Belshazzar’s Feast: Babylon’s last night

This chapter is based on Daniel 5.

Great changes were taking place in the land to which Daniel and his companions had been carried captive more than sixty years before. Nebuchadnezzar had died, and Babylon had passed under the unwise rule of his successors. Gradual but sure decline was resulting.RR 186.1

Belshazzar, the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, gloried in his power and lifted up his heart against the God of heaven. He had known that God’s decree had banished his grandfather from human society. He was familiar with Nebuchadnezzar’s conversion and miraculous restoration. But he allowed pleasure and self-glorification to erase the lessons he should never have forgotten. He neglected to use the means within his reach for becoming better acquainted with truth.RR 186.2

It was not long before reverses came. Cyrus, commanding general of the Medes and Persians, put Babylon under siege. But within its massive walls and gates of bronze, protected by the river Euphrates and stocked with abundant provisions, the pleasure-seeking monarch felt safe and passed his time in merriment and partying.RR 186.3

In his pride and arrogance, with a reckless feeling of security, Belshazzar “made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and drank wine in the presence of the thousand.” Beautiful women with their enchantments were among the guests. Men of genius and education were there. Princes and statesmen drank wine and partied under its maddening influence.RR 186.4

With reason dethroned through drunkenness and with lower impulses and passions controlling him, the king himself took the lead in the riotous orgy. He “gave the command to bring the gold and silver vessels which ... Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple which had been in Jerusalem.” The king would prove that nothing was too sacred for his hands to handle. “They brought the gold vessels ...; and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze and iron, wood and stone.”RR 186.5