What Does Daniel 5:30 Mean?
That night Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans was struck down.
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
In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.THE KEY
The verse leaves the title “king” attached to a man even as it names his killing, exposing that rank cannot put a life beyond violence.
THE MEANING
Even now, no title makes a human life invulnerable; the king is killed in the night. The sentence holds that violence plainly, without explaining it away or cushioning it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that enough authority can place someone beyond bodily vulnerability.
THE ROOT
קְטִיל
qəṭīl
GROWS FROM
קטל
qṭl
To kill or slay.
“struck down” in this verse is qəṭīl. This Aramaic root also appears when the court orders Daniel’s wise men killed (2:13), placing this word within the book’s recurring vocabulary of lethal power. Here the same root lands on the king, bringing the ruler and the person exposed to violence into the same word.
ALSO GROWS
ləmiqṭal: To kill.
לְמִקְטַל
The infinitive appears in Daniel 2:24 in the order concerning the wise men, linking Belshazzar’s killing to the court’s earlier threat of death.
mitqattəlīn: Being killed; to be slain.
מִתְקַטְלִין
This form describes the wise men under a death sentence in Daniel 2:13, making the root’s movement from threatened victims to the king himself visible.
מַלְכָּא
malkā
GROWS FROM
מלך
mlk
To rule or reign.
“king” in this verse is malkā. The Aramaic word for the ruler grows from the same root as the word for kingdom: the person and the realm share one linguistic seed. The sentence holds that royal identity beside the killing, showing the limit of what rule can secure.
ALSO GROWS
malkû: Kingdom or dominion.
מַלְכוּ
The related word names the realm of rule, joining the king in this verse to the domain his title represents.
malkayyā: Kings.
מַלְכַיָּא
The plural form shows that the same root names rulers as a class; the title belongs to human rulers, not to a life beyond vulnerability.
THE PATTERN
Human rank and possessions cannot command the continuation of human life.
No one has power over the breath to hold in the breath, and no one has power in the day of death. There is no sending away in the war, and wickedness does not slip its owners free.His breath goes out; he returns to his ground. In that very day his plans lose their way.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
And the decree went forth that the wise men should be struck down, and they sought Daniel and his companions to be struck down.The same Aramaic root קטל names the death sentence imposed on the wise men and the killing of Belshazzar here. One word binds threatened death at the court to death reaching the ruler himself, without softening either scene.
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