Daniel 5:1-6

Contemporary English Version

King Belshazzar's Banquet

5 One evening, King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his highest officials, and he drank wine with them. ² He got drunk and ordered his servants to bring in the gold and silver cups his father Nebuchadnezzar^[a] had taken from the temple in Jerusalem. Belshazzar wanted the cups, so that he and all his wives and officials could drink from them.

^3-4 (A) When the gold cups were brought in, everyone at the banquet drank from them and praised their idols made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

⁵ Suddenly a human hand was seen writing on the plaster wall of the palace. The hand was just behind the lampstand, and the king could see it writing. ⁶ He was so frightened that his face turned pale, his knees started shaking, and his legs became weak.