John Calvin Commentary Daniel 5

Daniel here refers to the history of what happened at the capture of Babylon. In the meantime, he leaves to his readers' consideration those judgments of God which the Prophets had predicted before the people became exiles. He does not use the prophetic style, as we will see later, but is content with a simple narrative. The practice of history can be learned from the following expressions.

It is our duty now to consider how this history contributes to building us up in the faith and fear of God. First of all, we notice the time at which Belshazzar celebrated this banquet. Seventy years had passed since Daniel had been led into exile with his companions.

For although Nebuchadnezzar will soon be called the father of Belshazzar, it is clear enough that Evil-Merodach lived between them, as he reigned for twenty-three years. Some count two kings before Belshazzar, placing Regassar after Labassardach; these two would occupy eight years. Metasthenes has stated it this way, and he has many followers.

But Nebuchadnezzar the Great, who took Daniel captive and was the son of the first king of that name, evidently reigned for forty-five years. Some transfer two years to his father's reign; in any case, he held royal power for forty-five years. If the twenty-three years of Evil-Merodach are added, this totals sixty-eight years—during which Belshazzar had reigned for eight years.

We see, then, how seventy-two years had passed since Daniel was first led captive. Metasthenes counts thirty years for the reign of Evil-Merodach; and then, if we add eight years, this makes more than eighty years. This appears probable enough, although Metasthenes seems to be mistaken in supposing different kings instead of only different names.

For Herodotus does not call Belshazzar (of whom we are now speaking) a king, but calls his father Labynetus and gives Belshazzar the same name. Metasthenes makes some mistakes in names, but I readily accept his calculation of time when he asserts Evil-Merodach reigned for thirty years.

When we discuss the seventy years that Jeremiah had previously indicated, we should not begin with Daniel’s exile, nor even with the destruction of the city. Instead, we should start with the slaughter that occurred between King Nebuchadnezzar's first victory and the burning and ruin of the temple and city.

For when the report concerning his father's death was first spread, as we have said elsewhere, he returned to his own country to prevent any disturbance from occurring due to his absence. Therefore, we will find that the seventy years during which God wished the people’s captivity to last will require a longer period for Evil-Merodach's reign than twenty-three years.

Although there is not any significant difference, soon after Nebuchadnezzar returned, he carried off the king, leaving the city untouched. Even though the temple was then standing, God had inflicted the severest punishment upon the people, which was like a final slaughter, or at least nearly equal to it. However this may be, we see that Belshazzar was celebrating this banquet just as the time of deliverance drew near.

Here we must consider the providence of God in arranging the timing of events, so that the impious, when the time of their destruction has come, cast themselves headlong of their own accord. This happened to this wicked king.

Indeed, it was wonderful stupidity that led him to prepare a splendid banquet filled with delicacies while the city was besieged.

Cyrus had been besieging the city for a long time with a large army. The wretched king was already half captive; yet, as if in defiance of God, he provided a rich banquet and invited a thousand guests. From this, we may conjecture the extent of the noise and expense of that banquet.

If anyone wishes to entertain only ten or twenty guests splendidly, it will cause him much trouble. But this was a royal entertainment with a thousand nobles, along with the king’s wife and concubines. With so great a multitude assembled, it became necessary to obtain from many sources what was required for such a festival—and this may seem incredible!

But Xenophon, though he related many fables and preserved neither the gravity nor the fidelity of a historian because he desired to celebrate the praises of Cyrus like a rhetorician, and although he trifles in many things, yet here he had no reason or occasion for deception. He says a treasure was stored up, so that the Babylonians could endure a siege of ten or more years.

Babylon was deservedly compared to a kingdom, for its size was so large as to surpass belief. It must have been very populous, but since they drew their provisions from all of Asia, it is not surprising that the Babylonians had enough food in store to allow them to close their gates and sustain themselves for a long period.

But what was most peculiar about this banquet was that the king, who should have been on guard or at least have sent out his guards to prevent the city from being captured, was as intent on his delicacies as if he were in perfect peace and exposed to no danger from any external enemy.

He was contending with a strong man, if ever a man was so. Cyrus was endowed with singular prudence and far excelled all others in swiftness of action. Since, then, the king was so keenly opposed, it is surprising to find him so careless as to celebrate a banquet.

