Daniel 5:2

2 Under the influence of the wine, Belshazzar gave orders to bring in the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his father ^[a] had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king could drink from them, along with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines.

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 Later, King Belshazzar held a great feast for a thousand of his nobles, and he drank wine with them.

2 Under the influence of the wine, Belshazzar gave orders to bring in the gold and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his father had taken from the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king could drink from them, along with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines.

3 Thus they brought in the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king drank from them, along with his nobles, his wives, and his concubines.

4 As they drank the wine, they praised their gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.

5 At that moment the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lampstand in the royal palace. As the king watched the hand that was writing,

Footnotes

• [a] Or predecessor or grandfather; also in verses 11, 13, and 18