A Dream Becomes Reality

Nebuchadnezzar foresaw this terrible night in a dream–a great empire, crumbling by the day, now entering its final hours. In his visionary dream of a gigantic metallic statue with a head of gold, Nebuchadnezzar saw the greatness of his own empire, even as Daniel warned him that both the king and his empire would come to an end–crushed by a rock cut from a mountain without human hands. Now, Nebuchadnezzar is long since dead and gone with the last of the Babylonian kings (Belshazzar, co-regent with his father–Nabonidus) on the throne. The year is 539 BC. Although Daniel does not reveal the circumstances behind the debauchery seen in the opening verses of chapter 5 until the closing verses of the chapter, this is the Kingdom of Babylon’s last night. Persian armies are about to take the city of Babylon through a daring commando raid using the city’s dried-up water supply. Instead of leading the city’s defenders in an effort to save the city, Belshazzar hosts a massive drunken party as though all were right with the world. On this night, the last hours of the great Babylonian empire, Belshazzar spends it drinking and mocking YHWH, even as YHWH takes his kingdom from him and gives it to another–the Persian conqueror of the city, Darius the Mede. All of this was foretold in King Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of Daniel 2.

In Daniel 5, the circumstances are greatly different from those at the end of Daniel 4 (v. 37), when Nebuchadnezzar confessed–even if reluctantly–“Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.” Nebuchadnezzar died in 562 BC–twenty three years before the events recounted here. A list of short-term successors had taken Nebuchadnezzar’s place. The first was the king’s own son, Amel-Marduk, who was assassinated by his brother-in-law in 560 (reigning just two years). One of those who plotted his death (Neriglessar) ruled until 556, and was succeeded by his own son, Labashi-Marduk, who was brought down just a few months into his reign by a coup lead by Nabonidus, an unpopular eccentric known for his devotion to the god “Sin” instead of the traditional and most favored Babylonian god, Marduk (Bel).

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