Xenophon, indeed, states that the day was a festival. The assertion of those Jews who think the Chaldeans had just obtained a victory over the Persians is insignificant. For Xenophon—who can be trusted whenever he does not falsify history in favor of Cyrus, because he is then a very serious historian and entirely worthy of credit, but who has no moderation when he desires to praise Cyrus—is historically correct here when he says the Babylonians were holding their usual annual festival.

He also tells us how Babylon was taken, namely, by his generals Gobryas and Gadatas. Belshazzar had shamefully castrated one of these and had slain the son of the other during his father's lifetime. Since the latter burned with the desire to avenge his son’s death, and the former his own disgrace, they conspired against him.

Therefore, Cyrus diverted the many channels of the Euphrates, and thus Babylon was suddenly captured. We must remember the city was captured twice; otherwise, there would not have been any confidence in prophecy.

This is because when the Prophets threaten God’s vengeance upon the Babylonians, they say their enemies would be most fierce, not seeking gold or silver, but desiring human blood. Then they narrate every kind of atrocious deed customary in war (Jeremiah 50:42).

However, nothing of this kind happened when Babylon was captured by Cyrus. But when the Babylonians freed themselves from Persian rule by casting off their yoke, Darius recovered the city with the assistance of Zopyrus.

Zopyrus mutilated himself and pretended to have suffered such cruelty from the king that it induced him to betray the city.

From this, we gather how harshly the Babylonians were afflicted when 3,000 nobles were crucified! And what usually happens when 8,000 nobles are put to death, all suspended on a gallows—indeed, even crucified?

Thus it easily appears how severely the Babylonians were punished at that time, even though they were then subject to a foreign power, treated shamefully by the Persians, and reduced to the condition of slaves. They were forbidden the use of arms, taught from the first to become slaves of Cyrus, and dared not wear a sword.

We should briefly touch upon these things to assure ourselves of God's governance of human events by His judgment, when He casts the reprobate headlong as their punishment is near. We have an illustrious example of this in King Belshazzar.

The time of the deliverance predicted by Jeremiah was near—the seventy years were finished, and Babylon was besieged (Jeremiah 25:11). The Jews could now raise their heads and hope for the best because the arrival of Cyrus approached, contrary to everyone's expectation.

For Cyrus had suddenly rushed down from the mountains of Persia when it was still a barbarous nation.

Therefore, since the sudden arrival of Cyrus was like a whirlwind, this change might have given some hope to the Jews. However, after a considerable time had passed in the siege of the city, so to speak, this might have disheartened them.

While King Belshazzar was banqueting with his nobles, Cyrus seemed able to oust him in the midst of his merriment and hilarity.

In the meantime, the Lord was not idle in heaven; for He blinded the mind of the impious king, so that he willingly incurred punishment. Yet no one drew him on, for he brought it upon himself.

And from where could this arise, unless God had given him up to his enemy? It was according to that decree of which Jeremiah was the herald. Therefore, although Daniel narrates the history, it is our duty, as I have said, to discuss things far more important.

For God, who had promised His people deliverance, was now secretly stretching out His hand and fulfilling the predictions of His Prophets (Jeremiah 25:26).

King Belshazzar was drinking wine before a thousand. Some of the Rabbis say, “He strove with his thousand nobles and contended with them all in drinking to excess,” but this seems grossly ridiculous.

When the text says, he drank wine before a thousand, it alludes to a national custom, for the kings of the Chaldeans very rarely invited guests to their table. They usually dined alone, as the kings of Europe do now, because they thought it added to their dignity to enjoy a solitary meal.

The pride of the Chaldean kings was of this kind. Therefore, when it is said, Belshazzar drank wine before a thousand, something extraordinary is intended, since he was celebrating this annual banquet contrary to his ordinary custom, and he deigned to treat his nobles with such honor as to receive them as his guests.

Some, indeed, conjecture that he drank wine in private, as he was accustomed to become intoxicated when there were no witnesses present; but there is no force in this comment. The word before means in the presence or society of others. Let us go on.

Here King Belshazzar courts his own punishment, because he furiously stirred up God’s wrath against himself, as if he was dissatisfied with its delay while God postponed his judgment for so long. This is according to what I have said. When the destruction of a house is near, the impious remove the posts and gates, as Solomon says (Proverbs 17:19).

God therefore, when he wishes to execute his judgments, impels the reprobate by a secret instinct to rush forward of their own accord and to hasten their own destruction. Belshazzar did this. His carelessness was the sign of his stupidity and also of God’s wrath, when in the midst of his own pride and crimes he could delight in reveling. Thus his blindness more clearly points out God’s vengeance, since he was not content with his own intemperance and excesses, but had to openly declare war against God.

