Written on the Wall

Daniel 5:5

^{“Midnight drew nearer already;
In mute rest lay Babylon.}

^{Only above, in the king's castle,
lights are flickering and the king's retinue makes noise.}

^{Behold! Behold! upon the wall}

^{A thing — a hand — came in the hall;}

^{And wrote in fire upon the wall,}

^{And wrote, and vanished in the pall.}

^{The king just sat there, goggle-eyed,}

^{With knocking knees, pale, terrified.}

^{The lackey troop, by horror bound,}

^{Sat cold and still, without a sound.}

^{Magicians came, yet none at all}

^{Could decipher the flame-script on the wall.”}

^{Heinrich Heine’s poem “Belshazzar”, part of it translated here from German, goes on to describe the famous scene from today’s chapter in which a warning writes itself on the palace wall.}

^{Heine was fascinated by this story, and he is one among many artists and scholars who continue to be intrigued by this story and what it may mean for anybody who is paying attention to signs and messages - to what’s written on the wall. This famous expression stems from this chapter and is often quite misunderstood.}

^{First the context:}

^{Belshazzar, the next Babylonian king whom Daniel serves, throws a big party for thousands of his nobles. Wine is poured in vessels of gold and silver - some of them taken from the treasury and they are ancient loot from the Jerusalem temple. The king toasts to the local gods of gold and silver in defiance of the ancient God of Israel.}

^{And then this happens:}

^{בַּהּ־שַׁעֲתָה נְפַקָה אֶצְבְּעָן דִּי יַד־אֱנָשׁ וְכָתְבָן לׇקֳבֵל נֶבְרַשְׁתָּא עַל־גִּירָא דִּי־כְתַל הֵיכְלָא דִּי מַלְכָּא וּמַלְכָּא חָזֵה פַּס יְדָא דִּי כָתְבָה׃}

^{Just then, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace opposite the lampstand, so that the king could see the hand as it wrote.}

^{Daniel 5:5}

^{What happens next follows a familiar script but with heightened drama. The king is horrified and trembling, but none of his wise wizards can interpret what the message means.}

^{The queen suggests that there is an old wise man who has been in the palace for some years, respected by the present king’s father, and that’s how Daniel shows up and immediately deciphers the words on the wall, as well as their meaning:}

^{“MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN” - loosely translated as ‘your time is accounted for and the next reign comes - by the Persians’. Daniel tells the king that this is his punishment for arrogance and hubris, including abusing the temple vessels and disregarding human dignity and people’s rights to justice.}

^{That night - the king is slain, likely by his enemies who sought the chance to do so.}

^{Daniel’s words are seen as prophetic, and this chapter ends.}

^{So what is this story all about, how did we get the ‘written on the wall’ meme to become so central to our culture and what does it have to with the power of graffiti?}

^{Rabbi Dan Ornstein helps unpack the story, starting with how most modern users may be missing the original point:}

^{“When we use this expression in everyday speech, we might say, “You need to read the writing on the wall,” or “I can read the writing on the wall.” We generally mean by this that we can detect something terrible that will happen in the near future. There seems to be universal agreement that to read the writing on the wall means to brace oneself, soberly and stoically, for the worst. However, this popular use of the phrase distorts its original meaning. In the Book of Daniel, the source of the phrase, something quite different is happening.}

^{..Daniel is more a classical prophet than a futurist. His job, in this scene, is to reveal Belshazzar’s fate; but even more so, he’s there to offer a damning critique of the king and his society, to force them “to read” the truth about who they have become and where it is leading them.}

^{…Daniel is no Jeremiah; he doesn’t shriek at state and society from the margins, he serves them from within, indeed from high within as a member of court. Yet as a passionate lover of God and God’s oppressed people, he refuses to sugarcoat the message of the wall’s writing to appease the king and court. “}

^{As Orenstein points out, and as artists such as Heine explore - this strange story about a hand spelling out the future for all to see is about the art of protest and the power of words to unsettle realities too preoccupied with their own power to see what else is going on.}

^{Recent graffiti all over Toronto, I am told, simply includes the tag “Daniel 5:5” - code for all who know that this is where this story comes from. Walls all over the world have become similar containers of messages that may be hidden by the media, obscured by governments and nevertheless must be seen, read and communicated to the general public that often prefers to avoid what must be heard.}

^{Orenstein reads this story as an American-Jewish rabbi in the 21st Century - and the obligation to speak truth to power, even at a cost:}

^{“The story of the handwriting on the wall occupies the realm of biblical mythology and miracle. Removing this literary dressing, we’re left with a message and a mission, a “writing on the wall” of contemporary life, which we Jews are obligated to place incessantly before society: we must speak truth to power. This is difficult to do, especially when it places us at great potential risk; it has always been a fraught endeavor for us, especially in the Diaspora. Like Daniel, we Jews have struggled over many centuries to survive with political cunning under regimes that tolerated us, used us, were hostile to us, and most horribly, tried to destroy us. Even Jewish life in democratic America comes with complicated strings attached. They present us with huge political and moral choices between self-protection and fighting for what is right in the greater society. That’s why Daniel can be such a powerful model for us. He rises so high in the court of the king that the latter calls upon his wisdom and good counsel before all his nobility. Yet the favor that Daniel curries with Belshazzar doesn’t prevent him from severely chastising Belshazzar for his wrongdoing. Daniel serves the king, but he serves God and God’s truth even more…Cast over us is a foreboding that our society is actually writing its own slow demise on our American wall; ironically, it can’t — or it refuses — to read what it has written. Daniel teaches us that, however risky it may be, we Jews must be on the frontlines of using our accrued power, privilege and presence to speak out, protesting what we know are the growing injustices and hatreds that threaten to shatter America in angry, warring, pieces.}

^{Daniel demands of us that we help our society to read the writing on the wall before it’s too late to repair what is broken.”}

^{Daniel’s story continues, as one king replaces another and the Persians take over Babylon. The story stays the same and his wisdom is required by the next regime as well, and on its walls - and ours.}

^{Wendy Zierler, a contemporary Jewish feminist theologian reminds us that}

^{“The hand that writes in Daniel is a divine disruption—a moment when the invisible becomes visible, and power is unmasked by poetry written in fire.”}

^{What disruptive divine writing on our walls are we ignoring today?}

^{Image: Belshazzar's Feast by Rembrandt, c. 1635 inspired by the rabbis of the Talmud who suggested that the writing on the wall was a cipher, written vertically, not horizontally.}

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