House Beautiful by Charlotte Maria Tucker

BITTER must have been the shame and grief of the Jews when Nebuchadnezzar, King of Assyria, plundered the glorious building which they had raised, the Temple which, eleven years later, was itself given to the flames. Well was it for the good King Hezekiah that he lived not to see that day when his precious things, his silver and his gold, with the consecrated gold of the Temple, were carried away to Babylon, according to the word of the Lord spoken by the Prophet Isaiah. Great was the quantity of sacred vessels taken from Jerusalem, even if Ezra's list of those restored comprises them all. Thirty chargers and twenty basins of gold; a thousand chargers of silver. "All the vessels of gold and of silver were five thousand and four hundred. " It was a humbling day to the captives from Jerusalem when the treasures of the sanctuary, the pride of their fathers, were placed as trophies in the idol temple of the Gentiles.

But we conceive yet stronger indignation excited in the breasts of Jewish exiles, when the sacred vessels were brought forth to add to the magnificence of the feast of King Belshazzar, when the heathen in riotous mirth quaffed wine out of those splendid chargers, and praised their own gods of silver and gold, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone! It was a sacrilegious hand that Belshazzar laid on the golden cup before us, a blasphemous lip that pressed its brim; and God at once avenged the insult to His Majesty. Part of a man's hand appeared writing on the wall terrible mysterious characters that no one present could read, and the king's countenance was changed, he trembled, his knees smote one another with fear. On that night was proud Babylon taken by the Persians under that Cyrus who subsequently restored to the Jews the vessels of their Temple, to be once more devoted to the service of the one true God.