He ordered, therefore, says he, the gold and silver vessels to be brought to him which he had taken away from Nebuchadnezzar. These vessels appear to have been stored in the treasury; hence Nebuchadnezzar had never abused these vessels in his lifetime. We do not read that Evil-Merodach did anything of this kind, and Belshazzar now wishes purposely to inflict this insult on God. There is no doubt he brought out those vessels in ridicule, for the purpose of triumphing over the true God, as we shall see later.

We have already explained the sense in which the Prophet calls Nebuchadnezzar the father of Belshazzar, since it is usual in all languages to speak of ancestors as fathers. For Belshazzar was of the offspring of Nebuchadnezzar, and being really his grandson, he is naturally called his son; and this will occur again.

There are some who think Evil-Merodach was stricken with that grievous affliction mentioned in the previous chapter. Possibly his name was Nebuchadnezzar, but there is no reason for adopting their opinion; it is frivolous to jump to this conjecture when the name of the father occurs.

The Prophet says Belshazzar committed this under the influence of wine. Since טעם, tegnem, means “to taste,” no doubt he here speaks of tasting. And since this may be metaphorically transferred to the understanding, some explain it to mean being impelled by wine, and thus his drunkenness took the place of reason and judgment.

Nights and love and wine, says Ovid, have no moderation in them. This explanation I think is too forced; it seems simply to mean that when Belshazzar grew warm with wine, he commanded the vessels to be brought to him, and this is the more usual view.

When, therefore, the effect of the wine took hold—that is, when it seized upon the king’s senses—then he ordered the vessels to be brought. It is worthwhile to notice this, to encourage us to be cautious about intemperance in drinking, because nothing is more common than undertaking many things far too rashly when our senses are under the influence of wine.

Hence we must use wine soberly, so that it may invigorate not only the body but the mind and the senses, and may never weaken, enervate, or stupefy our bodily or mental powers. And this is, alas, too common, since the common proverb is well known—pride springs from drunkenness.

For this reason the poets supposed Bacchus to have horns, since intemperate men are always puffed up, and the most wretched fancy themselves kings. What then must happen to monarchs, when in their forgetfulness they dream themselves kings of kings, and even deities? The Prophet wishes to mark this fault when he says, Belshazzar, under the influence of wine, ordered vessels to be brought to him.

The Prophet uses the word “golden,” probably, because the most precious vessels were brought; silver might also have been added, but the more splendid ones are noticed. He does not say that Nebuchadnezzar carried them off, but implies it to be the common act of all the Babylonians. They obtained the victory under the direction of this king, therefore he used the spoils; and since they were all engaged in the victory, the Prophet speaks of them all. In using the phrase, “the temple,” he expresses more than before, by saying, not from Jerusalem only but from the temple of God’s house.

Here the Prophet shows more distinctly and clearly how the king insulted the true and only God by ordering his vessels to be brought to him. For when they had been brought out, they praised, he says, all their gods of gold and silver; meaning, in defiance of the true God, they celebrated the praises of their false deities and thanked them, as we find in Habakkuk (Habakkuk 1:16).

Although there is no doubt they sacrificed heartily the produce of their industry, as the Prophet there expresses it, yet they exalted their own gods and thus obliterated the glory of the true God. And this is the reason why the Prophet now takes pains to state that those vessels had been brought from the temple of God's house. For he here strengthens the impiety of the king and his nobles for erecting their horns against the God of Israel.

There is then a great contrast between God, who commanded His temple to be built at Jerusalem and sacrifices to be offered to Him, and false gods. And this was the chief offense of Belshazzar, because he thus purposely rose up against God and not only tyrannically and miserably oppressed the Jews, but triumphed over their God — the Creator of heaven and earth. This madness accelerated his ultimate destruction, and it occurred for the purpose of hastening the time of their deliverance. Hence I have represented him as having been drawn by God’s great instinct to such madness that vengeance might be ripened.

They drank, he says, wine, and praised their gods. The Prophet does not ascribe the praise of their gods to drunkenness, but he obliquely shows their petulance was increased by drink. For if each had been sober at home, he would not have thus rashly risen up against God; but when impiety exists in the heart, intemperance becomes an additional stimulus.

The Prophet seems to me to mean this when he repeats, they were drinking; for he had said, the king and his nobles, his wife, and concubines, were drinking. He now inculcates the same thing in similar words, but adds, they drank wine—meaning their madness was the more inflamed by the excitement of the wine.

