Belshazzar's Feast and the Writing on the Wall

King Belshazzar of Babylon threw a grand banquet for a thousand of his nobles. In the midst of the revelry he ordered that the gold and silver vessels taken from God's holy temple in Jerusalem be brought in for drinking, and they praised idols made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall. The king's face turned pale, his knees knocked together, and he was filled with dread. None of the wise men of the kingdom could read the writing on the wall. The Queen Mother remembered Daniel and called for him. Daniel refused the king's rewards and spoke plainly: Belshazzar knew that his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar had been disciplined for pride, yet he would not humble himself, and instead profaned the vessels of the Most High God. The words on the wall — "MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN" — meant that God had numbered his kingdom, weighed him on the scales, and was dividing his kingdom between the Medes and the Persians. That very night Belshazzar was killed, and Darius the Mede received the kingdom of the Chaldeans.