TRV
Translation
King James Version
Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them.
Complete Jewish Bible
So they brought the gold vessels which had been removed from the sanctuary of the house of God in Yerushalayim; and the king, his lords, his wives and his concubines drank from them.
Berean Standard Bible
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.
American Standard Version
Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, drank from them.
World English Bible Messianic
Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of God’s house which was at Jerusalem; and the king and his lords, his wives and his concubines, drank from them.
Geneva Bible (1599)
Then were brought the golden vessels, that were taken out of the Temple of the Lords house at Ierusalem, and the King and his princes, his wiues and his concubines dranke in them.
Young's Literal Translation
Then they have brought in the vessels of gold that had been taken out of the temple of the house of God that is in Jerusalem, and drunk with them have the king and his great men, his wives and his concubines;
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Commentary on Daniel 5 verses 1–9
1 ¶ Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
2 Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein.
3 Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them.
4 They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
5 In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
6 Then the king's countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.
7 The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers. And the king spake, and said to the wise men of Babylon, Whosoever shall read this writing, and shew me the interpretation thereof, shall be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about his neck, and shall be the third ruler in the kingdom.
8 Then came in all the king's wise men: but they could not read the writing, nor make known to the king the interpretation thereof.
9 Then was king Belshazzar greatly troubled, and his countenance was changed in him, and his lords were astonied.
We have here Belshazzar the king very gay, but all of a sudden very gloomy, and in straits in the fulness of his sufficiency. See how he affronts God, and God affrights him; and wait what will be the issue of this contest; and whether he that hardened his heart against God prospered.
I. See how the king affronted God, and put contempt upon him. He made a great feast, or banquet of wine; probably it was some anniversary solemnity, in honour off his birthday or coronation-day, or in honour of some of their idols. Historians say that Cyrus, who was now with his army besieging Babylon, knew of this feast, and presuming that they then would be off their guard, somno vinoque sepulti - buried in sleep and wine, took that opportunity to attack the city, and so with the more ease made himself master of it. Belshazzar upon this occasion invited a thousand of his lords to come and drink with him. Perhaps they were such as had signalized themselves in defense of the city against the besiegers; or these were his great council of war, with whom, when they had well drunk, he would advise what was further to be done. And they were to look upon it as a great favour that he drank wine before them, for it was the pride of those eastern kings to be seldom seen. He drank wine before them, for he made this feast, as Ahasuerus did, to show the honour of his majesty. Now in this sumptuous feast, 1. He put an affront upon the providence of God and bade defiance to his judgments. His city was now besieged; a powerful enemy was at his gates; his life and kingdom lay at stake. In all this the hand of the Lord had gone out against him, and by it he called him to weeping, and mourning, and girding with sackcloth. God's voice cried in the city, as Jonah to Nineveh, Yet forty days, or fewer, and Babylon shall be destroyed. He should therefore, like the king of Nineveh, have proclaimed a fast; but, as one resolved to walk contrary to God, he proclaims a feast, and behold joy and gladness, slaying oxen, killing sheep, eating flesh, and drinking wine, as if he dared the Almighty to do his worst, Isa 22:12, Isa 22:13. To show how little fear he had of being forced to surrender, for want of provisions, he spent thus extravagantly. Note, Security and sensuality are sad presages of approaching ruin. Those that will not be warned by judgments of God may expect to be wounded by them. 2. He put an affront upon the temple of God, and bade defiance to his sanctuary, Dan 5:2. While he tasted the wine, he commanded to bring the vessels of the temple, that they might drink in them. When he tasted how rich and fine the wine was, "O," said he, "it is a pity but we should have holy vessels to drink such delicious wine as this in," which was looked upon as a piece of wit, and, to carry on the humour, the vessels of the temple were immediately sent for. Nay, there seems to have been something more in it than a frolic, and that it was done in a malicious despite to the God of Israel. The heart of his people was very much upon these sacred vessels, as appears from Jer 27:16, Jer 27:18. Their principal care, at their return, was about these, Ezr 1:7. Now, we may suppose, they had an expectation of their deliverance approaching, reckoning the seventy years of their captivity near a period; and some of them might perhaps have given out some words to that purport, that shortly they should have the vessels of the sanctuary restored to them, in defiance of which Belshazzar here proclaims them to be his own, will keep them in store no longer, but will make use of them among his own plate. Note, That mirth is sinful indeed, and fills the measure of men's iniquity apace, which profanes sacred things and jests with them. This ripened Babylon for ruin - that no songs would serve them but the songs of Zion (Psa 137:3), no vessels but the vessels of the sanctuary. Let those who thus sacrilegiously alienate what is dedicated to God and his honour know that he will not be mocked. 3. He put an affront upon God himself, and bade defiance to his deity; for they drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, Dan 5:4. They gave that glory to images, the work of their own hands and creatures of their own fancy, which is due to the true and living God only. They praised them either with sacrifices offered to them or with songs sung in honour of them. When their heads were giddy, and their hearts merry, with wine, they were in the fittest frame to praise the gods of gold and silver, wood and stone; for one would think that men in their senses, who had the command of a clear and sober thought, could not be guilty of so gross an absurdity; they must be intoxicated ere they could be so infatuated. Drunken worshippers, who are not men, but beasts, are the most proper for the service of dunghill deities, that are not gods, but devils. They have erred through wine, Isa 27:7. They drank wine, and praised their idol-gods, as if they had been the founders of their feast and the givers of all good things to them. Or, when they were drinking wine, they praised their gods by drinking healths to them; and the king drank wine before them (Dan 5:1), that is, he began the health, first to this god, and then to the other, till they went through the bead-roll or farrago of them, those of wood and stone not excepted. Note, Immorality and impiety, vice and profaneness, strengthen the hands and advance the interests one of another. Drunken frolics were an introduction to idolatry, and then idolatrous healths were a shoeing-horn to further drunkenness.
