No. 6.
CHAPTER 5. The character of evil as developed in the two following chapters is especially a foreshadowing of the future, that is to say, of certain acts which will take place at the close, more than an historical picture of what befalls the Gentile powers during the course of their existence.
There we find iniquity reaching to its highest point, and because of the way in which it develops itself, no room is left for God to intervene in grace; hence summary judgment from Him closes the scene.
Through king Belshazzar’s impiety, the question is raised between the living God and idols. Such being the case, God must act, and He does, vindicating His name, and making His power known. For the question thus raised is settled that very night by the king’s destruction.
All this was no sudden thought with God; judgment had for a long time been declared (Isaiah 46:1, and 13; Jeremiah 25:12); but the impious conduct of the king in using the vessels that his father had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem (verse 2), and in view of these tokens of the supreme and only God “praising the gods of gold, of silver, and of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone,” was the cause of the immediate execution of that which already had been announced. God could not bear with such profanity, nor would He allow a power to go unjudged which had risen to these heights of iniquity.
But how altered everything is when He comes on the scene (verse 6); how the haughtiness of man is brought down, and the loftiness of man made low. The king, one moment with blasphemy on his lips, (the expression of what was in his heart,) the next, his countenance is changed, and his thoughts trouble him; so that the joints of his loins are loosed, and his knees smite one against another. What a transition! what a pitiable object man is when thus brought into the presence of God! It brings to mind Revelation 6, where all the “kings of the earth, and great men, and rich men, and chief captains, and the mighty men,”―those who had made the world tremble at their frown, or bow before their power,―are calling on the rocks and hills to cover them, sooner than they should meet the One once led as a lamb to the slaughter, but now crowned with glory and honor, and coming in the clouds of heaven with His own glory, and that of the Father, and of the holy angels.
What is most important to notice here is, that none of the king’s wise men could read the writing, or make known to him the interpretation; though it was in the Chaldean tongue, yet they are powerless to learn the mind of God. As is always the case, “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned: but he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is discerned by no man. (1 Corinthians 2:14-15.) Of what avail was their wisdom to give them an understanding of the divine mind?
And how could it be otherwise? Mixed up with that which God was going to judge, associated in every way with the evil, their own language even is but a mystery to them. “To depart from evil is understanding,” and they are in the midst of it; hence that which a child might have known is to them but a source of wonder and amazement.
There was, however, one outside of it all―the queen mother. (Comp. verse 10 and 2.) She had profited by past lessons, and learned what it was to fear the Lord, from the judgment executed during her husband’s reign. Now, in their trouble, they are ready to listen to her; but it is too late. “Because I called, and ye refused, I lifted up my hand, and no man regarded; ... I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh,” is ever true, and souls will find it to be so; for it may do to put man off, but not God.
She remembered Daniel, though all else had forgotten him. The world knows not the born ones of God, because it knew Him not. (1 John 3:1.) Daniel’s warning and the judgments of the previous reign had passed away from their minds, had all been forgotten; they had failed to lay it to heart, and now the door is shut forever.
All this is but a picture of these latter days: there is no profiting by what has passed; the present scene drives out everything else from the mind―nothing is remembered. Nebuchadnezzar with all his dignity had never sunk so low, had never acted like this.
Daniel is now brought before the king, but his conduct towards him is very different from what it was towards his father Nebuchadnezzar (4:19), and rightly so; the pride for which the former was justly judged, was a very different thing from the blasphemy that characterized Belshazzar. He, by his conduct, had taken the place of an insolent enemy of the God of Israel―had applied the righteous judgment of Jehovah, in delivering over His people to the Gentiles to the actions of his own gods.
It was not merely idolatry therefore, but blasphemy; and Daniel accordingly answers as became him (verse 17), refusing the king’s gifts, and declaring to him God’s revelation of his doom, as his actions had now left him no room for repentance.
He tells him, moreover, how pride had been the ruin of his father. Given by God supreme dominion in the whole earth, he had used it to exalt himself, and judgment as a consequence soon followed, until he learned “that the Most High God ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will.”
Belshazzar had not laid this to heart, but making light of it all in his reckless indifference, has to learn God’s thoughts about himself, and of a judgment to come that very night.
This is what sin and Satan would ever seek to hide, and what they will too well succeed in doing with respect to the judgments soon about to full on the scene in which we live; blinding and deceiving men’s hearts with a sense of safety, so that while they shall say, “Peace and safety,” then destruction will come upon them, and they shall not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:3.)