Belshazzar's feast

Daniel then reads the message and interprets it: God has numbered Belshazzar's days, he has been weighed and found wanting, and his kingdom will be given to the Medes and the Persians.

[8] The phrase "writing on the wall" has grown to be a popular idiomatic expression referring to the foreshadowing of any impending doom, misfortune, or end.

A person who does not or refuses to "see the writing on the wall" is being described as ignorant of the signs of a cataclysmic event that will likely occur soon.

One of the earliest known uses of the phrase in English was by Captain L. Brinckmair in 1638, whose report "The Warnings of Germany" during the Thirty Years' War cautioned that the violence there could soon spill over to England.

[10] Modern scholarship agrees that Daniel is a legendary figure,[11] and it is possible that his name was chosen for the hero of the book because of his reputation as a wise seer in Hebrew tradition.

[12] Chapters 2–7 of the book form a chiasm (a poetic structure in which the main point or message of a passage is placed in the centre and framed by further repetitions on either side):[13] Daniel 5 is thus composed as a companion-piece to Daniel 4, the tale of the madness of Nebuchadnezzar, the two giving variations on a single theme.

The following is one possible outline:[15] The story is set around the fall of Babylon, when on 12 October 539 BCE, the Persian conqueror Cyrus the Great entered the city.

This is a marked contrast with the visions of chapters 7–12, where the sufferings of the Jews are the result of actions by the evil 2nd century BCE king Antiochus IV Epiphanes.

Chapters 3 and 6 describe how pious Jews withstand the arrogance of earthly kings and are rescued by the God of Israel.

Chapters 4 and 5 form the center and carry the most important message in their parallel but contrasting tales of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar, verses 5:21–22.