Belshazzar's Feast

King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine with them. As they drank the wine, they praised the gods of gold and silver, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone. Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall. The king saw the hand as it wrote. His face turned pale and he was so frightened that his legs gave way and his knees knocked together.

The king called for the enchanters, astrologers, and diviners. He said, "Whoever reads this writing and tells me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck, and he will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom." None of them could read the writing or tell the king what it meant. The queen came and said, "There is a man in your kingdom who has the spirit of the holy gods. In the time of your father, he was found to have insight and intelligence and wisdom. Let Daniel be summoned."

Daniel was brought before the king and said, "You have set yourself up against the Lord of heaven. You have praised the gods of silver and gold, but you have not honored the God who holds in his hand your life and all your ways. Therefore he sent the hand that wrote the inscription." This is what was written: "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Parsin." Daniel interpreted: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. That very night Belshazzar was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom.