What Does Daniel 5:1 Mean?
Belshazzar the king made a great drinking for a thousand of his great ones, and drank wine before the thousand.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.THE KEY
The king’s drinking turns the feast into a public display of power, with a thousand people gathered as witnesses.
THE MEANING
A ruler’s authority can stage itself through a table: one person drinks in full view of a thousand, making abundance a public spectacle. Appetite becomes a measure of privilege, with the many gathered as witnesses to the one at the center.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a feast is only private enjoyment: here the king drinks before a thousand, and the act becomes a display of authority.
THE ROOT
שָׁתֵה
shāṯēh
GROWS FROM
שתה
Drink.
“drank” in this verse is shāṯēh. The Aramaic verb belongs to the same Semitic root שתה as the Hebrew verb שָׁתָה (shātāh, “to drink”) and מִשְׁתֶּה (mishteh, “a drinking feast”). The root holds the king’s act and the banquet’s drinking character together: his consumption takes place before the thousand.
ALSO GROWS
shātāh: To drink.
שָׁתָה
This Hebrew cognate shares the root consonants שתה and makes the king’s action part of a wider word family for drinking.
mishteh: A drinking feast or banquet.
מִשְׁתֶּה
This word shares the root consonants שתה and links a feast with the act of drinking that defines this scene.
THE PATTERN
Feasting can stage abundance so visibly that it exposes the power and privilege surrounding the table.
In the third year of his reign he made a feast for all his princes and his servants, the army of Persia and Media, the nobles and the princes of the provinces, before the face of the king.And the savory food of his table, and the sitting of his servants, and the standing of his attendants, and their garments, and his cupbearers, and his ascent by which he went up to the house of the LORD; there was no more breath in her.There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen, and feasted brightly every day.THE THREAD
It is not for kings, Lemuel; it is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink.The Aramaic verb שָׁתֵה (shāṯēh, “drank”) in Daniel and the Hebrew שָׁתָה (shātāh, “to drink”) in Proverbs share the root שתה. Proverbs places a warning about kings and wine beside this public royal drinking, adding a pointed tension to the scene.
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