Daniel 5:30

30 That very same night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonian people, was killed.

Daniel 5:30 Meaning and Commentary

Daniel 5:30

In that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans,
slain.
] Not by a servant of his own, as Jacchiades; or by an eunuch, one of his guards, as Saadiah and Joseph ben Gorion F2; but by Gadales and Gobryas, who led Cyrus's army up the river Euphrates into the city of Babylon, its course being turned; the inhabitants of which being revelling and rioting, and the gates open, these men went up to the king's palace; the doors of which being opened by the king's orders to know what was the matter, they rushed in, and finding him standing up with his sword drawn in his own defence, they fell upon him, and slew him, and all about him, as Xenophon F3 relates; and this was the same night the feast was, and the handwriting was seen, read, and interpreted. This was after a reign of seventeen years; for so Josephus says F4, that Baltasar or Belshazzar, in whose reign Babylon was taken, reigned seventeen years; and so many years are assigned to him in Ptolemy's canon; though the Jewish chronicle F5 allows him but three years, very wrongly, no more of his reign being mentioned in Scripture: see ( Daniel 7:1 ) . His death, according to Bishop Usher F6, Mr. Whiston F7, and Mr. Bedford F8, was in the year of the world 3466 A.M., and 538 B.C. Dean Prideaux F9 places it in 539 B.C.


FOOTNOTES:

F2 Hist. Heb. l. 1. c. 6. p. 26.
F3 Cyropaedia, l. 7. sect. 22, 23.
F4 Antiqu. l. 10. c. 11. sect. 4.
F5 Seder Olam Rabba, c. 28. p. 81.
F6 Annales Vet. Test. A. M. 3466.
F7 Chronological Tables, cent. 10.
F8 Scripture Chronology, p. 711.
F9 Connexion par. 1. p. 120.

Daniel 5:30 In-Context

28 Parsin: Your kingdom is being divided and will be given to the Medes and the Persians."
29 Then Belshazzar gave an order for Daniel to be dressed in purple clothes and to have a gold chain put around his neck. And it was announced that Daniel was the third highest ruler in the kingdom.
30 That very same night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonian people, was killed.
31 So Darius the Mede became the new king when he was sixty-two years old.
Scripture taken from the New Century Version. Copyright © 1987, 1988, 1991 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.