Isaiah 21:5

And in testimony of the fact that Babylon was captured during a banquet, Isaiah clearly exhorts her to battle when he writes: "Babylon, my beloved, has become a strange spectacle unto me: set thou the table and behold in the mirrors those who eat and drink; rise up, ye princes, and snatch up your shields!"

[Daniel 5:30-31] "On that same night Belshazzar, King of the Chaldeans, was slain, and Darius the Mede succeeded to his kingdom at the age of sixty-two." Josephus writes in his tenth book of the Jewish Antiquities that when Babylon had been laid under siege by the Medes and Persians, that is, by Darius and Cyrus, Belshazzar, King of Babylon, fell into such forgetfulness of his own situation as to put on his celebrated banquet and drink from the vessels of the Temple, and even while he was besieged he found leisure for banqueting. From this circumstance the historical account could arise, that he was captured and slaughtered on the same night, while everyone was either terrified by fear of the vision and its interpretation, or else taken up with festivity and drunken banqueting. As for the fact that while Cyrus, King of the Persians, was the victor, and Darius was only King of the Medes, it was Darius who was recorded to have succeeded to the throne of Babylon, this was an arrangement occasioned by factors of age, family relationship, and the territory ruled over. By this I mean that Darius was sixty-two years old, and that, according to what we read, the kingdom of the Medes was more sizable than that of the Persians, and being Cyrus's uncle, he naturally had a prior claim, and ought to have been accounted as successor to the rule of Babylon. Therefore also in a vision of Isaiah which was recited against Babylon, after many other matters too lengthy to mention, an account is given of these things which are to take place: "Behold I Myself will rouse up against them the Medes, a people who do not seek after silver nor desire gold, but who slay the very children with their arrows and have no compassion upon women who suckle their young" (Isaiah 13:17-18). […]

(Verse 5.) Set the table, observe those who are eating and drinking: arise, leaders, take up the shield. This place is understood in two ways: o Medes and Elamites, of whom I spoke above: ascend, O Elam, besiege the Medes, take food, prepare yourselves for the coming battle, lest weariness hold you back once the time of conflict has arrived. And when you have eaten and drunk, arise, seize your weapons, wage war against Babylon. And what he says, observe those who are eating and drinking, is read in this sense: look carefully at what is to come.

512. Fourth, he designates the manner and condition of the destruction, saying: O Babylon, prepare the table, inviting Cyrus and Darius to the banquet, contemplate, that is, see, in the watchtower, that is, in the writing of the hand that writes, Mane, Thecel, Phares (Dan …

Set the guards; let them watch in the watch-tower while we eat and drink securely and make merry; and, if any alarm should be given, the princes shall arise and anoint the shield, and be in readiness to give the enemy a warm reception." Thus secure are they, and thus do they gird on the harness with as much joy as if they were putting it off.

quarantine:debris (2026-07-29) — odd-straight-quotes