1 One evening, King Belshazzar gave a great banquet for a thousand of his highest officials, and he drank wine with them.
2 He got drunk and ordered his servants to bring in the gold and silver cups his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem. Belshazzar wanted the cups, so that he and all his wives and officials could drink from them.
3-4 When the gold cups were brought in, everyone at the banquet drank from them and praised their idols made of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.
5 Suddenly a human hand was seen writing on the plaster wall of the palace. The hand was just behind the lampstand, and the king could see it writing.
6 He was so frightened that his face turned pale, his knees started shaking, and his legs became weak.