God, and contemptible to man; in which we may suppose him to have been immersed the more deeply, for want of some faithful monitor near his person, to tell him the truth, like honest Micaiah, without dread of royal resentment. There was one man in Belshazzar’s kingdom, who was especially qualified for this important office; but he had not the opportunity, being a Jew, and a captive, till a singular event brought him out of his obscurity, and displayed the superiority of his wisdom above all the pretenders to it in Belshazzar’s court. Upon a particular day, Belshazzar made a feast, to which were invited “a thousand of his lords.” Dan. v. 1. Being a lewd polygamist, like all the heathen princes of the East, “his wives and his concubines” formed a part of his guests; for, to an abandoned prince a palace hath no beauty unless it be a receptacle for prostitutes; the whole apparatus of a court appears incomplete without a seraglio; and in the esteem of the drunken king of Babylon, or the grand Turk with Mahomed’s Koran in his hand, there are no blessings comparable with the blessings of polygamy.—Belshazzar, thus environed with his concubines and his lords, pushes about his intoxicating goblet, and poured out libations, or toasted the memory of their “gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.” Verse 4. Proper deities, it must be acknowledged, to preside in _such_ assemblies, in which the songs of the drunkard, and the conversation of the lascivious, render the scene perfectly worthy of all that indecency and excess, which idolatry ever promoted among its votaries. The king of Babylon, not content with blending idolatry and voluptuousness together, at his luxurious feast, where lords and whores unite to strengthen him in his wickedness, adds sacrilege to his other sins. “He commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king and his princes, his wives and his concubines, _might drink therein_.” Verse 2. Thus this impious prince insulted the God of heaven by sacrilegiously profaning those vessels that had been consecrated to the service of his temple; as if his wine would be doubly sweet, when drank out of God’s sacred chalice, or the vessels of his holy sanctuary were only fit to be prostituted to the purposes of riot and excess. In the desecration of these vessels, the temple-worship was profaned, a captive people insulted, and an atrocious act of indignity committed against the Holy One of Israel.