We are still examining what Daniel says about Belshazzar’s ill-fated party on the night that the Medo-Persians invade and conquer Babylon and kill king Belshazzar. So far we’ve read…
1 King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords and drank wine in front of the thousand. 2 Belshazzar, when he tasted the wine, commanded that the vessels of gold and of silver that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem be brought, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.
The biggest mistake that Belshazzar made that night was treating the vessels from God’s house in a profane manner. This was something, as we saw, that Nebuchadnezzar had never done. Even worse, it was a direct offense against the Most High God.
The Scriptures tells us that these gold and silver goblets were holy unto the Lord, like the pieces of the tabernacle the Lord told Moses to make. For example, the altar of incense (Exodus 30:1-10) was “most holy to the lord.”
There were special instructions on to how to treat this altar. Special poles were made to carry the altar of incense so no human hand would ever touch it. The ark of the covenant was another piece of the tabernacle that was “most holy to the Lord.” It too was to be carried using poles, so no human hand would touch it.
In their previous dedication and service of God, some of these vessels were so holy that, on penalty of death, they could not even be handled by Levites. They were reserved for use by the Aaronic priesthood (Num. 18:1-4). Some of them had carried the blood of solemn sacrifices.
God revealed how seriously He takes the holy nature of these special objects in the days of King David. When the Israelites were returning the ark to Jerusalem, they ignored the rule of treating the ark as holy by carrying it with two poles. Instead, they set the ark on a new cart. As they were walking, the oxen stumbled, and the ark began to fall off. Uzzah reached out his hand to keep the ark from falling, and God struck him dead instantly “because of his irreverent act” (2 Samuel 6:7).
What? Why did God do that? Even King David was upset with God. “David was angry because the Lord’s wrath had broken out against Uzzah” (v. 8). What we need to realize is that God is holy, and we are sinful. We are much more filthy than the ground upon which the ark would have fallen. We must not profane the holy things of God. If that is how God treated Uzzah who truly was trying to help, how much more was Belshazzar in trouble by using God’s holy vessels for such revelry.
And what about us?
We don’t have the holy temple vessels anymore, but that does not mean there is not an application for us to realize here. Paul wrote about this in his letters. “Flee from sexual immorality. … Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).
And in another place he wrote, “It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-6). We are the holy vessels of God and should use our bodies only for holy, not profane, ends.
Belshazzar seems to choose only the more valuable gold vessels for his purpose. Belshazzar made three mistakes: (1) he took the sacred vessels and used them for a profane purpose. (2) instead of worshipping the God of heaven as he drank from them, he praised the gods of silver and gold. (3) and most significantly, he took for himself that which belonged to God. In doing all this Belshazzar was taunting the Hebrew God with this act of desecration.
These vessels had remained in the temple treasury, but now Belshazzar calls for them to be brought out so that his wives, concubines, and lords could drink from them—an act that would certainly outrage a Jew. And it was not pleasing to the LORD God either!
“The presence of the king’s ‘wives’ and ‘concubines’ was usually not tolerated at banquets. It was, however, permitted when degeneracy began to run rampant” (Leupold, p. 216. Cf. Esth. 1:10-12). The wives and concubines may not have been present when the feast began but were brought in as the wine eroded restraint.
David Jeremiah makes the point that normally these social strata of people don’t associate together. So, for example, when Persian King Xerxes gave a banquet for his officials, scripture tells us that Queen Vashti had her own feast for the women (Esther 1:2-3, 9). “When this protocol was violated, it usually meant that sensuality was involved” (Agents of Babylon, p. 150). “This was a real taboo, but he threw all restraints aside and did exactly as he pleased” (David Jeremiah, Handwriting on the Wall, p. 99).
In doing this, Belshazzar went beyond anything “Nebuchadnezzar his father” had done.
3 Then they brought in the golden vessels that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. 4 They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.
Not only does Belshazzar profane God’s glory by using the holy vessels for profane uses, but he also used them to worship his gods. By using these holy objects for the purpose of drinking in praise of his own gods he was making the Most High subservient in his mind. And why not? These Jews had been subservient to the Babylonians his whole life.
The Babylonian’s incorrectly attributed their ascendancy (and assumed invulnerability during the siege) to their false gods instead of the One True God. Yet Habakkuk 1:6-11 reveals the truth—that it was the God of the Jews who had raised up and empowered Babylon to judge His people:
6 I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwellings not their own. 7 They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor. 8 Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their cavalry gallops headlong; their horsemen come from afar. They fly like an eagle swooping to devour; 9 they all come intent on violence. Their hordes advance like a desert wind and gather prisoners like sand. 10 They mock kings and scoff at rulers. They laugh at all fortified cities; by building earthen ramps they capture them. 11 Then they sweep past like the wind and go on— guilty people, whose own strength is their god.”
The way the holy vessels were employed at the party seems to have been an intentional slight of Israel’s God—placing Him below Babylon’s gods—who had seemingly been proved superior due to the capture of “His people” and the vessels from “His house.” The sacred vessels of the living God were being desecrated in praise of dead idols.
Relocation of the vessels to a Babylonian god’s temple (1:2) had defiled them already, but the attendees of the banquet defiled them further not only when they “drank wine” from them but also when they “praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.”
Drinking from the Temple items is done before an audience. This is a public mocking of the God of the Judean exiles. Even Nebuchadnezzar had treated the Temple items with some respect when he placed them in the house of his gods (Dan 1:1-2). Even for a Babylonian, Belshazzar has lost all sense of decency!
