The Last Night of Babylon

Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, was born in the north Mesopotamian city of Harran,
one of the two major cult centers for the moon-god in the ancient Near East, the other being Ur
in Sumer, present-day southeastern Iraq. As noted earlier, Nabonidus left his royal city and
settled in the Arabian oasis of Tayma for ten years, another center of moon-god worship, for
reasons scholars haven’t agreed upon yet. This is remarkable since his time in the desert
accounted for more than half of his seventeen-year reign.
Whatever his motivation, Nabonidus was not led to the oasis in northwestern Arabia
solely because of Tayma’s strategic importance, although its proximity to the caravan route used
by the lucrative spice trade was undoubtedly a factor. Politicians rarely miss an opportunity to It
may be that he was waiting for a message from the moon-god—a prophecy or sign of some sort.
While he stayed at Tayma, his son ruled as regent in Babylon. That was Belshazzar, the king we
know from the Book of Daniel.
Belshazzar was in a delicate situation. There were certain religious duties that the king of
Babylon was expected to perform. He played a key role in the annual spring akitu festival with
the god Marduk. If the king wasn’t in Babylon to “take the hand of Bel” (Marduk), the rites
couldn’t be performed, and the city, it was believed, wouldn’t receive the blessing of its patron
god. Remember, Nabonidus was out of Babylon for ten years, living at Tayma in the Arabian
desert.
Nabonidus didn’t seem to feel that this was a problem, lending credence to the belief that
his goal was to replace Marduk as the chief god of Babylon with Sîn, the moon-god. That plan

couldn’t have been popular with the ancient priesthood of Marduk or religious conservatives in
Babylon.
On that fateful night in 539 BC, recorded in chapter 5 of the Book of Daniel, Belshazzar,
the son and coregent of Babylon’s king Nabonidus, hosted a drunken party at the palace. During
the festivities, he ordered his servants to bring out the gold and silver vessels that had been
plundered from the Temple in Jerusalem more than half a century earlier, and he used them to
serve wine to the Chaldean nobles and his wives and concubines.
Then:
Immediately the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the
wall of the king’s palace, opposite the lampstand. And the king saw the hand as it
wrote. Then the king’s color changed, and his thoughts alarmed him; his limbs
gave way, and his knees knocked together. (Daniel 5:5–6, ESV)
Daniel was summoned to interpret the sign. Bad news for Belshazzar.

You have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of
his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives,
and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods
of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or
know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways,
you have not honored.
Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed.
And this is the writing that was inscribed: MENE, MENE, TEKEL, and PARSIN. This is

the interpretation of the matter: MENE, God has numbered the days of your
kingdom and brought it to an end; TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances
and found wanting; PERES, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and
Persians. (Daniel 5:23–28, ESV)
All this you probably know. The story is popular with all ages, from Sunday School kids
to grownups. It’s an easy moral for a Sunday sermon: Don’t get too big for your britches. But
there’s a lot more to it just under the surface.
The timing of the fall of Babylon is key. The festival hosted by Belshazzar wasn’t
random event, some excuse for Belshazzar to show off in front of his friends. This party had
spiritual significance.

The tradition of the festivities might reflect historical fact. According to the
chronicle, Babylon was taken on the sixteenth of Tašritu. Accepting that
Nabonidus imposed new features of the cult of Sîn in the capital after his return
from Teima, it is conceivable that festivals linked with the cult of Sîn at Harran
were transplanted to Babylon, perhaps even the akitu festival. This festival started
on the seventeenth of Tašritu. As Babylon was captured on the eve of the
seventeenth, the festivities mentioned by Herodotus and the Book of Daniel may
have been those of the Harran akitu festival, as celebrated in the capital by the
supporters of Nabonidus. 1
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Babylonian calendar was tweaked so that the fall
akitu festival for the moon-god was specifically timed to coincide with either the Harvest Moon
or the Hunter’s Moon:

The seventeenth of Tašritu always fell during one of the two periods of the year
that the moon had an unusually prominent place at night. It should also be
remembered that the Harvest Moon and Hunter’s Moon, by a curious trick of
perception, are popularly believed to be unusually large and luminous. It is
therefore singularly appropriate that the akitu festival in honor of the moon god
Sîn should take place on the seventeenth of Tašritu, when the lunar deity, several
days after full moon, retained its sway throughout the night. 2
Because most of us Christians are not very familiar with the festivals of Yahweh, let us
point out that the last feast of the year, Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles), begins on the fifteenth
of Tašritu/Tishrei.
So, here’s the situation on the night of Belshazzar’s party: Babylon was ruled by a king
so devoted to the moon-god that he tried to overturn more than a thousand years of religious
tradition to elevate Sîn above Marduk in the pantheon. His son, the coregent, had just kicked off
the akitu festival to honor the moon-god, an annual rite in Mesopotamia at least two thousand
years old. Meanwhile, the most important annual festival of Yahweh, Sukkot, had begun two
days earlier. Then Belshazzar, for reasons unknown, decided to liven up the party for his god,
Sîn, by ordering the wine served in sacred utensils consecrated for use in the Temple of Yahweh.
Why did Belshazzar do it? What inspired him? (And why was he partying while the
enemy Medes and Persians were right outside the city walls?)
It’s impossible to say. Accounts of the last night of Babylon are somewhat contradictory.
Some say Nabonidus was at the battle; others say he wasn’t. It seems unlikely that Cyrus could
have marched an army into Babylonia without word reaching the king. If the account in Daniel is

accurate, and we assume it is, then maybe the akitu feast for Sîn was too important to postpone,
even for an invasion. Maybe Belshazzar’s decision to bring out the Temple utensils was to
demonstrate the power of the moon-god over the God of the exiles from Judah.
Big mistake.
Lights out. Babylon was done.
And that was the last time the moon-god threatened the people of Yahweh for more than a
thousand years.

1 Paul-Alain Beaulieu. The Reign of Nabonidus, King of Babylon, 556–539 B.C. (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 150.
2 Al Wolters, “Belshazzar’s Feast and the Cult of the Moon God Sîn,” Bulletin for
Biblical Research 5 (1995), 201-202.

Derek Gilbert

Derek Gilbert Bio

Derek P. Gilbert hosts SkyWatchTV, a Christian television program that airs on several national networks, the long-running interview podcast A View from the Bunker, and co-hosts SciFriday, a weekly television program that analyzes science news with his wife, author Sharon K. Gilbert.
Before joining SkyWatchTV in 2015, his secular broadcasting career spanned more than 25 years with stops at radio stations in Philadelphia, Saint Louis, Little Rock, and suburban Chicago.
Derek is a Christian, a husband and a father. He’s been a regular speaker at Bible prophecy conferences in recent years. Derek’s most recent book is The Great Inception: Satan’s PSYOPs from Eden to Armageddon. He has also published the novels The God Conspiracy and Iron Dragons, and he’s a contributing author to the nonfiction anthologies God’s Ghostbusters, Blood on the Altar, I Predict: What 12 Global Experts Believe You Will See by 2025, and When Once We Were a Nation.