[413] Isa. xxiv. 21, xl. 15, 17. For the "host of heaven" (στρατία οὐράνιος, Luke ii. 13) see Isa. xl. 26; Job. xxxviii. 7; 1 Kings xxii. 19; Enoch xviii. 14-16; Matt. xi. 25. [414] Isa. xliii. 13, xlv. 9; Psalm cxxxv. 6; Job ix. 12; Eccles. viii. 4. The phrase for "to reprove" is literally "to strike on the hand," and is common in later Jewish writers. [415] Dan. ii. 38. [416] Psalm xxxiii. 4. [417] Exod. xviii. 11. CHAPTER V _THE FIERY INSCRIPTION_ "That night they slew him on his father's throne He died unnoticed, and the hand unknown: Crownless and sceptreless Belshazzar lay, A robe of purple round a form of clay." SIR E. ARNOLD. In this chapter again we have another magnificent fresco-picture, intended, as was the last--but under circumstances of aggravated guilt and more terrible menace--to teach the lesson that "verily there is a God that judgeth the earth." The truest way to enjoy the chapter, and to grasp the lessons which it is meant to inculcate in their proper force and vividness, is to consider it wholly apart from the difficulties as to its literal truth. To read it aright, and duly to estimate its grandeur, we must relegate to the conclusion of the story all worrying questions, impossible of final solution, as to whom the writer intended by Belshazzar, or whom by Darius the Mede.[418] All such discussions are extraneous to edification, and in no way affect either the consummate skill of the picture or the eternal truths of which it is the symbolic expression. To those who, with the present writer, are convinced, by evidence from every quarter--from philology, history, the testimony of the inscriptions, and the manifold results obtained by the Higher Criticism--that the Book of Daniel is the work of some holy and highly gifted _Chasîd_ in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes, it becomes clear that the story of Belshazzar, whatever dim fragments of Babylonian tradition it may enshrine, is really suggested by the profanity of Antiochus Epiphanes in carrying off, and doubtless subjecting to profane usage, many of the sacred vessels of the Temple of Jerusalem.[419] The retribution which awaited the wayward Seleucid tyrant is prophetically intimated by the menace of doom which received such immediate fulfilment in the case of the Babylonian King. The humiliation of the guilty conqueror, "Nebuchadrezzar the Wicked," who founded the Empire of Babylon, is followed by the overthrow of his dynasty in the person of his "son," and the capture of his vast capital.