Daniel 5:1-6 ▼

1 King Belshazzar put on a great festival for a thousand of his officials. He joined all one thousand of them in getting drunk.

2 Under the influence of wine, Belshazzar ordered that the gold and silver vessels his grandfather Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the Temple in Jerusalem be brought in so the king, his officials, his wives, and his mistresses could drink from them.

3 As ordered, they brought in the gold vessels that had been taken from the sanctuary of God's Temple in Jerusalem, and the king, his officials, his wives, and mistresses drank from them.

4 As they drank the wine, they praised gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.

5 At that moment, humanlike fingers of a hand appeared near the lamp stand of the royal palace and wrote on the plaster of the wall.

6 While the king watched the back of the hand as it was writing, his facial expression changed. Utterly frightened, he lost control of his own bowels and his knees knocked together.