Belshazzar

(the meaning of the word has not yet been determined): a) (Dan. 5:1, 9, 12, 22, 29, 30) son or grandson of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 5:18) and the last king of Babylon of the Chaldean dynasty. During the siege of the city of Babylon by Cyrus, king of Persia, and Darius the Mede, Belshazzar made a great feast for his nobles and, in blasphemous mockery, drank wine with his guests from the golden and silver vessels taken by Nebuchadnezzar from the Temple of Jerusalem. And behold, in the very height of the impious feast, a mysterious hand traced upon the wall the fateful words: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, which the prophet Daniel, summoned to the banquet hall, explained as follows: Mene — God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it; Tekel — thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting; Upharsin (otherwise Peres) — thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians (Dan. 5:26, 28).

And indeed, amid the general drunkenness, the city was left without any watch, and the gates and the riverbed remained open without proper guard. The Persians entered the city unhindered and took possession of it without any resistance. The Babylonians fell by the thousands under the strokes of the sword and by fire; the bold band of raiders even penetrated into the royal palace and put to death the drunken king and his nobles. “In that night,” says the prophet Daniel, “was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.

And Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old” (Dan. 5:30, 31); b) (Dan. 1:7) the name given to the prophet Daniel at the court of Nebuchadnezzar, and by which he is often mentioned in the subsequent chapters.