II. See how God affrighted the king, and struck a terror upon him. Belshazzar and his lords are in the midst of their revels, the cups going round apace, and all upon the merry pin, drinking confusion, it may be, to Cyrus and his army, and roaring out huzzas, in confidence of the speedy raising of the siege; but the hour had come when that must be fulfilled which had been long ago said of the king of Babylon, when his city should be besieged by the Persians and Medes, Isa 21:2-4. The night of my pleasures has he turned into fear to me. The mirth of this ball at court must be spoiled, and a damp cast upon their jollity, though the king himself be master of the revels; immediately, when God speaks the word, we have him and all his guests in the utmost confusion, and the end of their mirth is heaviness. 1. There appear the fingers of a man's hand writing on the plaster of the wall, before the king's face (Dan 5:5), "the angel Gabriel," say the rabbin, "directing these fingers and writing by them." "That divine hand" (says a rabbi of our own, Dr. Lightfoot) "that had written the two tables for a law to his people now writes the doom of Babel and Belshazzar upon the wall." Here was nothing sent to frighten them which made a noise, or threatened their lives, no claps of thunder nor flashes of lightning, no destroying angel with his sword drawn in his hand, only a pen in the hand, writing upon the wall, over-against the candlestick, where they might all see it by the light of their own candle. Note, God's written word is sufficient to put the proudest boldest sinners into a fright, when he is pleased to give it the setting on. The king saw the part of the hand that wrote, but saw not the person whose hand it was, which made the thing more frightful. Note, What we see of God, the part of the hand that writes in the book of the creatures and the book of the scriptures (Lo, these are parts of his ways, Job 26:14), may serve to possess us with awful thoughts concerning that of God which we do not see. If this be the finger of God, what is his arm made bare? And what is he? 2. The king is immediately seized with a panic fear (Dan 5:6): His countenance was changed (his colour went and came); the joints of his loins were loosed, so that he had no strength in them, but was struck with a pain in his back, as is usual in a great fright; his knees smote one against another, so violently did he tremble like an aspen leaf. But what was the matter? Why is he in such a fright? He perceives not what is written, and how does he know but it may be some happy presage of deliverance to him and to his kingdom? But the business was his thoughts troubled him; his own guilty conscience flew in his face, and told him that he had no reason to expect any good news from Heaven, and that the hand of an angel could write nothing but terror to him. He that knew himself liable to the justice of God immediately concluded this to be an arrest in his name, a summons to appear before him. Note, God can soon awaken the most secure and make the heart of the stoutest sinner to tremble; and there needs no more to do it than to let loose his own thoughts upon him; they will soon play the tyrant, and give him trouble enough. 3. The wise men of Babylon are immediately called in, to see what they can make of this writing upon the wall, Dan 5:7. The king cried aloud, as one in haste, as one in earnest, to bring the whole college of magicians, to try if they can read this writing, and show the interpretation of it; for the king and all his lords cannot pretend to it, it is out of their sphere. The study of divine revelation (such as they had, or thought they had) and converse with the world of spirits were by the heathen confined to one profession, and no other meddled with it; but what is written to us by the finger of God is legible to all; whoever will may read the mind of God in the scriptures. To engage these wise men to exert the utmost of their skill in this matter, and provoke them to an emulation in the attempt, he promised that whoever would give him a satisfactory account of this writing should be dignified with the highest honours of the court. He knew what these pretenders to wisdom aimed at, and what would please them, and therefore promised them a scarlet robe and a gold chain, glorious things in the eyes of those that know no better. Nay, he should be primus par regni - chief minister of state, the third ruler in the kingdom, next to the king and his heir apparent. 4. The king is disappointed in his expectations from them; they can none of them read the writing, much less interpret it (Dan 5:8), which increases the king's confusion, Dan 5:9. He likes the thing yet worse and worse, and fears that mischief is towards him. His lords also, that had been partners with him in his jollity, are now sharers with him in his terrors; they also were astonished at their wits' end; and neither their numbers nor their refreshment by wine would serve to keep up their spirits. The reason why the wise men could not read the writing was not because it was written in any language or characters unknown to them, but God either cast a mist before their eyes or put such confusion upon their spirits that they could not read it, that the honour of expounding this mystical writing might be reserved for Daniel. Note, The terror of an awakened convinced conscience may justly be increased by the utter insufficiency of all creatures to give it ease or satisfaction.
