home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Belshazzar:
-
- "Son of Nabonidus and grandson of Nebuchadnezzar. Belshazzar's miserable doom came about at the end of, and largely as a consequence of, a drunken orgy held October 29, 539 B.C. (Dan 5). Suddenly the fingers of a man's hand appeared, writing in fiery letters a message that Belshazzar could not decipher. After the failure of his advisers to decipher the 'cryptogram,' he summoned Daniel who interpreted the message ('You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting'). The judgment was swift and inevitable. Babylon fell to the Medo-Persians, Belshazzar was killed, and Darius in the name of Cyrus took the throne." (THE NEW INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, © 1987 Zondervan, p. 133)