Daniel 5:10-12

5:10 Due to the noise ¹  caused by the king and his nobles, the queen mother ²  then entered the banquet room. She ³  said, “O king, live forever! Don’t be alarmed! Don’t be shaken! 5:11 There is a man in your kingdom who has within him a spirit of the holy gods. In the days of your father, he proved to have ⁴  insight, discernment, and wisdom like that ⁵  of the gods. ⁶  King Nebuchadnezzar your father appointed him chief of the magicians, astrologers, wise men, and diviners. ⁷  5:12 Thus there was found in this man Daniel, whom the king renamed Belteshazzar, an extraordinary spirit, knowledge, and skill to interpret ⁸  dreams, solve riddles, and decipher knotty problems. ⁹  Now summon ¹⁰  Daniel, and he will disclose the interpretation.”

[5:10]  ¹ tn Aram “words of the king.”

[5:10]  ² tn Aram “the queen” (so NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV). In the following discourse this woman is able to recall things about Daniel that go back to the days of Nebuchadnezzar, things that Belshazzar does not seem to recollect. It is likely that she was the wife not of Belshazzar but of Nabonidus or perhaps even Nebuchadnezzar. In that case, “queen” here means “queen mother” (cf. NCV “the king’s mother”).

[5:10]  ³ tn Aram “The queen.” The translation has used the pronoun “she” instead because repetition of the noun here would be redundant in terms of English style.

[5:11]  ⁴ tn Aram “[there were] discovered to be in him.”

[5:11]  ⁵ tn Aram “wisdom like the wisdom.” This would be redundant in terms of English style.

[5:11]  ⁶ tc Theodotion lacks the phrase “and wisdom like the wisdom of the gods.”

[5:11]  ⁷ tc The MT includes a redundant reference to “your father the king” at the end of v. 11. None of the attempts to explain this phrase as original are very convincing. The present translation deletes the phrase, following Theodotion and the Syriac.

[5:12]  ⁸ tc The translation reads מִפְשַׁר (mifshar) rather than the MT מְפַשַּׁר (mÿfashar) and later in the verse reads וּמִשְׁרֵא (mishre’) rather than the MT וּמְשָׁרֵא (mÿshare’). The Masoretes have understood these Aramaic forms to be participles, but they are more likely to be vocalized as infinitives. As such, they have an epexegetical function in the syntax of their clause.

[5:12]  ⁹ tn Aram “to loose knots.”

[5:12]  ¹⁰ tn Aram “let [Daniel] be summoned.”