1 King Belshazzar held a great feast for a thousand of his nobles and drank wine in their presence.
2 Under the influence of the wine, Belshazzar commanded that the gold and silver vessels his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken from the temple in Jerusalem be brought in, so that the king, his nobles, his wives, and his concubines could drink from them.
3 So the gold vessels taken from the temple of God in Jerusalem were brought in, and the king, his nobles, his wives, and his concubines drank from them.
4 They drank the wine and praised the gods of gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.
5 At that very moment, the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall near the lampstand in the royal palace. The king watched the hand as it wrote.
6 Then the king’s face turned pale, and his thoughts terrified him. His hips became weak, and his knees knocked together.