What Does Daniel 5:30 Mean in the King James?
In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
“slain” 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.
There is no man that hath power over the spirit to retain the spirit; neither hath he power in the day of death: and there is no discharge in that war; neither shall wickedness deliver those that are given to it.His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?THE THREAD
And the decree went forth that the wise men should be slain; and they sought Daniel and his fellows to be slain.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.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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