But the God of Israel will not be made subservient to any other god. He says, “I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth” (Psalm 46:10). Again he says, “For great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; he is to feared above all gods. For all the gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens” (Psalm 96:4, 5). He will not share his glory with another! To do so is idolatry. Belshazzar is now openly mocking the one true God. It was an open insult to the Most High.
Why does God get so upset over this? Why is it important to Him to receive the praise that is due Him?
As a young man, C. S. Lewis was more than a little agitated by the persistent demand, especially in the Psalms, that we all “praise God.” What made it even worse is that God himself called for praise of God himself. This was almost more than Lewis could stomach. What kind of “God” is he who incessantly demands that his people tell him how great he is? Lewis was threatened with a picture of God in which he appeared as little better than a vain woman demanding compliments. Thanking God for his gifts was one thing, but this “perpetual eulogy” was more than Lewis could stomach.
Early in his Christian life, C.S. Lewis struggled with the idea that God demands our praise and commands us to give Him glory. However, he soon realized that this “stumbling block” was due to his misconception of God and a misunderstanding of what praise really is. He writes in his book, Reflections on the Psalms:
The most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything—strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless …shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise—lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humblest, and at the same time most balanced and capacious, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits, and malcontents praised least…Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible.…
I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: “Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?” The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what we indeed can’t help doing, about everything else we value.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.
It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed… If it were possible for a created soul fully… to “appreciate”, that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beautitude…
The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.1
While God as our Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer certainly deserves our praise, isn’t it amazing again to realize His lovingkindness towards us, as in commanding us to give Him praise, He is offering us the supreme in joy and fullness of life. It makes you want to shout out loud and share the goodness of God with others.
Belshazzar and his guests may have directed their attention to the gods because of the encroaching Medo-Persian army, which—according to the Babylonian Chronicle—had defeated Nabonidus and the Babylonian army merely fifty miles from Babylon two days earlier. In all likelihood, Belshazzar had become aware of this defeat, yet he held the banquet in a brazen display of invincibility—and, as it turned out, delusion. Lennox writes, “For Belshazzar, nothing was sacred, except possibly himself—his position, wealth, and power” (John Lennox, Against the Flow: The Inspiration of Daniel in an Age of Relativism, p. 182).
David Guzik notes: “The scene of partying while a hostile army surrounded the city reminds us of the spirit of our present age. Many today have the idea that the best response to the seeming danger of the times is to forget about it and escape into the pursuit of pleasure.”
It reminds me of what Jesus said about the generation preceding the return of Christ: “37 For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, 39 and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:37-39)
And in the Gospel of Luke (21) Jesus warns: 34 “But watch yourselves lest your hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and cares of this life, and that day come upon you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come upon all who dwell on the face of the whole earth. 36 But stay awake at all times, praying that you may have strength to escape all these things that are going to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
People and nations may come and go, but human nature remains the same.
Gathering the vessels from the Jewish temple served the purpose of reminding the partiers of a previous victory, and Belshazzar hoped it would boost morale. “As if these dung-hill deities had mastered and spoiled the God of Israel… This was blasphemy in a high degree, and therefore presently punished by God.” (Trapp)
In his book Voices from Babylon, Joseph Seiss writes, “Not only their ill-timed merriment, their trampling on the customary proprieties, and their drunkenness, but even their foolhardy and blasphemous insults to the most high God, is veiled over and cloaked with a pretense of devotion! This was as far as it was possible for human daring and infatuation to go. It was more than the powers of Heaven could quietly endure. The divine resentment broke forth on the spot” (pp. 145-146).
It was at this point that God unmistakably records his judgment against King Belshazzar. In what happens next, God was basically telling Belshazzar, “Enough is enough. Your number is up!”
4 Do you not know this from of old,
since man was placed on earth,
5 that the exulting of the wicked is short,
and the joy of the godless but for a moment?
6 Though his height mount up to the heavens,
and his head reach to the clouds,
7 he will perish forever like his own dung;
those who have seen him will say, ‘Where is he?’ (Job 20:4-7)
Zophar’s words were not appropriate to Job, but they would certainly apply in this moment to Belshazzar, and to anyone who defies the holiness of God.
Belshazzar didn’t know it, but he was celebrating his own funeral. The prophet Jeremiah gave specific details about Babylon’s fall more than fifty years before it happened.
- A northern nation would conquer the city (Jeremiah 50:1-3, 9, 41).
- This nation would be associated with the Medes (Jeremiah 51:11, 26, 28-29).
- Babylon was described as a greatly fortified city, in which they would trust (Jeremiah 51:53 ,58).
- Babylon would be taken by a trick or a snare (Jeremiah 50:24).
- The city’s demise would involve the drying up of water, her “fountain” (Jeremiah 51:36-37), obstructing the flow of the Euphrates river (Jere. 51:32)
- This would be accomplished while a great feast was in progress (Jeremiah 51:39).
- Both government officials and military officers would be so drunk they would be sleepy (Jeremiah 51:57).
- This would be accomplished when Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson was in power (Jeremiah 27:6-7).
The word “immediately” or “suddenly” shows that the party suddenly took a sharp turn. God crashed the party. The music stopped and every eye turned to the handwriting on the wall.
The revelry soon took a sharp turn for the macabre when a disembodied hand crashed the party (Daniel 5:5). One wonders: Was Belshazzar initially ticked that someone was writing graffiti on his wall?? But his drunken high would be suddenly replaced by a dreadful fear.
Grace Still Amazes 