A hand appeared. No arm. No body. Just a hand, writing.
📖Based on Daniel 5:5
Belshazzar had thrown a feast for a thousand of his lords.
While he was drinking wine, he made the decision to bring out the gold and silver vessels.
The ones his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem.
They drank from them. While praising their gods of gold and silver and brass.
And in the same hour.
The fingers of a man's hand appeared.
No person attached. Just the hand.
Writing on the plaster wall of the palace. Opposite the lampstand. In full light.
The king watched it happen.
His face changed. His thoughts troubled him. His joints became loose. His knees knocked together.
The hand wrote and left.
The writing stayed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.
He called every wise man in Babylon. None could read it.
The queen remembered Daniel.
Daniel was brought in. He refused the rewards Belshazzar offered before he spoke.
He told him about his father Nebuchadnezzar. About what pride had done to him.
Then he read the words.
MENE: God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end.
TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting.
PERES: Your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and Persians.
That same night, Belshazzar was killed.
The feast ended.
The hand had written what the king had refused to read in everything else.
Scripture — Daniel 5:5
"In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king's palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote."
Reflection
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The hand wrote plainly on a lit wall. The mystery was not the message. It was that he couldn't read it until it was too late.
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Belshazzar was weighed before the verdict was announced. The writing formalized what was already true.