“Then was the part of the hand sent from before him, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed, MENEMENETEKELUPHARSIN. This is the interpretation of the thing:
· MENE - God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end.
· TEKEL - you are weighed in the balances and are found wanting.
· PERES - your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.
‘Then' indicates that the hand came because of the treatment of the holy vessels. The hand is clearly stated as having come from ‘before the Most High'. What it wrote would be all in one sequence as above, for there were no spaces between words. We do not know whether it was actually in Aramaic or not (if it was why could the Chaldeans not at least read it?). It is therefore pointless to consider any alternatives other than the interpretation given. Indeed transliterated it would be M'N'M'N'TKLUPRSN.
However these interpretations do depend to some extent on word play so that we can assume that in whatever language the words were given in the word play was possible. This could come about in Aramaic because only the consonants would be written and thus different readings could be obtained by using different vowels on the same consonants.
M'N' comes from the root to ‘count' or ‘number', thus meaning ‘It is numbered'. Daniel interprets it as ‘God has numbered your kingdom and brought it to an end', that is He has determined the days of its length and has thus brought it to a conclusion. The repetition of Mene confirms that the fulfilment is certain and sure. Thus Belshazzar learned that his kingdom was finished.
TKL comes from the root to ‘weigh'. Thus ‘It is weighed'. Daniel interprets it as meaning ‘you have been weighed in the balances and have been found wanting' (compare for such weighing Job 31:6; Psalms 62:9; Proverbs 16:2). Thus Belshazzar learned that God had passed judgment on him and that he had failed the test. He was found wanting. This was why his kingdom was finished, because morally and religiously he had proved unworthy.
PRSN comes from two possible roots, ‘peres' meaning ‘it is divided' (‘parsin' is the dual or the plural), and ‘paras' which means Persians. Daniel therefore interprets ‘your kingdom is divided (peres) and given to the Medes and the Persians (paras).' The idea of ‘divided' is not that the kingdom will be divided into two, but that the whole of what is in it will be split up among the invaders, and the empire would be dissolved. It is important to note that the writing according to Daniel only speaks of the Persians (PRSN - n is often redundant). Thus by ‘the Medes and the Persians' Daniel means the Persian empire. There is no room here for the idea of two separate empires. The writing speaks of one Persian empire under Cyrus, made up of the Medes and the Persians, that will divide up among its men the spoils of Babylon, and dissolve the universality of the Babylonian empire.
This demonstrates the ancient nature of the account. At this stage it is still ‘Medes and Persians' (compare Daniel 6:8; Daniel 6:12), but not for long. By the time of Esther it would be ‘Persians and Medes' (Esther 1:19. See also Daniel 5:3; Daniel 5:14; Daniel 5:18).