Daniel 5:2

2 While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might 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.

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FOOTNOTES:

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

Daniel 5:2 In-Context

1 Belshazzar the king made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand.

2 While he tasted the wine, Belshazzar gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem, that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.

3 Then they brought the gold vessels that had been taken from the temple of the house of God which had been 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 and iron, wood and stone.

5 In the same hour the fingers of a man's hand appeared and wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king's palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.