9. The state setting unveiled to Isaiah suddenly changes in view of what command from Jehovah?

⁹ Suddenly the stage setting unveiled to the prophet Isaiah changes like in a change of acts in a theater. He hears the command from Jehovah: “Let there be a setting of the table in order, an arranging of the location of seats, an eating, a drinking! Get up, you princes, anoint the shield. For this is what Jehovah has said to me.”​—Isa. 21:5, 6.

10. What did the divine command portray, and when did the matter portrayed reach the height of contempt for Jehovah God?

¹⁰ This briefly portrays the scene at the palace in Babylon on the last night of her world domination. Graphically it sets forth the feast of Belshazzar, the son of the absent emperor Nabonidus. Then, indeed, there was an arranging of seats for the thousand grandees of Babylon. There was lighthearted eating and drinking. But this came to be with the height of contempt for Jehovah God, when they started eating and drinking with the use of the tableware that had belonged to his temple until the Babylonians took possession of Jerusalem and destroyed its temple.

11. What did Jehovah now miraculously do at this impious feast of Belshazzar, and how did Daniel serve as the interpreter for the occasion?

¹¹ Belshazzar’s feast now becomes impious, for it brought Jehovah into the situation. He miraculously sent a hand to write upon the wall of the banquet hall, where the king could see it, the words: “Mene, mene, tekel and parsin.” To decipher those code words the exiled Jewish prophet Daniel had to be brought in. The final word of the handwriting, parsin, is the plural number of the Chaldaic word peres and means “divisions.” So, in his inspired interpretation, Daniel said: “PERES, your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.”​—Dan. 5:28.

12. What was the “shield” that was to be anointed by the princes, and what did the command to anoint such a “shield” indicate?

¹² In reward Daniel was favored with royal apparel and was made “the third ruler” in the empire. But this was not the fulfillment of Jehovah’s command meant for the nobility of Babylon: “Get up, you princes, anoint the shield.” (Isa. 21:5) Neither was it a command for the princes to grease their military shields for doing battle with the besiegers of Babylon. Rather, the expression “the shield” applied to the royal head of the nation. (Compare Psalm 89:18.) What, then, does the command to “anoint the shield” mean? This: that King Belshazzar was about to be killed, this creating the need for another to assume the position of ‘second ruler’ in the Babylonian Empire. But this induction of a new symbolic “shield” by an anointing never did take place. Belshazzar’s violent death did not actually make room for a successor from the royal family.

WHAT THE WATCHMAN HAS TO REPORT

15. The command given after the prophetic description of Belshazzar’s feast indicates what concerning ancient Babylon and her counterpart?

¹⁵ Why, though, does Isaiah give us that advance look into Belshazzar’s feast on that painful night of 539 B.C.E.? It was because of what was to follow, namely, the reporting of that outstanding event of the century to Jehovah’s covenant people, who would rejoice over the fall of “the treacherous dealer.” Isaiah 21:5, 6 shows what would follow upon the heels of Babylon’s fall, saying: “Get up, you princes, anoint the shield. For this is what Jehovah has said to me: ‘Go, post a lookout that he may tell just what he sees.’” Aha, there was to be world publicity on the event! So, too, the fall of Babylon the Great must make the news headlines!