II.  After the stern catalogue of sins comes the tremendous sentence.  Daniel speaks like an embodied conscience, or like an avenging angel, with no word of pity, and no effort to soften or dilute the awful truth.  The day for wrapping up grim facts in muffled words was past.  Now the only thing to be done was to bare the sword, and let its sharp edge cut.  The inscription, as given in verse 25, is simply ’Numbered, numbered, weighed and breakings.’  The variation in verse 28 (Peres) is the singular of the noun used in the plural in verse 25, with the omission of ‘U,’ which is merely the copulative ‘and.’  The disjointed brevity adds to the force of the words.  Apparently, they were not written in a character which ‘the king’s wise men’ could read, and probably were in Aramaic letters as well as language, which would be familiar to Daniel.  Of course, a play on the word ‘Peres’ suggests the Persian as the agent of the breaking.  Daniel simply supplied the personal application of the oracular writing.  He fits the cap on the king’s head.  ’God hath numbered thy kingdom ... thou art weighed ... thy kingdom is divided’ (broken).

These three fatal words carry in them the summing up of all divine judgment, and will be rung in the ears of all who bring it on themselves.  Belshazzar is a type of the end of every godless world-power and of every such individual life.  ’Numbered’—­for God allows to each his definite time, and when its sum is complete, down falls the knife that cuts the threads.  ’Weighed’—­for ‘after death the judgment,’ and a godless life, when laid in the balance which His hand holds, is ‘altogether lighter than vanity.’  ’Breakings’—­for not only will the godless life be torn away from its possessions with much laceration of heart and spirit, but the man himself will be broken like some earthen vessel coming into sharp collision with an express engine.  Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the same night in which it was carried out in act; we see it long before, and we can read it.  But some of us are mad enough to sit unconcerned at the table, and go on with the orgy, though the legible letters are gleaming plain on the wall.

III.  The execution of the sentence need not occupy us long.  Belshazzar so little realised the facts, that he issued his order to deck out Daniel in the tawdry pomp he had promised him, as if a man with such a message would be delighted with purple robes and gold chains, and made him third ruler of the kingdom which he had just declared was numbered and ended by God.  The force of folly could no further go.  No wonder that the hardy invaders swept such an Imbecile from his throne without a struggle!  His blood was red among the lees of the wine-cups, and the ominous writing could scarcely have faded from the wall when the shouts of the assailants were heard, the palace gates forced, and the half-drunken king, alarmed too late, put to the sword.  ’He that, being often reproved, hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.’