NOTICES IN DANIEL.
CHAPTER
IX.
FURTHER NOTICES OF BABYLON " Belshazzar the king
79
IN DANIEL.
made a
great feast to a thousand of his lords, Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the gold and silver vessels which his father. Nebuchadnezzar, had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concuThen they brought the golden vessels bihes, might drink therein. that were taken out of the temple of the house of Ood that was at Jerusalem; and the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank in them. They drank wine, and praised the gods of DAN. gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone."
and drank wine before the thousand.
v. 1-4.
THE main difficulties connected with the Book of Daniel open upon us with the commencement of chapter v. A new king makes his appearance
a king
unknown
to profane
by some critics to be a purely fictiWe have to consider at the outset who this Belshazzar can be. Does he represent any king known to us under any other name in profane history ? Can we find a trace of him in the inscriptions ? Or is he altogether an obscure and mysterious personage,of whose very existence we have no trace outside Daniel, and who must therefore always constitute an historical difficulty of no small magnitude? historians, and declared tious personage.*
Now,
in the first place, he is represented as the son of The only son of (vers. 2, 11, 13, 18, 22). we have any mention in profane of
Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar
whom
history is Evil-Merodach,t who succeeded his father in B. c. 562, and reigned somewhat less than two years, ascending the throne in Tisri of B. c. 562, and ceasing to reign in Ab of B.C. 560. $ It has been suggested that the Belshazzar of
Daniel
is
this
monarch.
* See I)e Wette, "Einleitung in das Alt. Test., p. 255 a. " Chron. t Mentioned by Berosus, Fr. 14; Polyhistor lap. Euseb., Can." i. 5), and Abydenus (ap. Euseb. i. 10). He appears in the dated tablets as Avil-Marduk. Babylonian 4i Transactions of Bibl. Arch. Soc.," vol. vi., pp. 25-26. J So Iliipfeld and Havernick.