1 Belshazzar the king made a great banquet to a thousand of his lords, and against the thousand he drank wine.
2 Belshazzar, under the influence of the wine, commanded that they bring the vessels of gold and of silver which Nebuchadnezzar his father had brought from the temple of Jerusalem; that the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, might drink with them.
3 Then they brought the vessels of gold that they had brought from the temple of the house of God which was in Jerusalem; and the king and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, drank with them.
4 They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.
5 In that same hour some fingers of a man’s hand came forth and wrote in front of the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the palm of the hand that wrote.
6 Then the king became pale, and his thoughts troubled him, and the girdings of his loins were unloosed, and his knees smote one against another.