The rewards offered by the degenerate monarch in his fear, were worthless in the sight of Daniel. "Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another," he said; but he added, "yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation."

"O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour: And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive and whom he would he set up, and whom he would he put down. But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him: and he was driven from the sons of men, and his heart was made like the beasts, and his dwelling was with the wild asses: they fed him with grass like oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruleth in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will."

"And thou his son, O Belshazzar, hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this."

Daniel then went on to reproach the king for his yet more flagrant impiety, in bringing forth the vessels of the LORD's House to drink wine in them, he and his lords, and his wives, and thus adding profanation and sacrilege to his riot.

The vessels had been placed in the temple of Belus at Babylon, and though they were profaned by being made to adorn an idol worship, they were at least kept apart from common use, and in the eyes of the heathen they were treated as sacred vessels, devoted to their god; but to use them as common drinking cups in a bacchanalian feast, was to treat them with the utmost possible contempt; a bravado of impious sacrilege, seldom or never ventured upon by the most flagitious idolator. It was the consciousness of this act of extraordinary impiety which made Belshazzar tremble, and seek to know the fate he had provoked.

Then Daniel read the writing on the wallMENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. "This," said the prophet, "is the interpretation:” “MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it."

"TEKEL; thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting."

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PERES; thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.”

Scarcely was the awful punishment foretold, than it was accomplished. Cyrus had silently entered the city, the gates were open, his troops

PERES is the singular, and PHARSIN the plural form, with u (or) added to it. The repetition of the same word, or repeating the word in the singular and plural form, gives intensity to the meaning, and implies that the decree was certain, and would shortly come to pass.-(See Notes by Kitto.)

marched directly upon the palace, and “in that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CONTINUATION OF THE HISTORY OF DANIEL. DANIEL CAST INTO THE LION'S DEN: HIS DEATH.

Dan. vi.

THE fall of Babylon, and its subjugation by Cyrus, brought in a new dynasty, and its monarchs ceased to be styled the kings of Babylon, but were called henceforth either kings of the Medes and Persians, or, after the death of Cyaxares, (Darius the Mede of the Bible,) kings of Persia only, that vast monarchy embracing the ancient territory of all three, Persia, Medea, and Babylon. Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon, was, as already stated, son of the king, (or governor,) of Persia, and grandson of Astyages king of Media, and consequently nephew to Cyaxares, the reigning king, whose armies he commanded for upwards of twenty years, jointly with his own. Persia being originally inferior to and dependant upon Media, Cyrus, although the general of the army, and possessed of supreme authority in the countries he subdued, yet made his conquests in the name of his uncle Cyaxares, and reigned jointly with him, giving to him the

first rank during his life. Hence Cyaxares, who is called in Daniel, Darius the Mede, is styled by him the king,' until his death, which happened two years after the taking of Babylon, when Cyrus, who had married his daughter and only child, succeeded to the whole empire: he reigned alone for seven years, and it was in the first year of his reign, reckoned from the death of his uncle Darius, that Daniel obtained from him the decree which allowed the Jews to return into their own land, and thus put an end to the seventy years captivity. Before following the historical narrative, we shall relate what befel Daniel at the court of Darius, and his deliverance from the den of Lions.

When Darius the Mede came, at the desire of Cyrus, to take possession of their new conquests and reside at Babylon, he found there the prophet Daniel, an old and experienced counsellor, whose life had been passed in the service of Babylon's wisest sovereigns, and whose character for integrity and wisdom had stood against the jealousy of his equals, and the attacks of the enemies of his nation. Besides these claims upon the regard of so wise a monarch as Cyrus, a new lustre was added to his fame by the occurrences which preceded the taking of Babylon. Fifty years before, he had predicted the rise and dominion of the Persian empire to Nebuchadnezzar the Great, and it was he, who at Belshazzar's feast read the mysterious writing on the wall, and pronounced that that night the

predicted judgment would fall. We are therefore not surprised to read, that when it pleased Darius to set three presidents to be over the hundred and twenty princes who governed the kingdom, Daniel was one, and held the first place. The reason assigned for this preference accords with the previous acts of Daniel, for it was "because an excellent spirit was in him, that the king sought to set him over the whole realm."

Nevertheless the king's well-deserved favor excited the enmity and jealousy of the princes, and they sought to frame some accusation against him in the discharge of his high offices; but so perfect was his wisdom and integrity, that "they could find no occasion nor fault in him, forasmuch as he was faithful, nor was there any error found in him." Then said these men, "We

shall not find any occasion against this Daniel, except we find it against him concerning the law of his God." On this they formed the following wicked device. They determined to induce the king to make a decree, by which it should be forbidden to all persons to ask a petition of any god or man, except the king, for thirty days, and whosoever broke the command should be cast into a den of lions. As Daniel's piety was well known, as well as its being the custom of all pious Jews to offer up daily prayers to God at stated times, it was foreseen that Daniel would disregard a decree which interfered with his religious observances, and thus he would