Divine Graffiti: The End of an Empire

Daniel 5:1-31

     Tonight we have the privilege of going to the fifth chapter of Daniel, Daniel 5, in our continuing study of this amazing prophet, Daniel, one of the great Hebrew prophets of old.  A man whose record of the history of his time is without equal.  And by the way, for many years critics attempted to discredit the prophesy of Daniel, to say that it wasn't true, that his history was ill formed and unfounded.  Some of the characters that he referred to were just not real but false.  Some of the interpretations he gave to the dreams and the visions were those of his own whims.

     But after years and years of criticism, archaeology in the last hundred years, the last 50 years, and even later has uncovered evidence, upon evidence, upon evidence that Daniel's prophecy is absolutely accurate.  And there have been no contradictions at all found.  In fact, from the Babylonian record at the time of Daniel, we have no less than 10,000 fragments to indicate to us the truthfulness of this tremendous prophesy.  It is the Word of God and therefore it is true and will become verified by history.  And that is, in fact, exactly what has happened.

     So when you read Daniel 5, you are reading an eyewitness account of the fall of the Babylonian Empire by one who was a prime minister of that very empire itself.  And even though he was a prime minister in a pagan culture, in a pagan society, in a palace of Babylonian monarchs, he never compromised his faith in the true God.  And thus, every time he appears on the scene, we find him somehow unrelated to everybody else that's there.  He always makes a grand entrance alone, never with the magicians, and soothsayers, and Chaldeans who come to give their human wisdom.  And so he is set apart as God's man and the record he has given us is wonderfully true.

     As we come to Daniel 5, these 31 amazing and marvelous, insightful verses, we see the end of an empire.  In fact, the end of the most glorious empire of the times of the gentiles, the great Babylonian empire.  We see the movement from the head of gold as the image in chapter 2 indicated, to the breast and the arms of silver, which indicate the Medo-Persians who followed the Babylonians.  This great transition takes place at the close of this, the fifth chapter.

     As we begin our study, let me remind you of a verse in Ezekiel 18:20.  It says this.  "The soul that sinneth, it shall die.  The soul that sinneth, it shall die."  And this chapter is a vivid commentary on that verse.  Sin brings death.  In the life of an individual and in the life of a nation and an empire.

     The Babylonian Empire was once the glorious head of gold.  The crown of the times of the gentiles.  But it had gradually deteriorated.  It had gradually entered a state of debauchery, a state of degeneration.  Until the hour of its doom is finally pronounced suddenly and totally and the Medo-Persian army sweeps in.  And it is the end of a great and historic era.

     This chapter becomes for us a powerful look at what causes the end of an empire.  What causes something as great and magnificent, as wealthy and as far reaching, as militarily mighty as the Babylonian Empire to fall?  And I believe the message of the chapter speaks directly to us today in 1980 in the United States of America.  There's not much to get excited about in America unless you're big on hockey.  I'm glad for the victory.  But it's amazing to me to see the almost desperate need for something to revel about in the midst of a dying society.  If we can't withstand Russia's onslaughts in the Middle East, at least we can slam more pucks into a net than they can.

     The first scene in the chapter is an orgy.  It is filled with desecration, blasphemy, evil acts.  The history would describe for us, but I would not assault your brain with such a description.  In the midst of the orgy is the awesome intervention of God who pronounces doom on the whole empire.  And in a few hours, that doom comes.  And I believe that all civilization follows the very same pattern.  It rises to its heights.  At its height, it is filled with pride.  In the midst of its pride, and self-indulgence, and materialism it begins to descend into degeneration, and debauchery, and evil.  And as it descends, it comes closer and closer to its destruction.

     In Psalm 19:7, it says, "The wicked shall be turned to hell and all the nations that forget God."  The doom of a nation is spelled when it forgets God.  So the empire fell.  In one night, the end came.  And Daniel gives us the record.

     Now I want you to look at the chapter in two perspectives.  First the account and then the application.  First the account, just the historical record, and then its application.  And under the account, we've tried to break it down so you can see the flow of the text.  First is the scene in verses 1-4.  Let's look there.

