The Persians have been busy preparing for the fall of Babylon. According to the Greek historians Herodotus and Xenophon, the Persians dug a trench around the city of Babylon and temporarily diverted the Euphrates River. Their army entered under the walls of the city by means of the riverbed, swiftly moved to the palace, and killed the drunken guards.

So, Belshazzar is giving a grand feast in spite of the fact that the Persians have been literally outside the gates and the work of digging trenches and diverting a river is not exactly quiet. It’s clearly not a small feast for a few confidants but 1,000 nobles, wives, and concubines have been invited – or likely commanded to attend. This is an act of rare stupidity or perhaps it is an effort to bolster the morale of a city surrounded by enemy forces. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself” banners might have been placed around the room and motivational speakers had been hired to come in and assure the crowd that everything was going just as planned and the best was yet to come.

I’m not an Al Gore fan but I do like the title of the documentary he produced – “An Inconvenient Truth” That is a perfect description of the scene that night. While the Persians are excavating the foundations of the city the rulers are carousing with the King while ignoring the inevitable.

We can all do that when we wish to block out a truth that is inconvenient or uncomfortable. We just make our own noise that keeps us from hearing the crumbling of the foundations from beneath us. Is it possible that out of a thousand people there were not a few who looked at each and said, “I think he’s lost his mind. What are we doing here?”

I’m not sure Belshazzar was as much an evil king as he was unusually ignorant and plain dumb. We have many examples of the sons of kings being evil in the Old Testament. We have examples of those who have listened to bad advice and paid dearly for it. I am thinking especially of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, who clearly did not inherit his father’s gift.

“The whole assembly of Israel went to Rehoboam and said to him: “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you.” Rehoboam answered, “Go away for three days and then come back to me.” So the people went away. Then King Rehoboam consulted the elders who had served his father Solomon during his lifetime. “How would you advise me to answer these people?” he asked. They replied, “If today you will be a servant to these people and serve them and give them a favorable answer, they will always be your servants.” But Rehoboam rejected the advice the elders gave him and consulted the young men who had grown up with him and were serving him. He asked them, “What is your advice? How should we answer these people who say to me, ‘Lighten the yoke your father put on us’?” The young men who had grown up with him replied, “These people have said to you, ‘Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but make our yoke lighter.’ Now tell them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s waist. My father laid on you a heavy yoke; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.’ ” Three days later Jeroboam and all the people returned to Rehoboam, as the king had said, “Come back to me in three days.” The king answered the people harshly. Rejecting the advice given him by the elders, he followed the advice of the young men and said, “My father made your yoke heavy; I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips; I will scourge you with scorpions.”

That one rash decision split the Kingdom his father and grandfather had built. That was an example of following the wrong advice. I suspect it was a pattern of thinking his young friends were wiser than his father’s advisors. It’s frustrating work being an advisor to a fool.

The sense I get from Belshazzar is he was not one to ask for advice until a moment of crisis and even then would ask the wrong people. He was not equipped to deal with this crisis.  Henry Kissinger once said that, “High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it,” The daily pace of the office and the demands of time and energy make it almost impossible for one holding high office to grow intellectually. Whatever intellectual capital and character they have going into the office  will have to serve them for their full term.

My guess is Belshazzar did not have much intellectual capital or character when he came to inherit the office of the king and he surrounded himself with incompetent advisors.  That is one of the themes of Daniel, isn’t it? How many times does the king call on his wise men, enchanters, astrologers, diviners to explain things and they are stumped?

Every time.

Look at an example of just the opposite in David.

While David was banished from the court by King Saul he went to Ziklag and men began to come to his side with the intention of making him the king. Many were warriors – even relatives of Saul. But among them was a group from the tribe of Issachar. They were “men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do – 200 chiefs, with all their relatives under their command.”

Think about the power of such a group of supporters and counselors. They understood the times and what Israel should do.

How many of the 1,000 nobles at Belshazzar’s banquet could be described as those who understood the times? Not a single one. While the army of Persia was tunneling under the city they were having a banquet.

How many of the wise men could be considered those who understood the times? Again, none of them. In fact, it seems none of them were even invited to the banquet as they had to be called in. Belshazzar was bankrupt for wisdom and surrounded by fools.

How else do we know that?

It is only at the queen’s insistence that Belshazzar discovers that all along he has had access to the wisest man in the kingdom. Perhaps it is because Daniel is older now and has been forgotten or set off to the side. Like Rehoboam, Belshazzar listens more to the counsel of younger friends. Perhaps it is because Belshazzar was not impressed with one of the captives of Judah and preferred one of his own. Perhaps he resented Daniel’s influence over his father. Whatever the case, he had no knowledge of Daniel and his abilities.