Matthew Henry (1662–1714) — Commentary on the Whole Bible. This section covers verses 1–9. Public domain.
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Ephrem the SyrianAD 373
COMMENTARY ON DANIEL 5:1
“Under the influence of wine, he commanded that they bring the vessels” from the sanctuary and did not hesitate in showing them to his lords and concubines and other guests, as he intended to use them for a profane symposium. His father had taken those vessels from the temple of Jerusalem, when Nebuchadnezzar had conquered the city and had destroyed it; nonetheless he had set them in a decent place and had preserved them with holy devotion. [Belshazzar] went beyond any limit.
JeromeAD 420
LETTER 22.23
Therefore I summon you before God and Jesus Christ and his elect angels to guard that which you have received, not readily exposing to the public gaze the vessels of the Lord’s temple.… Unchaste eyes see nothing correctly. They fail to appreciate the beauty of the soul and only value that of the body. Hezekiah showed God’s treasure to the Assyrians, who ought never to have seen what they were sure to covet. The consequence was that Judea was torn by continual wars and that the very first things carried away to Babylon were these vessels of the Lord. We find Belshazzar at his feast and among his concubines (vice always glories in defiling what is noble) drinking out of these sacred cups.
Theodoret of CyrusAD 458
COMMENTARY ON DANIEL 5:2
In other words, intoxication confused his thinking, and intemperance gave rise to this insane action against God: the vessels consecrated to the worship of God, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had seized when God surrendered them but had honored in the way he thought fit and had kept from human use, this man presumed to use like ordinary vessels, not only giving the order but giving effect to the order.
Isaac of NinevehAD 700
ASCETICAL HOMILIES 10
[God] showed that His true servants and friends are those who walk before Him in fear and reverence and do His will, since virtuous deeds and purity of conscience are things holy [and beloved] of God. But when people repudiate His paths, the Lord repudiates them, casts them away from His face and takes from them His grace. For why was the sentence against Baltasar issued so swiftly and why did it strike him down, as it were, by the form of a hand? Was it not because he acted with audacity toward the untouchable vessels of offering he seized from Jerusalem, drinking out of them, both he and his concubines? In the same manner, those who have consecrated their members to God but are so audacious as to use them once more for worldly deeds, the same perish, being smitten by an invisible blow.
John DamasceneAD 749
ON DIVINE IMAGES 3:35
The third kind of relative worship we give to objects dedicated to God, such as the holy Gospel and other books, for they have been written for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come. Obviously, patens, chalices, censers, candlesticks and altars should all receive respect. Remember how Belshazzar made his people serve wine in sacred vessels and how God brought his kingdom to an end.
Ishodad of MervAD 850
COMMENTARY ON DANIEL 5:2
The words “at the taste of the wine, [Belshazzar] said,” that is, after he became drunk and unreasonable as a consequence of tasting wine.
Source: Quotations drawn from early Church Fathers and historical Christian theologians (AD 100–1500). Some quotes address the surrounding passage context rather than this verse alone.
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SUMMARY
Daniel 5:3 vividly recounts the moment King Belshazzar of Babylon, in a display of audacious impiety, commanded that the sacred golden vessels plundered from the temple of God in Jerusalem be brought forth for use in his drunken feast. This act of profound sacrilege, involving the king, his princes, his wives, and his concubines drinking from these consecrated items, served as the immediate catalyst for divine judgment, setting the stage for the dramatic appearance of the "writing on the wall" that would seal Babylon's fate.