     Verse 1, "Belshazzar, the king, made a great feast to 1,000 of his lords."  Stop there.  Immediately you're introduced to a name.  Belshazzar.  This name sets the scene.  Who is he?  Where did he come from?  When did he live?  When did he rule?  Why did he call this feast?  What's going on here?

     For years and years, the critic says Daniel is wrong because there is no Belshazzar.  There is no historical record of such a man.  You can read books in the library today that say that Daniel was wrong because there is no Belshazzar.  Until something was found which archaeologists call the Nabonidus cylinder.  And it is a record of Belshazzar, just as Daniel said.

     He was young, 36 years old about.  He was decadent.  He was dissolute.  He was idolatrous.  He was immoral.  He was impious.  He was unworthy.  But he was the ruler who sat in the seat of royalty in Babylon the night it fell.

     Now what do we know about him?  Piecing together all that we know from archeology, it's not too difficult to come up with a picture.  So we can set the scene a little bit.  Stick with me and we'll get right to the scene.

     Seventy years have passed since Daniel 1.  Seventy years since Daniel and his friends were taken captive.  Daniel isn't a teenager anymore.  He's in his 80s.  23 years have happened since chapter 4 ended.  The great breaking of Nebuchadnezzar and his recognition of the true God.  So a lot has happened.  For one thing, Nebuchadnezzar has died.  After 43 years of reigning, seven of them in insanity like an animal, but after 43 years, in 562 B.C., he died.

     Now Daniel doesn't record for us anything between Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar.  Nebuchadnezzar is mentioned in verse 37 of chapter 4 and Belshazzar is introduced in chapter 5 and we have nothing in between.  But history fills it in for us very clearly.  And there are several records of this.

     After Nebuchadnezzar died, the empire began to decline.  He was followed by his son, whose name was Amel-Marduk.  And by the way, these kings have a couple of different names.  They seem to be changing names according to whatever gods they identified with.  But his name was Amel-Marduk.  He was the son of Nebuchadnezzar and he only reigned for two years.  And the reason he only reigned for two years was because he was assassinated.

     The Bible mentions him as a man named Evil-merodach, who was the same as Amel-Marduk.  He is mentioned in 2 Kings 25 and in Jeremiah 52 as one who released Jehoiachin from prison and gave him a place of privilege in the Babylonian court.  So he figures in the Biblical record.  Amel-Marduk only lasted two years.  And as I said, he was assassinated by his own brother-in-law.

     His brother-in-law's name was Neriglissar.  It sounds like a medicine.  But that was his brother-in-law.  And he ruled for four years.  He is mentioned in Jeremiah 39 under the name of Nergal-sharezer.  He was an official under Nebuchadnezzar who apparently was involved in helping Jeremiah be released from prison.

     So Amel-Marduk lasted two years.  Neriglissar lasted four years.  He died and was succeeded by his son.  I can't imagine anybody naming his son this, but his little boy, who only reigned nine months and was just a child, was named Labashi-Marduk.  Just calling him would be a linguistic problem.  Labashi-Marduk only lasted nine months as a little boy because he was beaten to death by conspirators.

     And the kingdom kept waning.  One of the conspirators appointed Nabonidus as king.  And Nabonidus reigned 17 years.  And Nabonidus was finally defeated by Cyrus, who was the leader of the Medes and the Persians.  Cyrus, who came in and conquered the Babylonian Empire.

     Now when Nabonidus was appointed as monarch, he was not related to Nebuchadnezzar so he didn't have a right to the royal line.  All of the children who had a right to the royal line had been clubbed to death or assassinated.  And the conspirators, one of whom was Nabonidus, appointed him to be the king.  And so he was the king.

     But he was apparently very intimidated by trying to hold onto that royal position and not being a member of Nebuchadnezzar's family.  So as best we can tell, he married either the widow of Nebuchadnezzar or one of his daughters.  And therefore, he married into the royal family.  And this daughter of Nebuchadnezzar, or more likely one of the widows of Nebuchadnezzar, had a son named Belshazzar.  So that Belshazzar was in Nebuchadnezzar's line, a remaining child who had not laid claim to the throne and so had not been assassinated.  And so it is most likely then that Nabonidus, in order to secure his position, married into Nebuchadnezzar's family by marrying one of his widows and then adopting the son, Belshazzar.

