God’s Word for You
Daniel 5:7-9 Terror
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Friday, October 17, 2025
7 The king called out with a loud voice for the enchanters, astrologers and diviners to be brought to him. He said to the wise men of Babylon, “Whoever can read this writing and explain to me what it means will be clothed in purple and have a gold chain placed around his neck. He will be made the third highest ruler in the kingdom.” 8 Then all the king’s wise men came in, but they could not read the writing or tell the king what it meant. 9 So King Belshazzar became even more terrified and his face grew even more pale. And his nobles were perplexed.
This sounds like things that had happened to Nebuchadnezzar. The difference here can be seen by comparing Daniel’s age then (a teenager, and perhaps a young one at that) to now, when the prophet was in his seventies, maybe approaching eighty. Daniel may have been the only man left among all of the astrologers, enchanters and wise men who remembered that first dream of the king in the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’s reign (604 BC, Daniel 2:1).
In his terror Belshazzar yelled for his wise men as his knees knocked and his legs gave way, promising that whoever interpreted what the hand wrote would become the third ranking man of the kingdom (that is, after Belshazzar the underking and Nabonidus the king).
In came the wise men. Notice that they had not been on the king’s guest list, but since the celebration was apparently a national holiday, they would have been off at their own homes or at some other banquet hall having a drink or two themselves.
The wise men were unable to interpret the writing. More than that, they were not even able to read it. This means that either the letters were written in an unusual fashion, or else the writing was not in Aramaic at all. A third possibility is that they were kept from reading the letters through a miraculous intervention on the part of God or his angels. One possible solution that is sometimes brought forward is that the letters and the words that the hand wrote were indeed in Aramaic, but not written right-to-left in the usual way of Semitic languages. The words could have been written left-to-right (one Semitic language, Ugaritic, was written this way), or in columns, or even upside-down. Or the words could have been written in Hebrew. “Tekel,” for example, is the Aramaic word which would be (to us) the more familiar “shekel” in Hebrew (Leviticus 27:25). Also, the Aramaic alphabet, which the Jews brought back from Babylon and which is the alphabet of most all Hebrew copies of the Bible going back as far as the Dead Sea Scrolls, was not the alphabet used by the Israelites from the time of Moses until the captivity. That older alphabet, sometimes called Phoenician, looks very different and might well have confused even the wise men of Babylon.
They failed to understand the word of God, which is absolutely what this handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar’s banquet hall was. The Word will always have one of two effects. It will either harden the unbeliever’s heart even further, or else it will kindle faith in that heart. “The person who is not yet converted to God and regenerated can hear and read this Word externally because even after the Fall man still has something of a free will in these external matters, so that he (or she) can go to church, listen to the sermon, or not listen to it.” But the writing or preaching of the Word would be useless without the Holy Spirit working his power through the Word. For God always works through the Word to convert people’s hearts to faith. The true Christian Church rejects and condemns the error of those who imagine that God draws people to himself and saves them without the hearing of God’s Word and without the use of the holy sacraments. When someone or some group rejects his Word, he takes it away from them and gives it to someone else (Romans 9:14-18). But when someone is frightened by the threats of his law and they look to him to forgive, he will send his forgiveness through his Word.
Belshazzar became more terrified. More pale. His advisers were confused and baffled. But what does the Holy Spirit say to you and me? Keep reading the Bible (Romans 15:4). Don’t give up going to church (Hebrews 10:25). Keep coming to the Lord’s Supper for the forgiveness of your sins (1 Corinthians 11:23-25). Let your whole family be baptized, and don’t keep that sacrament away from any of them for any reason, including their age (Acts 16:15, 16:33). Love one another (John 13:34). And pray for one another (James 5:16).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.