Daniel 5:29–31

“Then at Belshazzar’s command, Daniel was clothed in purple, a gold chain was placed around his neck, and he was proclaimed the third highest ruler in the kingdom. 30That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, 31and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom, at the age of sixty-two.

With his knees knocking and heart pounding, Belshazzar proved to be a man of his word. In the presence of a thousand witnesses, he had promised to reward the man who interpreted the writing, and he kept his promise. Although Daniel had expressed no interest in the rewards, he did not refuse them when they were given to him. And there was no good reason why he should have refused them. Surely no one could accuse him of having tailored his interpretation of the writing to suit the king’s preference. And so Daniel received the necklace of gold, the royal robes, and the exalted government position. In a sense the honors, especially the latter two, may seem to have been quite meaningless, since that very night the king was killed and the kingdom collapsed.

God’s judgment struck swiftly because Belshazzar’s insolence had been so daring. At least four different sources record the details of the fall of Babylon. The Greek historians Herodotus and Xenophon describe how Cyrus, the MedoPersian king, surprised the “impregnable” city of Babylon by diverting the course of the Euphrates River, which flowed under the walls of Babylon and through the city, into a new channel. This enabled the Medo-Persian army to invade the city without a battle by crossing the shallow water of the old river bed. Nabonidus, father and coruler with Belshazzar, and Cyrus have also left written records of this event.

It is good to note that the text does not say that Cyrus’ armies invaded the city the night of the banquet. Herodotus records that Cyrus had invaded Babylonia earlier, and that the Babylonian army had advanced to meet him. But after several defeats the Babylonian army retreated behind the walls of its capital city. According to Herodotus, the city fell while a festival was being celebrated. Xenophon, another Greek historian, reports that one of the Persian leaders entered the palace and killed the king.

Darius the Mede, the man who took over the kingdom, is a man whose name does not occur outside the Bible. Some have concluded from this that he is not a historical character. But every student of ancient history knows that records from the past are very fragmentary. To conclude that a person named in the Bible is unhistorical just because his name has not turned up in sources outside of the Bible is an argument from silence. It is unscientific and unpersuasive.

And so the once proud Babylonian Empire collapsed, as the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah had predicted it would. When the news of the fall of the kingdom reached the ears of the Israelites who were exiles in Babylon, they recalled Jeremiah’s prophecy, spoken half a century earlier:

Announce and proclaim among the nations, . . . “Babylon will be captured;

Bel will be put to shame, Marduk filled with terror. . . .

I set a trap for you, O Babylon,

and you were caught before you knew it;

you were found and captured because you opposed the LORD ”(Jeremiah 50:2,24). 

The exiles also would have recalled Isaiah’s prophecy, spoken nearly two centuries before Babylon’s fall:

Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians’ pride,

will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah.

She will never be inhabited

or lived in through all generations (Isaiah 13:19,20).

And why did Babylon fall? Isaiah stated the reason: 

You said in your heart,

“I will ascend into heaven; I will raise my throne

above the stars of God; . . .

I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14:13,14)

King Nebuchadnezzar, himself a Babylonian king, said it well, “Everything [the King of heaven] does is right and all his ways are just. And those who walk in pride he is able to humble” (4:37).

It’s just as true today: “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5). Humility is the only proper attitude before God.