What Does Daniel 5:27 Mean?
TEKEL; you are weighed on the scales, and found short.
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
TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.THE KEY
The inscription’s word for “weight” becomes the act that exposes what your life actually carries.
THE MEANING
Your sense of worth meets a measure beyond your own estimation. What you carry is brought into balance, and any lack is revealed rather than covered by status or appearance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that looking important or feeling satisfied proves you have substance; a life can appear full and still come up short under the measure.
THE ROOT
תְּקִילְתָּה
təqiltā
GROWS FROM
תקל
to weigh
“weighed” in this verse is təqiltā. Daniel 5:27 is Biblical Aramaic, written in the Hebrew script; תקל is the verse’s own three-consonant seed. In the inscription, תְּקֵל names the measure, while תְּקִילְתָּה turns the same seed into an act done to you: the word for the weight is also the verdict that weighs you.
ALSO GROWS
təqēl: TEKEL; a weight or measure named in the inscription.
תְּקֵל
It preserves the measure sense that the verdict phrase turns into the act of weighing.
təqiltā: You have been weighed.
תְּקִילְתָּה
The same root is applied directly to “you”: the measure becomes an act that exposes what you carry.
חַסִּיר
ḥassîr
GROWS FROM
חסר
to lack, be deficient, or come up short
“found short” in this verse is ḥassîr. The Aramaic חַסִּיר belongs to the חסר family of being short or lacking. The verdict names an uncovered deficiency: what is missing becomes visible when the measure is applied.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāsēr: Lacking or deficient.
חָסֵר
This Hebrew cognate makes the shortfall in “found wanting” visible as a state of lack.
maḥsōr: Lack or want.
מַחְסוֹר
This related form gives the deficiency a concrete shape: something is absent from what is measured.
THE PATTERN
What appears complete to the eye is disclosed by a measure that tests its real substance.
All the ways of a person are clean in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the breaths.Let him weigh me on the scales of alignment, and let God know my wholeness.Each one's work will be made visible, for the day will show it, because it is uncovered in fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.THE THREAD
And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.The same Aramaic root תקל appears as TEKEL in the inscription and as “thou art weighed” in the verse that opens its meaning. What is written as a measure becomes the weighing that exposes the shortfall.
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