Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his nobles, and drank wine before the thousand.
This verse opens the last night of the Babylonian empire — not with the army outside the walls, but with the party inside them. Why does Scripture record this feast, and what turned it into a funeral?
The verse sets the scene for everything that follows. One writer sees in it a worse fault than anything in Nebuchadnezzar's reign.
Coming now to our chapter, we see a still worse moral feature of Gentile rule. Idolatry and pride of power — empty boasting — had marked Nebuchadnezzar. Belshazzar is known for something else: the public insolence of daring impiety, breaking out in open wickedness and profanity. The occasion for this outburst of sin is described in the first verse. It was a night of feasting, wild partying, and no restraint. Every evil passion of man's corrupt heart was stirred up and fed.
He is called "the king," yet the top reward he offers is only third place in the kingdom.
Why the third ruler? Because Belshazzar was the second ruler. His father was in fact the king. But his father was not in Babylon at that moment, and Belshazzar shared the throne with him.
The confidence behind the feast came from the city that hosted it.
It must have been a marvellous assembly. The banquet took place in one of the many palaces that adorned the city regarded as the mistress of the earth. Babylon stood on a broad plain, and was exactly square. Its walls ran fifteen miles in each direction. They were 300 feet high and 75 feet broad, with a hundred bronze gates set in them... The king and the people thought no power could touch them, in heaven or on earth. But they were wrong. They had forgotten God. One hundred and fifty years before, He had said through one servant, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon" (Isa. 21:9).
Commentators note that history and Scripture explain the night from two angles. One records an unguarded moment an army could exploit; the other records what the king did with it.
History may tell us that it was a yearly festival, when loose living ran unchecked. That gave the attacking army a good chance to seize an unguarded moment and put its long preparations to use. Scripture shows us the king wrapped in the false security that comes before destruction. He used the occasion to insult the God of Israel. Rash, blinded man! It was the eve of his ruined dynasty, and of his death.
The verse ends with the king drinking, and the next verse begins with his sacrilege. The link between the two is not accidental.
At this feast impiety broke out, apparently let loose by the effect of drink on the king. It was "when he tasted the wine" that he gave the command to bring the golden vessels of the temple of God into the feast. Up to a point a man can control the evil passions of his heart. But when some evil influence makes him lose control of himself, all the wickedness of his heart comes out.
The warning reaches past kings to anyone who drinks:
Wine has led many a man to ruin... Once the soul comes under the influence of strong drink, there is no depravity it will not sink to. Its victims worship it, while it damns them.
One writer reads chapters three to six as one sequence, each with its own sin.
In chapter 3 you have Nebuchadnezzar setting up the idol; in the fourth he exalts himself, but God brings him low. The fifth chapter is the scene of Belshazzar's impiety and sacrilege in bringing in the vessels of the Lord and drinking out of them — a most daring insult to God. What is the result? Belshazzar is judged... The third chapter gives us idolatry; the fourth, self-exaltation; the fifth, impiety; and the sixth, apostasy.
One writer reads the feast as more than a story from the past:
The fact of Belshazzar's feast, with its splendour and sudden doom, stands as history and as warning. But how few believe it is a picture of what is still to come? In the day of the Lord the same sudden judgment will overtake the boasting and splendour of this world of pleasure and greatness.
- Governing — Belshazzar is called king, yet he shared the throne with his father; the most he could offer was third place in the kingdom.
- Guarded — fifteen-mile walls and bronze gates made Babylon feel untouchable. God had announced its fall 150 years earlier.
- Loosened — the wine did not create the evil in Belshazzar's heart. It only removed the restraint that hid it.
- Graded — idolatry, then self-exaltation, then impiety, then apostasy. Chapter five is the step where insult to God goes public.
- Gone — the feast was the eve of his death. Scripture keeps it as a picture of splendour struck down without warning.
Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, might drink in them.
Belshazzar's feast is already loud with wine when the king turns a royal party into an act of defiance. He calls for the gold and silver cups Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, and two questions follow: why the wine matters, and why God still counts those cups as His.
The command comes while the king tastes the wine. One writer sees the drink releasing what was already in the man.
An outburst of impiety marked this feast, apparently let loose by the drink's effect on the king. It was "when he tasted the wine" that he commanded the golden vessels of God's temple to be brought into the feast. Up to a point a man can control the evil passions of his heart. But when some evil influence makes him lose control of himself, all the wickedness of his heart comes out.
Another writer asks what really made the king drunk.
Was he intoxicated? With the pride of wicked presumption, certainly — and the wine he drank inflamed it. Giving in to wine, and to the joy this earth offers, is bound to feed the heart's worst desires.
God had let these cups go to Babylon with His captive people. That did not hand over ownership.
The holy vessels were holy still in God's eyes, however polluted they had been by the sins of His kings and priests. They had been used in the house where He had put His name for ever, the house where His eyes and His heart would always be (1 Kings 9:3). True, in judgment He had let them share the captivity of His people. But He could not let the Gentile king and his immoral companions defile them. That would not fit with all that He was and all that He purposed.
The sin was misuse: holy things put to a use they were never meant for.
He and his lords drank out of those holy vessels to their gods of gold and silver and wood and iron, desecrating the vessels of Jehovah. He was putting them to an improper and unholy use; they were sanctified; they belonged to Jehovah.
Displaying the captured cups at the feast made a claim about whose God had won.
Belshazzar had thrown down a challenge before the eye of God. Bringing the golden vessels from the temple, the house of God, into that feast was the same as saying to Jehovah: "My gods are better than you. My gods helped the men who took your golden vessels and brought them here." That is what he meant.
Belshazzar was not Nebuchadnezzar's son in the ordinary sense. Two writers handle this differently. One is careful about the exact family link:
It seems beyond question that Belshazzar could not have been his son. It is possible that he might have been his grandson, though this is not certain. The term "father," therefore, as is often the case in Scripture, is used in the sense of ancestor, or forefather.
Another points to the monuments, which also explain why Belshazzar later offers Daniel third place, not second.
The monuments have revealed that he was the son of Nabonadius, or Labynetus, and was reigning with his father. Nabonadius was defending the kingdom outside in the open country. He was defeated, but not killed. His son was under siege inside the city, and was killed that night while holding a festival to the gods. This explains why Belshazzar promised Daniel the third place of rule in the kingdom.
A concubine was a wife of lower rank. Their presence at the table is noted as evidence of a practice that ran well beyond Israel.
Esther 2:14 and Daniel 5:2 show that concubinage was a custom also among the heathen. Christianity does not allow such evil. It recognises marriage as established by God, and so the sanctity of the marriage tie in those whom God joins together.
One writer sets this act in a sequence of three steps in Babylon's abuse of power.
The abuse of power in Babylon has three distinct characters, seen in three successive steps of evil: idolatry, profaneness, and self-exalting apostasy. First, there was idolatry in Nebuchadnezzar setting up the statue of gold on the plains of Dura. Second, profaneness in Belshazzar, who brings out the vessels of God's captive temple. Third, apostasy in Darius, who set himself up to be God.
- Trigger. The wine did not create the impiety; it removed the self-control that had been hiding it.
- Ownership. Captivity never cancelled God's claim. The vessels stayed "holy still in God's eyes," so drinking from them misused what belonged to Him.
- Defiance. Parading the captured cups said in public that Babylon's gods had beaten Israel's God. Belshazzar died that same night.
- History. "Father" here means forefather. The monuments name Belshazzar as the son of Nabonadius, ruling beside him — which explains the offer of third place, not second.
- Pattern. Idolatry, then profaneness, then apostasy — Babylon's power ran downhill in three steps, and this verse is the middle one.