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Belshazzar

   Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson 0.02 sec.
Belshazzar (bĕlshăz`ər), according to the Bible, son of Nebuchadnezzar Nebuchadnezzar (nĕb'əkədnĕz`ər), d. 562 B.C., king of Babylonia (c.605–562 B.C.
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 and last king of Babylon. The Book of Daniel relates that, at his feast, handwriting appeared on the wall. Daniel interpreted it as a prophecy of doom; that night Babylonia fell to the otherwise unknown Darius the Mede Darius the Mede, in the Bible, a king of the Medes who succeeded to the throne of Babylonia after Belshazzar. Otherwise unknown outside biblical tradition, it is likely that this Darius has been confused with Cyrus the Persian, who succeeded Belshazzar and decreed
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.

Belshazzar

(died c. 539 BC) Coregent of Babylon. Though he is referred to in the book of Daniel as the son of Nebuchadrezzar, Babylonian inscriptions suggest that he was the eldest son of King Nabonidus. When the king went into exile in 550 BC, the kingdom and most of its army were entrusted to Belshazzar. In the biblical story Belshazzar holds a last great feast at which he sees a hand writing on a wall the Aramaic words “mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,” which Daniel interprets as a judgment from God foretelling the fall of Babylon. Belshazzar died after Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 BC.


Belshazzar
6th century bc, the son of Nabonidus, coregent of Babylon with his father for eight years: referred to as king and son of Nebuchadnezzar in the Old Testament (Daniel 5:1, 17; 8:1); described as having received a divine message of doom written on a wall at a banquet (Belshazzar's Feast)

Belshazzar
gave banquet unrivalled for sumptuousness. [O.T.: Daniel 5:1–4]


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But he who in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own private dinner-table of invited guests, that man's unchallenged power and dominion of individual influence for the time; that man's royalty of state transcends Belshazzar's, for Belshazzar was not the greatest.
Here, while the national prosperity feasts, like another Belshazzar, on the spectacle of its own magnificence, is the Writing on the Wall, which warns the monarch, Money, that his glory is weighed in the balance, and his power found wanting.
Then the letter that Villefort had showed to him recurred to his mind, and every line gleamed forth in fiery letters on the wall like the mene tekel upharsin of Belshazzar.
 
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