ripe for judgment. Nebuchadnezzar demanded of all his subjects a recognition of his gods, and prided himself in his great power and worldly glory, but yet he gave glory to the Lord of heaven for the signs and wonders which God did to him. Belshazzar knew this, yet it did not prevent him from blaspheming this God, nor did it move him to seek to avert by penitential sorrow the judgment of death which was denounced against him.
Chap. 5
Verse 1
The verses describe the progress of Belshazzar's magnifying himself against the living Do, whereby the judgment threatened came upon him and his kingdom. A great feast, which the king gave to his officers of state and to his wives, furnished the occasion for this.
The name of the king, בּלשׁאצּר, contains in it the two component parts of the name which Daniel had received (Dan 1:7), but without the interposed E, whereby it is distinguished from it. This distinction is not to be overlooked, although the lxx have done so, and have written the two names, as if they were identical, Balta'sar. The meaning of the name is as yet unknown. לחם, meal-time, the festival. The invitation to a thousand officers of state corresponds to the magnificence of Oriental kings. According to Ctesias (Athen. Deipnos. iv. 146), 15, 000 men dined daily from the table of the Persian king (cf. Est 1:4). To account for this large number of guests, it is not necessary to suppose that during the siege of Babylon by Cyrus a multitude of great officers from all parts of the kingdom had fled for refuge to Babylon. The number specified is evidently a round number, i.e., the number of the guests amounted to about a thousand. The words, he drank wine before the thousand (great officers), are not, with Hävernick, to be explained of drinking first, or of preceding them in drinking, or of drinking a toast to them, but are to be understood according to the Oriental custom, by which at great festivals the king sat at a separate table on an elevated place, so that he had the guests before him or opposite to him. The drinking of wine is particularly noticed as the immediate occasion of the wickedness which followed.
Verse 2
Dan 5:2 חמרא בּטעם, while he tasted the wine, i.e., when the wine was relished by him; thus “in the wanton madness of one excited by wine, Pro 20:1” (Hitz.). From these words it appears that Belshazzar commanded the temple vessels which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem to be brought, not, as Hävernick