Just another symptom of his stupidity and ignorance.

But there is something else: his drunken sacrilege. Not only is he hosting a banquet in the face of a disaster but he does what even Nebuchadnezzar had not dared to do. Herod at a similar banquet centuries later promised up to half his kingdom to Salome after she danced for the audience. Power and wine go to their heads. While Nebuchadnezzar had confiscated all the gold and silver articles from the Temple in Jerusalem, he had never desecrated or misused them. He had encouraged false worship but never sacrilege. Sacrilege is different from false worship. Sacrilege is the sin of violating or profaning sacred things and using holy things for common purposes. It is taking something that has been consecrated and making it common. There are a number of examples of this in the Old Testament that illustrate how seriously God took the use of things that had been declared holy. Ahaz, king of Judah, “gathered together the furnishings from the temple of God and cut them in pieces. He shut the doors of the Lord’s temple and set up altars at every street corner in Jerusalem.”

One of the reasons Jesus chased the money changers out of the Temple was they had turned something holy into a den of thieves.

Uzzah touched the ark of the covenant to keep it from falling off the cart as it was being transported and God struck him dead.

Seventy people of Beth Shemesh were killed because they looked into the ark of the Lord while it was being returned to Jerusalem.

Even Nebuchadnezzar was intelligent enough to handle the holy articles with care but his son had no such sense.  He had not learned anything from his own history about the sovereign power of God. He had heard how God had humbled Nebuchadnezzar for seven years but it made no impression on him.

In his novel, The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky wrote:

“Whoever has experienced the power and the unrestrained ability to humiliate another human being automatically loses his own sensations. Tyranny is a habit, it has its own organic life, it develops finally into a disease. The habit can kill and coarsen the very best man or woman to the level of a beast. Blood and power intoxicate … the return of the human dignity, repentance and regeneration becomes almost impossible.” 

I think that was a good description of Belshazzar. He had no respect for anyone or anything and he had lost his own sensations. That is literally what it means to be dumb or stupid. It means having no sensations. He had gone so far in negligence of wisdom and common decency that the return of human dignity, repentance and regeneration had become almost impossible. As it turns out, he never gets the chance.

But, as is oftentimes the case, look at his response to the writing on the wall. It is not courage or even arrogance. It is terror. Granted, it is an eerie scene of a bodiless and disconnected hand writing on the wall in the middle of a drunken party. It would have upset anyone but Belshazzar’s reaction is embarrassing for a king and those who surround him.

“Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall, near the lamp stand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his knees knocked together and his legs gave way.” 

Is that Jewish humor again? The arrogant king exposed for what he is as nothing but a frightened fool whose knees are knocking and his legs giving way? It may have been at another time but I don’t think even the writer would make this humorous because it is God’s response to sacrilege – reducing what is honored and holy to something that is common and defiled. The punishments and upendings of Nebuchadnezzar are ironic and even funny but not this. This is the picture of a man who has lost all sense of shame and regard for holiness.

In this instance God is not just reversing the fortunes of a villain but calling down doom on a fool and the entire kingdom. His behavior and corrupted values have caused the moral values of the entire kingdom to crumble even while the army underneath is tearing away at the physical foundations of the city. There is no humor in this. This is a bankrupt man we are seeing for what he really is. A profane coward who can do nothing but collapse when he is faced with the judgment of God. He does not shake his fist. He screams and shouts and promises rewards and bribes that will very soon not be his to give.

And Daniel knows it. He has no interest in the rewards of a soon to be dead king. He has no fear of telling him exactly what he thinks of him and his stupidity.  “The Lord gave your father sovereignty and greatness and glory and splendor.”

His son has none of that.

“But you, Belshazzar, his son, have not humbled yourself, though you knew all this. Instead, you have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You had the goblets from his temple brought to you, and you and your nobles, your wives and your concubines drank wine from them. You praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood and stone, which cannot see or hear or understand. But you did not honor the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways.”

So, this is your future:

“God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end.” You are a loser.

“You have been weighed in the scales and found wanting.” You are lighter than a feather.

“Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” Like Rehoboam, you have lost what your family built.

That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom..”

What a night. It begins with feasting and drinking and ends with the sudden and violent death of a fool and the end of the kingdom. Sometimes things go slow and then they go fast. Not only is the life of the king lost but the life and future of the kingdom itself. What was once great is now a ghost of history. There is the long decline and then the sometimes violent ending when leaders cannot face an inconvenient truth and try to make enough noise of their own to drown out the incessant sounds of the foundations being dug out from below and the enemy coming in the night to destroy what seemed indestructible. The greatest nation on the earth is now just a rubble of distant memory.