Writing on the Wall

Belshazzar, king of Babylon, was dumbfounded. During a drunken party, he commanded the vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem be retrieved. Suddenly, disembodied fingers wrote a mysterious message on the wall, “and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote” (Daniel 5:5).

So much for the party. Revelry gave way to panic, as “the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him, so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another” (Daniel 5:6).

Belshazzar’s astrologers and soothsayers were unable to read and interpret the writing, but the queen (possibly Belshazzar’s mother or grandmother) knew what to do. A Jew named Daniel had proven capable of interpreting messages from heaven and had been rewarded by Belshazzar’s predecessor, Nebuchadnezzar. She urged the king to have Daniel interpret the writing (see Daniel 5:7-12).

When Daniel arrived, he reproved Belshazzar for forgetting or ignoring the lessons learned by Nebuchadnezzar. “Thou … hast not humbled thine heart, though thou knewest all this” (Daniel 5:22). Belshazzar was willfully ignorant and therefore culpable.

Centuries later in the Americas, a man named Amulek recognized his own willful ignorance. Identifying himself as a descendant of a man named Aminadi, “who interpreted the writing which was upon the wall of the temple, which was written by the finger of God” (Alma 10:2), Amulek diagnosed his own spiritual failings in these words: “I was called many times and I would not hear; therefore I knew concerning these things, yet I would not know” (Alma 10:6).

The idiom “seeing the writing on the wall” means recognizing the signs that something bad is about to happen. One of its earliest uses is in the poem “The Run Upon the Bankers,” written by Jonathan Swift in 1720:

A baited banker thus desponds,
From his own hand foresees his fall;
They have his soul, who have his bonds;
‘Tis like the writing on the wall.

Belshazzar missed the message. Even after hearing that the writing foretold the destruction of his kingdom, he responded by clothing Daniel in scarlet with a gold chain and proclaiming him “the third ruler in the kingdom” (Daniel 5:29).

A dubious honor, since Belshazzar died that night, “and Darius the Median took the kingdom” (Daniel 5:30-31).

What about Amulek? His city was also destroyed in a day (Alma 16:1-3, 9-11). But Amulek was spared. He had seen the writing on the wall, so to speak, and had followed his friend Alma to safety in Zarahemla (Alma 15:18). At long last, he both knew and “would know,” following God’s guidance given through a prophet.

Today I will read and heed the writing on the wall. Instead of barreling toward my next objective, I’ll pay attention to signs that things may not be right and that a course correction is required. Like Amulek, I will accept correction and change before the crisis arrives.