CONTEXT
EXPOSITION AND ANALYSIS
Key Word Analysis
Verse Breakdown
Literary Devices
Daniel 5:3 employs several powerful literary devices. Symbolism is paramount, as the golden vessels themselves symbolize the holiness of God and the sanctity of His worship. Their desecration is a direct symbolic assault on God's character and authority. The scene is rich in Contrast, juxtaposing the sacred purpose of the vessels with their profane use in a drunken, idolatrous feast. This stark contrast amplifies the severity of Belshazzar's sin. The verse also serves as a potent piece of Foreshadowing, as this act of extreme impiety immediately precedes and precipitates the divine judgment that unfolds in the rest of the chapter. The lavish setting and the king's overconfidence, despite the impending Persian threat, create a sense of Dramatic Irony, as the reader knows the doom that awaits Belshazzar, while he remains oblivious, celebrating his perceived power.
THEOLOGICAL AND THEMATIC CONNECTIONS
Daniel 5:3 serves as a profound theological statement on the absolute holiness of God and the severe consequences of profaning what is dedicated to Him. Belshazzar's act was not merely a lapse in judgment but a deliberate, arrogant affront to the God of Israel, whose power and authority had been demonstrated to his predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar. This incident underscores that God is sovereign over all kingdoms and will not tolerate open defiance or the desecration of His name and holy things. It teaches us that true reverence for God extends to how we treat everything associated with Him, whether physical objects, spiritual principles, or the very concept of His divine majesty. The immediate and dramatic judgment that follows this act highlights God's active involvement in human history and His unwavering commitment to uphold His own glory.
REFLECTION AND APPLICATION
The narrative of Daniel 5:3 offers enduring lessons for believers today, reminding us of the profound importance of reverence for God and the dangers of spiritual arrogance. Just as Belshazzar treated the sacred as common, we too can fall into the trap of trivializing God's holiness, whether through casual attitudes toward worship, neglecting His Word, or misusing the gifts and blessings He has bestowed upon us. This verse calls us to examine our hearts and ensure that our lives reflect a genuine awe and respect for the Lord. It warns against the spiritual pride that believes it can defy God's standards without consequence, echoing the biblical truth that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Ultimately, it challenges us to live lives that consistently honor God, recognizing that everything we have and are belongs to Him, and should be used for His glory, not our own self-indulgence or defiance.
Questions for Reflection
FAQ
Why was using these specific golden vessels such a serious offense to God?
Answer: The offense lay in the profound act of sacrilege and blasphemy. These were not ordinary drinking cups; they were holy implements, consecrated and set apart for the exclusive service and worship of the God of Israel in His temple in Jerusalem. Their gold material signified their preciousness and dedication. By using them for a drunken, idolatrous feast, Belshazzar and his court were deliberately profaning objects dedicated to the one true God, mocking His holiness, and asserting their own perceived superiority over Him. This act was a direct challenge to God's sovereignty and a public display of contempt for His divine majesty, which God, being holy, could not overlook, as articulated in Isaiah 42:8.
What was Belshazzar's relationship to Nebuchadnezzar, and why is that significant for this verse?
Answer: Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, and was serving as co-regent during his father's absence. While not Nebuchadnezzar's direct son in the modern sense, the Bible refers to him as Nebuchadnezzar's "son" or "descendant" in a broader dynastic sense, as seen in Daniel 5:2. The significance lies in the fact that Belshazzar knew, or should have known, the history of Nebuchadnezzar's humbling by God. Daniel 5:22 explicitly states, "And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this." Nebuchadnezzar had experienced God's power firsthand, acknowledging Him as the Most High God after a period of divine judgment, as recorded in Daniel 4:34-37. Belshazzar's defiance, therefore, was not born of ignorance but of willful rebellion against a God whose power had already been demonstrated to his royal predecessor.
CHRIST-CENTERED FULFILLMENT
The profanation of the temple vessels in Daniel 5:3 finds its ultimate resolution and fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus Christ. The Old Testament temple and its vessels were types and shadows pointing to a greater spiritual reality. Jesus Himself declared, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," speaking of the temple of His body, as recorded in John 2:19-21. He is the true and ultimate Temple, the dwelling place of God among humanity, and in Him, God's holiness is perfectly embodied. Belshazzar's sacrilege highlights humanity's propensity to defile what is holy, but Christ came to cleanse and sanctify. He entered the physical temple and cleansed it from those who profaned it with commercialism, demonstrating His zeal for God's house, as seen in Matthew 21:12-13. More profoundly, through His perfect life, atoning death, and glorious resurrection, Christ offers a means for humanity, once defiled by sin, to be made holy and become "vessels for noble use, set apart as holy, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work," as exhorted in 2 Timothy 2:21. The judgment that fell upon Belshazzar for his irreverence foreshadows the ultimate judgment against all who reject God's holiness, but Christ, the Lamb of God, bore that judgment on the cross, making it possible for us to approach a holy God not with fear of condemnation, but with confidence, through His shed blood, as described in Hebrews 10:19-22. In Christ, the sacred is not merely protected, but perfectly fulfilled and graciously extended to all who believe.