Daniel 5:2

2 And being now drunk, he commanded that they should bring the vessels of gold and silver, which Nabuchodonosor, his father, had brought away out of the temple, that was in Jerusalem, that the king and his nobles, and his wives, and his concubines, might drink in 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 Baltasar, the king, made a great feast for a thousand of his nobles: and every one drank according to his age.

2 And being now drunk, he commanded that they should bring the vessels of gold and silver, which Nabuchodonosor, his father, had brought away out of the temple, that was in Jerusalem, that the king and his nobles, and his wives, and his concubines, might drink in them.

3 Then were the golden and silver vessels brought, which he had brought away out of the temple that was in Jerusalem: and the king and his nobles, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them.

4 They drank wine, and praised their gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, and of wood, and of stone.

5 In the same hour there appeared fingers, as it were of the hand of a man, writing over against the candlestick, upon the surface of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king beheld the joints of the hand that wrote.