Daniel 5:2

2 Belshazzar, heady with the wine, ordered that the gold and silver chalices his father Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from God's Temple of Jerusalem be brought in so that he and his nobles, his wives and concubines, could drink from them.

Daniel 5:2 Meaning and Commentary

Daniel 5:2

Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine
As he was drinking his cups, and delighted with the taste of the wine, and got merry with it: or, "by the advice of the wine" F8, as Aben Ezra and Jarchi interpret it, by a personification; as if that dictated to him, and put him upon doing what follows; and which often puts both foolish and wicked things into the heads of men, and upon doing them: then he commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels, which his father
Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem;
what these vessels were, and the number of them, we learn from the delivery of them afterwards to the prince of Judah by Cyrus, ( Ezra 1:9-11 ) , these were put into the temple of Bel by Nebuchadnezzar, ( Daniel 1:2 ) and from thence they were now ordered to be brought to the king's palace, and to the apartment where he and his nobles were drinking: that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might
drink therein;
Saadiah says, this day the seventy years' captivity ended; and so, in contempt of the promise and prophecy of it, he ordered the vessels to be brought out and drank in, to show that in vain the Jews expected redemption from it.


FOOTNOTES:

F8 (armx Mejb) "vino dictante", Tigurine version.

Daniel 5:2 In-Context

1 King Belshazzar held a great feast for his one thousand nobles. The wine flowed freely.
2 Belshazzar, heady with the wine, ordered that the gold and silver chalices his father Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from God's Temple of Jerusalem be brought in so that he and his nobles, his wives and concubines, could drink from them.
3 When the gold and silver chalices were brought in, the king and his nobles, his wives and his concubines, drank wine from them.
4 They drank the wine and drunkenly praised their gods made of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.
5 At that very moment, the fingers of a human hand appeared and began writing on the lamp-illumined, whitewashed wall of the palace. When the king saw the disembodied hand writing away,
Published by permission. Originally published by NavPress in English as THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright 2002 by Eugene Peterson. All rights reserved.