In Daniel 5, a curious incident occurs.
King Belshazzar, the (apparant¹) successor to Nebuchadnezzar, throws a feast for all of his notables. At this feast, Belshazzar brings in the treasures of the Judean Temple that his father had confiscated during his conquest of Jerusalem and uses them to praise the “gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone”. This delightfully decadent display is interrupted, most unfortunately for the frightened king, by a disembodied hand that appears out of nowhere and writes a cryptic message on the wall. Nobody can read it: neither the king himself nor any of the sages in his employ. The queen, however, offers a solution: call for Daniel. Daniel is wise, Daniel is modest and (best yet) Daniel is a Judean exile. Nothing surprising here, considering the ethnicity of the book’s author.
Echoes from the Ether: