“And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom.”
The text continues with Daniel's interpretation of the writing on the wall. The words are Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin (sometimes rendered Parsin). These Aramaic words represent divine judgment on Belshazzar's kingdom. The repetition of Mene (twice) suggests emphasis on this particular word's significance. Daniel will explain that these words represent the divine judgment: the kingdom has been numbered and finished, the king has been weighed and found wanting, and the kingdom will be divided and given to the Medes and Persians. The writing's cryptic nature—comprehensible only to those with divine revelation—explains why the Babylonian wise men could not interpret it. The message itself, as Daniel will explain, announces the imminent fall of Babylon and transfer of power to the Medes and Persians (which historically occurred in 539 BCE when Cyrus's armies conquered Babylon).
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