     He was still intimidated, so amazingly he moved the capital, or his palace, or the place of his dwelling clear down to in an area known as Tayma in the middle of Arabia.  It was clear across the Arabian Desert from Babylon.  Days and days and perhaps weeks to make the journey.  And for 14 years of his 17 years, he never set his foot in the city of Babylon.  Now in order to hold on to the power in Babylon, he appointed Belshazzar, who had the line of royalty, as co-king, co-regent.  So Belshazzar occupied the throne in Babylon and he just went down in Tayma and they took care of him almost like he was in exile.

     The amazing thing about Nabonidus is that he was not a bad man, apart from the fact that he worshipped false gods.  I mean in character he was not an evil man.  He was not murderous as far as we know.  He, in fact, was a very deeply religious man.  He rebuilt a very special temple to his own god.  He rebuilt all kinds of religious centers and religious rites were instituted under his reign.  He appears to be a totally non-warring king.  He wasn't very interested in that at all.

     And by the way, this whole picture has been verified again and again in historic writings.  He was probably the most capable king next to Nebuchadnezzar.  He came from a priestly lineage.  He was a man of peace.  He was a man of conviction.  He was a man of capability.

     But Cyrus, now mark this, Cyrus, the king of the Medes and the Persians, was eating up the world.  And the Medes and the Persians were just crawling across the countryside.  And they met Nabonidus and his forces outside the city of Babylon, out in the wilderness of the Babylonian Empire.  And they destroyed the whole army of Nabonidus.  And they took him captive.

     This was in a place called Gorsipa.  And Gorsipa is somewhat south of Babylon, maybe 50 miles.  That's where the battle happened.  And he was taken captive.  He was exiled to a special place known as Carmenia until he died.  And never again did he see Babylon.

     Now mark it, all of this has happened when we begin chapter 5.  Nabonidus has been defeated.  He has been exiled.  The Medes and the Persians literally surround the entire city of Babylon.  They're everywhere.  And depending on which historian you take, they had already been besieging the city of Babylon either two months, some say, three months, some say, and four months, one historian said.  So Belshazzar is in Babylon.  And all around his is a siege from the Medes and the Persians who have exiled his adoptive father, destroyed his army, and are doing all they can to cut off the city of Babylon. 

     Now as you pick up the story in chapter 5, we meet Belshazzar.  This adopted son of Nabonidus, the de facto king now who sits on the throne in Babylon.  And it says, "He made a great feast to 1,000 of his lords and drank wine before the 1,000."  He sat up on an elevated deal where kings would sit and he drank.  "Belshazzar, while he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem that the king and his princes, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them."

     Now listen.  You will note in that verse that it says Belshazzar tasted the wine and commanded to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father, Nebuchadnezzar, had taken out of the temple.  Now we don't know specifically whether Nebuchadnezzar was his actual father.  Probably unlikely.  We just don't know.  It could be his grandfather.  This could be a grandson.  Perhaps a daughter rather than a widow.  I'm ambivalent at this point because scholars don't agree.

     But whether or not he was a son or a grandson, it would be expressed by the term father because in Hebrew, there is no word for grandfather.  So whenever you see the concept of father in Hebrew, you have to study the text a little bit to find out specifically what it means.  It talks about David being the father of Christ, in a sense, and yet there are all kinds of people in between.  When a Hebrew specifically wanted to speak of a grandfather, he had to say father's father, because there was no word for grandfather.

     And so this descendent of Nebuchadnezzar, be it a son, a grandson, or perchance a great grandson, we just don't know, made a feast.  Now such feasts were common.  And I did some reading on this this week and I'm telling you, when they had a feast, man, they had a feast.  This one was for 1,000 of his lords.  That was small time stuff.  That was nothing.  For example, the Persian monarchs we know from archaeological discovery were known to dine daily with 15,000 guests at a meal.  Now that's a lot of folks.

