On Wanting More

This is one of my favorite stories in the Old Testament. (Of course it would be; it’s about words.)

In Daniel 5, God speaks to Belshazzar, Nebuchadnezzar’s son, at a feast by writing on a wall. (How many prepositional phrases can you find in the previous passage? Answer: too many.) Or rather, by causing human fingers to appear to write on a wall. Yes, that would freak me out, too. Of course, since he and all his hookas were deliberately eating and drinking from the sacred objects of another nation’s God, they were probably half-expecting, in that drunken way, for something inexplicable to happen. Telling each other ghost stories, and all that jazz. And did it ever. That would definitely trump my strange dream last night about trying to stop a circus tiger from being mean to my cat (as you might imagine, I object to circuses … but not tigers … but darnit, it’s my cat and the issue wasn’t so much that the tiger was being mean – it and my cat were actually friends – but the #%^(#* trainer was training it to be mean…I don’t get me sometimes…) while trying to defend my home from the somewhat violent prostylizations of a particularly pushy cult (as in, they were actively attempting to break into my house, and had kidnapped several members of my family). Anyway, speaking of dreams, which this book does a lot of as well.

And in this story, these human fingers write some incomprehensible words on a wall, and of course Daniel is brought in to read them, because these darn Babylonians can’t do anything for themselves these days. I tell you, they just don’t make them like they used to.

And he says, basically, “God is saying you’re a dumbass. You should work on that. Not that it’ll make much difference, but you should anyway.” I love this passage.

Belshazzar seems from this passage to have been rather a weak (not to speak of brief) ruler. I guess I should look that up at some point, but here’s what I base my assumption: while Nebuchadnezzar spent his free time thinking up new ways of tortuously murdering his courtiers, Belshazzar tries the bribe method, offering exorbitant gifts or favors for those who ‘help him out’. It’s like two different styles of parenting – the my-way-or-I-break-your-knees kind, and the I-just-want-to-be-friends kind.

And of course Belshazzar is assassinated that night, and the good things in life stay the same. Enter the Medes and Persians. I think.