Then they praised the gods of silver, etc. The Prophet here reproachfully mentions gods of gold, silver, brass, wood, and stone, since we know God to have nothing in common with either gold or silver. His true image cannot be expressed in corruptible materials; and this is the reason why the Prophet calls all the gods which the Babylonians worshipped, golden, silver, brazen, wooden, and stone.

Clearly enough, the heathen were never so foolish as to suppose the essence of Deity resided in gold, or silver, or stone; they only called them images of their deities. But because in their opinion the power and majesty of the deity was included within the material substance, the Prophet is right in so completely condemning their guilt, because we observe how carefully idolaters invent every kind of subtlety.

In the present times, the Papacy is a glaring proof of how men cling to gross superstitions when they desire to excuse their errors.

Hence, the Prophet does not here admit those vain pretenses by which the Babylonians and other heathen disguise their baseness, but he says, their gods were of silver and gold. And why so? For although they orally confessed that gods reign in heaven (so great was the multitude and crowd of their deities that the supreme God was quite shrouded in darkness), and although the Babylonians therefore confessed their gods to have dwelt in heaven, yet they fled to statues and pictures.

Hence the Prophet deservedly chides them for adoring gods of gold and silver. As to his saying, then the vessels were brought, it shows how the slaves of tyrants obey them in the worst actions, because no delay occurred in bringing the vessels from the treasury.

Daniel therefore signifies how all the king’s servants were obedient to his nod, and desirous of pleasing a brutish and drunken person; at the same time he shows the shortness of that intemperate intoxication, for he says—

Here Daniel begins his narration of the change that took place, for at that instant the king acknowledged something sorrowful and disturbing to be at hand. Yet, as he did not at once understand what it was, God gave him a sign as an omen of calamity, according to the language of the profane.

In this way God sent him warning when he saw the king and his nobles raging with mad licentiousness. There appeared, then, the hand of a man, says the Prophet, using this expression from its likeness and form. We are sure it was not a man’s hand; it had the appearance of one, and so was called that.

Scripture often uses this method of expression, especially when dealing with external symbols. This is, then, a sacramental form of speech, if I may use the expression. God, indeed, wrote the inscription by His own power, but He shows King Belshazzar the figure as if a man had written it on the wall; hence the fingers of a hand were put forth.

This expression contributes significantly to the reality of the miracle. For if Belshazzar had seen this on the wall from the very first, he might have supposed some trickery had placed the hand there. But when the wall was previously bare, and then the hand suddenly appeared, we may readily understand the hand to have been a sign from heaven, through which God wished to show something important to the king.

The fingers of a hand, then, were put forth, and wrote from the middle of the candlestick, or lamp. Clearly, then, this was a feast by night, and Babylon was taken in the middle of the night. It is no wonder their banquets were prolonged to a great length, for intemperance has no bounds. When men are accustomed to spend the day in luxury, I confess indeed they do not usually continue their banquets until midnight; but when they celebrate any splendid and remarkable feast, they do not find the daylight sufficient for their festivities and the grosser indulgences of the table.

Therefore the hand appeared from the candlesticks to make it more conspicuous. That hand, says the Prophet, wrote on the surface of the palace wall. If anyone had announced to the king this appearance of a human hand, he might have doubted it; but he says the king was an eyewitness, for God wished to terrify him, as we shall afterwards see, and so He set this spectacle before him.

The king, then, perceived it; perhaps his nobles did not. We shall afterwards see how the terror operated upon the king alone, unless, indeed, some others trembled with him. When, therefore, they saw his countenance changed and exhibiting proofs of terror, they began to fear, although they were all wishing to offer him some comfort. Therefore God wished to summon this impious king to His tribunal when the hand of a man appeared before him in the act of writing. We shall see what it wrote in its proper place.

Prayer:

Grant, Almighty God, since we are so prone to forgetfulness and to our own indulgence in the desires and pleasures of the flesh—Grant, I say, to each of us to be recalled to the contemplation of Your judgments; and may we be anxious to walk as in Your sight. May we be afraid of Your just vengeance, be careful not to provoke it by our petulance and other vices; but may we submit ourselves to You, be held up and supported by Your hands, and proceed in the sacred course of Your calling, until at last You raise us to Your heavenly kingdom, which has been acquired for us by the blood of Your only-begotten Son.—Amen.