What Do the Words Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin Mean (Daniel 5:25)?
Belshazzar, co-regent of the Babylonian Empire, watched as these words were supernaturally written on the palace wall the very night his kingdom fell (probably October 13, 539 BC). What a frightening experience that must have been for him and his festive guests! Each of the words the fingers inscribed on the wall is a measure of weight (like our ounce, pound, and ton, or milligram, gram, and kilogram). The basic Babylonian unit of weight was the gold shekel (tekel in this verse). The mena equalled 50 shekels; the upharsin (half a mena) equalled 25. The four words, therefore, stood for: mena, 50 shekels; mena, 50 shekels; tekel, 1 shekel; upharsin, 25 shekels. The total equalled 126 shekels. In addition, each shekel can be divided into even smaller units (as a pound can be divided into ounces, for example). The shekel was equal to 20 gerahs (Ezekiel 45:12). The 126 shekels of Daniel 5:25 is equivalent to 2,520 gerahs. The words of the handwriting on the wall symbolize that God had “weig
