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god Meni was but a pagan shadow, Who indeed had numbered the days of Belshazzar:
"God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it" (Dan. 5: 26).
Tekel is the Chaldee equivalent of the Hebrew shakal, to weigh, from which comes
shekel, a weight. With the prefix "m" the word becomes mishkoleth, "the plummet", as
in Isa. 28: 17: "Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the
plummet." "Thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting" (Dan. 5: 27).
Peres.--Many readers of the English Version are somewhat puzzled when they come
to this third word. The actual writing on the wall being upharsin, how is it that Daniel
says peres? The answer is simple. The actual words translated as they stand are
"Numbered, numbered, weighed, and divided". "And" is represented by the letter "u",
and this letter coming before the letter "p" softens it, making it for the time being "ph".
The letters in are merely an ending, equivalent, so far as our language can afford a
parallel, to "en", as in broken, or "ing" as in dividing. Now no one would look in the
dictionary for the word "and divided", the "and" would naturally be omitted. Again, it is
usual to look for the infinitive, "to divide", rather than, for instance, "dividing" or
"divided". This is what Daniel did. He omitted the vav, "and", let the "ph" go back to
"p", omitted the ending "in", and took the true word peres.
Just as we saw in Isa. 65: 11, 12 that meni, as well as being a verb, was a proper
noun, so we find peres not only means "divided", but is the name for "Persian", the word
thereby revealing by whom the kingdom was to be divided or taken. A parallel might be
put in these terms, "You will be scotched", thus conveying the idea that a Scot would do
the scotching. Similarly, play could be made upon the names China, Japan, Greece,
Turkey, etc. So it was that Daniel who, it must be remembered, was interpreting, not
merely repeating, the words written, took the word peres in its double significance:--
"Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians" (Dan. 5: 28).
"In that night was Belshazzar the king of the Chaldeans slain, and Darius the Median
took the kingdom, being about threescore and two years old" (Dan. 5: 30, 31).
Just as Belshazzar was co-regent with his father, so Cyrus, the son of Darius, was
acting in a like capacity. His general, Gobryas, took Babylon in the name of Cyrus, who
was then about 40 years of age (see Herodotus). Isaiah and Jeremiah had prophesied:--
"Thus saith the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to
subdue nations before him, and I will loose the loins of kings (see Dan. v.6, `the joints of
his loins were loosed'); to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not
be shut" (Isa. 45: 1).
"The Lord hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes; for His device is against
Babylon, to destroy it; because it is the vengeance of the Lord, the vengeance of His
temple" (Jer. 51: 11) (see Dan. 5: 2-4).
"The mighty men of Babylon have forborn to fight, they have remained in their holds
. . . . . one post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to shew the
king of Babylon that his city is taken at one (or each) end" (Jer. 51: 30, 31).
Herodotus tells us that the Babylonians retired to the city. Cyrus, having diverted the
waters of the Euphrates, entered the city by the bed of the river at each end (Companion