In the fifth chapter of Daniel, the Babylonian king Belshazzar made a great feast and used the vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem to drink wine from; in his debauchery, he desecrated vessels that had been sanctified for worship of the one, true God. God gave a message to Belshazzar of four words written by a hand on the wall: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (Dan. 5:25). Mene meant that his kingdom had been numbered and finished (Dan. 5:26). Tekel meant he had been weighed on the scales and found wanting (Dan. 5:27). Parsin meant that his kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians (Dan. 5:28). That night, just as God said, Belshazzar was slain, and his kingdom was given to Darius the Mede (Dan. 5:30-31).
God’s word, the Bible, is accurate. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, skeptics claimed for years that the existence of king Belshazzar was pure invention, that the Bible was mistaken and Nabonidus was in fact the last king of Babylon; however, archeological discoveries of cuneiform tablets, housed in the British Museum, contain references that Belshazzar was co-regent with his father Nabonidus.[1] Belshazzar’s promise to make Daniel “third ruler in the kingdom” (Dan. 5:16, 29) fits with this truth, since Nabonidus and Belshazzar would be the first and second rulers in the kingdom. Belshazzar was ruling when Babylon fell to the Medo-Persian empire, a significant event in world history. Chapters 50 and 51 of Jeremiah describe the fall in detail. A century before Babylon’s fall, the prophet showed how a coalition of nations including the Medes would come from the north to take Babylon, that though Babylon had well-supplied storehouses and lofty fortifications her sea, the Euphrates river, would be dried up suddenly during a feast. Diverting the river that flowed under the city’s walls was evidently how Babylon was taken.
The Bible also speaks of how each one of us will be subject to the judgment of God (Acts 17:30-31; 2 Cor. 5:10; Heb. 9:27; Rev. 20:11-15). We will be weighed; our lives will be put on one side of the scale and God’s holy word will be put on the other side. Certainly, extremely wicked people will not measure up (Rev. 21:8). Yet, even good people that do a lot of great things will not be able to balance the scales by their goodness (Lk. 17:10). Our words and actions will condemn us in light of a perfectly holy God (Hab. 1:13) who has a perfect standard (Ecc. 7:20; Mt. 12:36; Rom. 2:12; 3:23; Gal. 3:10-12). Successful people according to the world’s standards will meet a similar end as Belshazzar: their days are numbered, their own accomplishments will find them lacking when weighed on God’s balance, and they will die and leave their possessions to be divided by those who shall come after them. However, with Christ there is hope (Rom. 5:1-2). By God’s grace, the blood of Jesus provides the means by which the scales are tipped and one can stand justified before God (Eph. 1:7; 1 Pet. 1:18-19; Heb. 9:12-14; 1 Jn. 1:5-9; Rev. 1:5; 12:11). Are you washed in the blood and ready to stand before God (Acts 2:38; 22:16; Rom. 6:3-7)?
[1] Raymond Philip Dougherty. Nabonidus and Belshazzar: A Study of the Closing Events of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1929), 13.
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