     When Alexander got married, Alexander the Great, he had 10,000 people come to his marriage dinner.  You think that's something, Acirbonapal the II, in 879 B.C. archaeologists tell us, threw a banquet including 69,754 guests.  And the food, you can't believe it.  Describing the dinners of the Persians, Athenacius says in one passage, "1,000 animals are slaughtered daily for the king.  These comprise horses, camels, oxen, asses, deer, and most of the smaller animals.  Many birds are consumed, including Arabian ostriches, geese, and chickens."  They really went for the food.

     And so he throws a feast.  Now it's hard to conceive that the guy could be that stupid to get a drunken orgy going while his city is enrapt by the Medo-Persians.  But Babylon was so formidable.  You realize, the city was supposedly 15 miles square, according to Herodotus.  Herodotus says that the city was 15 miles square, get this, the walls were 87 feet thick.  That's thick, folks.  That's about as thick as from where I'm standing to the back of this auditorium.  That's a thick wall.  You don't burrow through that.

     Now listen.  The walls were 87 feet thick, 350 feet high.  And on top of it and all surrounding Babylon were towers that rose another 100 feet to 450 feet where they could watch what was going on.  And there were 100 massive bronze gates.  And they had no problem with water because the Euphrates River flowed right through the middle of the city.

     What did they have to fear?  They had it all going for them.  So Belshazzar got up on his deal and sitting up there above all of the 1,000 of his lords that were gathered for the big feast, he started really drinking the wine.  And it says in verse 2 that while he tasted the wine, and the implication there is that he became drunk, he called for the gold and silver vessels which his father had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem.

     When Nebuchadnezzar first took captives from Jerusalem, in order to show them that his gods, the gods of Babylon, were more powerful than the God of Israel, he desecrated the temple.  He took all of the gold and silver vessels that were in the temple used by the priests, and he hauled them off to Babylon and he put them in a special place in the house of his own deities.  This was his way of showing his people that their god was stronger than Israel and showing Israel that their god was stronger, too.

     And apparently these vessels had sat in this place all this time.  And now Belshazzar, in the midst of his drunken stupor, is going to really mock the God of Israel one great last time.  And so he says, "Bring all of that stuff that is representative of the God of Israel and we're gonna drink out of it."  An act of desecration and blasphemy openly defying the God of Israel.

     Now he wasn't totally uninformed.  He knew the God of Israel.  He knew history about Nebuchadnezzar.  He knew how the God of Israel had made Nebuchadnezzar a raving maniac for seven years.  He knew how the God of Israel had been able through Daniel, his prophet, to reveal dreams and visions.  He knew the God of Israel was a great and glorious God.  But in the midst of his paganism and folly, he decided to mock this God.  And he knew that such an act was totally blasphemous.  He knew it.

     Later on, when he has a conversation with Daniel in this chapter, he talks to Daniel and he admits who Daniel is.  And he knows about Judaism and he knows where Daniel came from.  He knew the whole story.  This was a flagrant mocking of God.  And to make it as blasphemous as possible, he takes those things that came out of the temple of God and he uses them as a part of his drunken debauchery.

     He challenged God.  And you want to know something?  God accepted the challenge.  He threw down the gauntlet and so did God.  Now I want you to know what happened.

     In verse 3, "Then they brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God which was at Jerusalem.  And the king, and his princes, and his wives, and his concubines drank from them.  They drank wine and praised the gods of gold, and silver, and bronze, and iron, and wood, and stone."  You see the descending there from the most precious gold down to the most worthless stone.

     He says, "All their deities, from the gold ones to the rocks, they praised their gods."  They used those utensils set apart for the true God in the worship of false gods.  And you could just see the picture.  Drunkenness everywhere.  An orgy with the concubines, the wives, everyone there being drunken.  And in their worship, Canaanites worship very similar to this, in that kind of worship there was sexual atrocities that are beyond description, perversions.  You think people today have invented group sex, then you haven't read your history in terms of biblical times.  This was all going on.  d in the midst of it, the desecration and the mockery of the God of Israel as they used these utensils.  Music went along with it, as well.  They were all engulfed in an orgy.  That's the seen.

     Secondly the sign, verse 5.  Like a lightening bolt come these words.  "In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand and rode over against the lamp stand upon the plaster of the wall of the king's palace.  And the king saw the part of the hand that