two nations. The Persian Cyrus brought about a union of Media and Persia. This united kingdom, destined to become the leading world power for the next two centuries, conquered Babylon, as Daniel had predicted.