As we prepare to think about God’s Word from Daniel 5 this coming Sunday, here is a visual attempt by Rembrandt to capture the fear of Belshazzar as a hand writes a message about his coming destruction. Even as God warns, he parties in unbelief and mocking God and His people. As Dale Ralph Davis writes:
[A]fter reading the first verse of Daniel 5 we may assume that [alcohol/drunkenness] is the problem here – nothing but a royal debauch featuring the triple trouble of wine, women and worship. But we soon realize the real trouble was not alcohol but arrogance (22-23), a bit of royal ‘struttery’. And the God of heaven wiped it out in an evening’s work. [1]
As Jesus warned in the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:20:
But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’
Davis, Dale Ralph The Message of Daniel, The Bible Speaks Today Commentary Series (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2013), 70.