The Original Writing on the Wall

          Yesterday’s First Reading at Mass, in which Daniel interprets Nebuchadnezzar’s dream about a statue, gave rise to the English expression “having clay feet.”  Today’s First Reading [https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/112625.cfm ] is responsible for another idiom: “the writing on the wall.”  It implies doom.

          Belshazzar is presented as Babylonian  King, son of Nebuchadnezzar.  He is depicted hosting a banquet with great revelry.  What is problematic about this banquet is that the vessels used for common drinking had been taken by the Babylonians from the Temple in Jerusalem.  In other words, the banquet was also a sacrilege of the plundered Temple.

          In the course of the banquet, a disincarnate hand appears and writes three characters on the wall.  Obviously, this shakes Belshazzar to the core. He summons Daniel to explain the writing, blandishing him with great rewards should be do so.

Daniel declines the bribes and interprets the words as God’s message to Belshazzar. It is a judgment and a prophecy: the days of Babylon were numbered; God has judged Belshazzar and found him “wanting”; his dominion would be divided among other peoples, the Medes and Persians. 

The Reading therefore expresses God’s judgment on Babylon and its enforced exile of Judah.  After Nebuchadnezzar besieged Jerusalem in 589-587 B.C., he took the city and led the Jews into exile “by the rivers of Babylon.”  In 587 B.C., they destroyed Solomon’s Temple, stealing its valuables and conveying them to Babylon.  Israel remained in exile in Babylon until 538 B.C., when the Babylonian Empire was taken over by the Persians, who repatriated the Jews to Jerusalem, allowing them to reconstruct the Temple.  Those are the historical facts. 

          Belshazzar is presented here as Babylonian King and son of Nebuchadnezzar.  Historically, he was neither: he was a ruler who was son of one of Nebuchadnezzar’s courtiers in the waning days of the Babylonian Empire, but most scholars deem the Biblical account historically inaccurate.  In any event, it has a didactic function: God’s judgment upon the idols of Babylon and the sacrilege committed by that Empire.

          Zeal for God’s House is a prominent Biblical theme: it is why Jesus drives the moneychangers out of the Temple.  Do we show similar zeal for the house of God where Jesus literally dwells in His Real Presence in the tabernacle, available to us every day?