Daniel 5:25

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23 ^aAnd you have lifted yourself up against the Lord of heaven. They have brought the ^bvessels of His house before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines, have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, bronze and iron, wood and stone, ^cwhich do not see or hear or know; and the God who holds your breath in His hand ^dand owns all your ways, you have not glorified.

24 Then the fingers of the hand were sent from Him, and this writing was written.

25 “And this is the inscription that was written: ¹MENE, MENE,² TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

26 This is the interpretation of each word. MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it;

27 TEKEL: ^aYou have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting;

28 PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the ^aMedes and ^bPersians.”

29 Then Belshazzar gave the command, and they clothed Daniel with purple and put a chain of gold around his neck, and made a proclamation concerning him ^athat he should be the third ruler in the kingdom.

Belshazzar’s Fall

30 ^aThat very night Belshazzar, king of the Chaldeans, was slain.

31 ^aAnd Darius the Mede received the kingdom, being about sixty-two years old.

Commentaries:

Adam Clarke

<< Daniel 5:24

Daniel 5:26 >>

Daniel 5:25

And this is the writing - Had the words been written in the Chaldean character, every wise man there, every one that could read the alphabet of his own language, could have read and interpreted them. Let it be observed, -

1.That the character which we now call Hebrew is the Chaldean character.

2.That the true Hebrew character is that which we call the Samaritan.

3.Daniel could easily read this, for it was the character used by the Jews previously to the Babylonish captivity.

4.It appears that it was simply on account of the strangeness of the character that the Chaldeans could not read it.

I shall set down the words in both characters, by which the least learned reader may see that it was quite possible that one might be well known, while the other might be unintelligible.

In ancient times, no doubt, these letters differed more from each other than they appear to do now; for we know that the Samaritan on ancient coins, though radically the same, differs very much from that now used in printing.

It should be observed, that each word stands for a short sentence; mene signifies Numeration; tekel , Weighing; and peres , Division. And so the Arabic translates them mokeeson , measured; mewzonon , weighed; mokesoomon , divided. All the ancient Versions, except the Syriac, read the words simply Mene, Tekel, Phares, as they are explained in the following verses; without the repetition of Mene, and without the conjunction vau and plural termination, in , in Peres.

<< Daniel 5:24

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Belshazzar’s Fall

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