Belshazzar's Feast and the Fall of Babylon

The event

By 539 BC, Babylon's throne was effectively held by Belshazzar, son of King Nabonidus, who had left the capital for years to pursue religious interests elsewhere and left his son as co-regent — which explains why Belshazzar could only offer Daniel the rank of "third ruler in the kingdom," the highest position left to give. Confident behind Babylon's famous walls, Belshazzar threw a great feast and, in a shocking act of sacrilege, called for the sacred gold and silver vessels looted from the Jerusalem Temple decades earlier so his nobles could drink toasts to pagan gods from them.

Mid-feast, a disembodied hand wrote four words on the palace wall. Daniel, summoned once the court's wise men failed, read the writing as both a numbering of Belshazzar's kingdom and its verdict: he had been weighed and found wanting, and his kingdom would be divided between the Medes and Persians. "That very night Belshazzar the Chaldean king was killed, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom."

Cyrus the Great's Persian forces took Babylon that same year with remarkably little resistance — ancient historians describe the Euphrates being diverted so troops could enter the city along the riverbed, catching the Babylonians by surprise during a festival. The episode brought sudden fulfillment to prophecies against Babylon spoken generations earlier by Isaiah and Jeremiah, and it set the stage, within months, for Cyrus's decree freeing God's exiled people to go home.

Scripture references

• Daniel 5:1-31
• Isaiah 13:17-19
• Jeremiah 51:11