Daniel 5 presents one of the Bible’s most colorful stories, set at a feast given by the Babylonian ruler Belshazzar. The king was drinking from vessels plundered from the Jewish temple at Jerusalem. During the feast, a strange disembodied hand appeared and wrote mysterious words on the palace wall: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
Belshazzar was so terrified that “his knees knocked against each other.” The faithful Jew Daniel appeared and interpreted the message, which meant that God had brought the Babylonian Empire to an end and given it over to the Medes and Persians. That very night Belshazzar, king of Babylon, was killed, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom.
Artists have delighted in capturing this story on canvas, and the great Rembrandt’s painting Belshazzar’s Feast is only one of many.
