The Kingdom of God Versus the Kingdoms of Man (16): Belshazzar's Drinking Party (Daniel 5:1-4)
I. The King’s Historicity
II. The Party’s Character
III. The Spiritual Lessons
Scripture reading and sermon only (no congregational prayer)
Joyce Baldwin on King Belshazzar: “Three chapters of Daniel are dated by reference to this ruler, and yet, as any king-list of Babylon shows, there was no king of this name in the Neo-Babylonian period. Bel-sar-usur as his name transliterates from cuneiform, was the eldest son of the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus, and is frequently named on the contract tablets because as crown prince he acted as regent in the absence of his father. Since Nabonidus was campaigning in Arabia for as long as ten years, and did not return until after the fall of Babylon, Belshazzar was in effect king there for more than half of the seventeen-year reign. Moreover his father ‘entrusted the kingship to him’ and Belshazzar’s name appears associated with that of the king in the oath formulae of that reign. Since this happened to no other king’s son in all Babylonian history, Belshazzar is shown to have been king in all but name. There is evidence that he received royal dues and exercised kingly prerogatives, but he could not bear the title king in the official records because, while his father lived, he could not perform the New Year Festival rite of ‘taking the hands of Bel’, an act carried out only by the king. Since Belshazzar was to all intents and purposes king, it is pedantic to accuse the writer of the book of Daniel of inaccuracy in calling him ‘Belshazzar the king’. This is especially out of place in the light of Daniel 5:7, 16, 29, where the reward for reading the mysterious writing was to be made third ruler in the kingdom. Evidently the writer knew that Belshazzar was second to his father Nabonidus” (Daniel, pp. 21-22).