(a) Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine (b) before the thousand.
(a) Daniel recites this history of King Belshazzar, Evilmerodach's son, to show God's judgments against the wicked for the deliverance of his Church, and how the prophecy of Jeremiah was true, that they would be delivered after seventy years.
(b) The kings of the east part then used to commonly sit alone, and disdained that any should sit in their company: and now to show his power, and how little he thought of his enemy, which then besieged Babylon, made a solemn banquet, and used excess in their company, which is meant here by drinking wine: thus the wicked are very lax in morals and negligent, when their destruction is at hand.