Daniel 5:25

Bahasa Indonesia Sehari-hari

Maka inilah tulisan yang tertulis itu: Mene, mene, tekel ufarsin.

Parallel Translations

Alkitab Terjemahan Baru
Maka inilah tulisan yang tertulis itu: Mene, mene, tekel ufarsin.

Alkitab Terjemahan Lama
Maka inilah bunyi suratan yang tertulis di situ: MENAI, MENAI, TEKAIL, UFARSIN.

Contextual Overview

¹⁰ Now the queene by reason of the talke of the king & his princes, came into the banket house: and the queene spake, and sayde, O king, lyue for euer: let not thy thoughtes trouble thee, and let not thy countenaunce be chaunged. ¹¹ There is a man in thy kingdome that hath the spirite of the holy Gods within him: & in the dayes of thy father, light, and vnderstanding, & wysdome, like the wysedome of the gods, was founde in hym, whom the king Nabuchodonozor thy father, the king [I say] thy father made chiefe of the wyse men, soothsayers, Chaldeans, and wysardes. ¹² Because that such an aboundaunt spirite, knowledge, and vnderstanding, to expound dreames, to open secretes, & to declare harde doubtes, was founde in him, yea euen in Daniel, whom the king named Baltassar: let Daniel be called, and he shal declare the interpretation. ¹³ Then was Daniel brought before the king: so the king spake vnto Daniel, and sayde, Art thou that Daniel, whiche art of the children of the captiuitie of Iuda, whom my father the king brought out of Iurie? ¹⁴ I haue hearde of thee, that thou hast the spirite of the holy gods, & that light and vnderstanding, and excellent wysdome is founde in thee. ¹⁵ Now haue there ben brought before me wyse men and soothsayers to reade this wryting, and to shewe me the interpretation therof: but they could not declare the interpretation of the thing. ¹⁶ Then hearde I of thee that thou couldest shewe interpretations, and dissolue doubtes: nowe if thou canst reade his writing, & shew me the meaning therof, thou shalt be clothed with purple, and haue a cheyne of gold about thy necke, & be the thirde ruler in the kingdome. ¹⁷ Then Daniel aunswered, and sayd before the king, As for thy rewardes, kepe them to thy selfe, and geue thy giftes to another: yet I wil reade the writing vnto the king, and shewe him the interpretation. ¹⁸ O thou king, the most high god gaue vnto Nabuchodonozor thy father a kingdome, and maiestie, and honour, & glorie. ¹⁹ And for the maiestie that he gaue him, al people, nations, and languages trembled and feared before him: he slue whom he would, he smote whom it pleased him: againe, whom he would he set vp, and whom he list he put downe.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

MENE: Had these words been written in the Chaldean character, every one who knew the alphabet of the language could at least have read them: they are pure Chaldee, and literally denote "He is numbered, he is numbered; he is weighed; they are divided." Daniel 5:25

Reciprocal: 1 Samuel 28:19 - and to morrow 2 Chronicles 21:12 - a writing Isaiah 14:11 - pomp Isaiah 47:11 - thou shalt not be Jeremiah 27:7 - until Habakkuk 2:7 - they Luke 1:51 - he hath scattered Luke 12:20 - God

Cross-References

Genesis 4:18
Unto ye same Henoch was borne Irad: Irad begat Mehuiael, Mehuiael begat Methusael, Methusael begat Lamech.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And this is the writing that was written,.... They are such and such letters, and so to be read, as follows:

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN; which are Chaldee words, and may be literally rendered, "he hath numbered, he hath numbered"; that is, God hath certainly, perfectly, and exactly numbered; "he hath weighed", God hath weighed thee, Belshazzar; "and they divide the kingdom"; that is, the Medes and Persians, as appears from the following interpretation:

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And this is the writing that was written - The Babylonians, it would seem, were unacquainted with the “characters” that were used, and of course unable to understand the meaning. See Daniel 5:8. The first thing, therefore, for Daniel to do was to read the writing, and this he was able to do without difficulty, probably, as already remarked, because it was in the ancient Hebrew character - a character quite familiar to him, though not known to the Babylonians, whom Belshazzar consulted. It is every way probable that that character “would” be used on an occasion like this, for

(a) it is manifest that it was intended that the true God, the God of the Hebrews, should be made known, and this was the character in which his communications had been made to men;

(b) it was clearly the design to honor his own religion, and it is morally certain that there would be something which would show the connection between this occurrence and his own agency, and nothing would do this better than to make use of such a character; and

(c) it was the Divine intention to put honor on Daniel, and this would be well done by making use of a character which he understood.

There have been, indeed, many conjectures respecting the characters which were employed on this occasion, and the reasons of the difficulty of interpreting the words used, but it is most probable that the above is the true statement, and this will relieve all the difficulties in regard to the account. Prideaux supposes that the characters employed were the ancient Phoenician characters, that were used by the Hebrews, and that are found now in the Samaritan Pentateuch; and that, as above suggested, these might be unknown to the Babylonians, though familiar to Daniel. Others have supposed that the characters were those in common use in Babylon, and that the reason why the Babylonians could not read them was, that they were smitten with a sudden blindness, like the inhabitants of Sodom, Genesis 19:11. The Talmudists suppose that the words were written in a cabalistic manner, in which certain letters were used to stand for other letters, on the principle referred to by Buxtorf (“Lex. Chal. Rabb. et Talm.” p. 248), and known as אתבשׁ 'âthebbash - that is, where the alphabet is reversed, and the Hebrew letter א (A) is used for the Hebrew letter ת (T), and the Hebrew letter ב (B) for the Hebrew letter ש (S), etc., and that on account of this cabalistic transmutation the Babylonians could not read it, though Daniel might have been familiar with that mode of writing. rabbi Jochanan supposed that there was a change of the order in which the letters of the words were written; other rabbis, that there was a change merely in the order of the first and second letters; others, that the words were written backward; others that the words were written, not in the usual horizontal manner, but perpendicularly; and others, that the words were not written in full, but that only the first letters of each were written. See Bertholdt, pp. 349, 350. All these are mere conjectures, and most of them are childish and improbable suppositions. There is no real difficulty in the case if we suppose that the words were written in a character familiar to Daniel, but not familiar to the Babylonians. Or, if this is not admitted, then we may suppose that some mere marks were employed whose signification was made known to Daniel in a miraculous manner.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Daniel 5:25. And this is the writing — Had the words been written in the Chaldean character, every wise man there, every one that could read the alphabet of his own language, could have read and interpreted them. Let it be observed, -

1. That the character which we now call Hebrew is the Chaldean character.

2. That the true Hebrew character is that which we call the Samaritan.

3. Daniel could easily read this, for it was the character used by the Jews previously to the Babylonish captivity.

4. It appears that it was simply on account of the strangeness of the character that the Chaldeans could not read it.

I shall set down the words in both characters, by which the least learned reader may see that it was quite possible that one might be well known, while the other might be unintelligible.

Hebrew

מנא מנא תקל ופרסין

Samaritan

[Samaritan]

In ancient times, no doubt, these letters differed more from each other than they appear to do now; for we know that the Samaritan on ancient coins, though radically the same, differs very much from that now used in printing.

It should be observed, that each word stands for a short sentence; מנא mene signifies NUMERATION; תקל tekel, WEIGHING; and פרש peres, DIVISION. And so the Arabic translates them. [Arabic] mokeeson, measured; [Arabic] mewzonon, weighed; [Arabic] mokesoomon, divided. All the ancient Versions, except the Syriac, read the words simply Mene, Tekel, Phares, as they are explained in the following verses; without the repetition of Mene, and without the conjunction ו vau, and plural termination, ין in, in Peres.