Justin Appel
Dear Friends,
Today’s Old Testament lesson comes from the book of Daniel and encompasses the story of Belshazzar’s Feast and the writing on the wall.
Of this story, and of Belshazzar’s actions in it, St. Jerome memorably said that ‘vice always glories in defiling what is noble’.
The 20th-century English composer William Walton wrote a cantata, Belshazzar’s Feast, that tells this same episode with huge, dramatic forces. This work puts the story into a larger context of the Babylonian Captivity by framing the story with verses from Psalm 137, Psalm 81 and the Book of Revelation.
While it’s possible to read this story as a purely historical episode in the story of Israel, we can also discern in it a divine condemnation of Babylon as a symbolic and spiritual reality. The French historian and sociologist Jacques Ellul explores the biblical history of the city from this perspective, and he would see Babylon as a prime example of the city’s symbolic identity as a repository of human attempts at autonomy, security, and idolatry. Babylon is thus in a long tradition of idolatrous cities that includes the likes of Enoch, Babel, Ninevah, even Jerusalem — in Ellul’s thought, the city truly is a universal symbol of human rebellion. (See The Meaning of the City, Jacques Ellul, Wipf & Stock, 1970.)
Such an interpretation might be useful for us, insofar as it allows us to recognize the spiritual power that still exists in the city-project, and our relationship to it as individuals. (In Walton's work, the Baritone's smooth recitation of Babylon's riches rings like an accusation. Also, notice how the most beguiling and lavish music of the cantata accompanies the heathen hymn of praise to Babylon’s deities: gods of gold, silver, iron, wood, stone and brass!) It also reminds us that God’s plan for humanity (and the city) involves a salvation that transfigures: the city becomes the symbol of God's redemption with the unveiling of the New Jerusalem in the Book of Revelation.
Yours in Christ,
Justin