Daniel 5:26

Hebrew Bible

24 Therefore the palm of a hand was sent from him, and this writing was inscribed. 25 “This is the writing that was inscribed: mene, mene, teqel, and pharsin. 26 This is the interpretation of the words: As for Mene—God has numbered your kingdom’s days and brought it to an end. 27 As for Teqel—you are weighed on the balances and found to be lacking. 28 As for Peres—your kingdom is divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.”

1 Enoch 41:1

Pseudepigrapha

1 And then I witnessed all the mysteries of the heavens, how the kingdom is divided, and how the actions of people are weighed on a scale. 2 There, I saw the dwellings of the chosen and the holy, and my eyes beheld all the sinners being expelled, those who deny the name of the Lord of Spirits, dragged away, unable to endure the punishment from the Lord of Spirits. 3 My eyes also saw the mysteries of lightning and thunder, and the secrets of the winds, how they are distributed to blow across the earth, and the mysteries of the clouds and dew, observing where they originate and how they moisten the dusty earth.

 Notes and References

"... As we have noted already, however, this is a well-established trope in ancient literature, a point explored in depth recently by Schaper.36 Hence, other biblical passages that employ the metrological imagery in relation to justice (e.g., Daniel 5:26–8) might be considered relevant, but not distinctively so. The suggestion that Daniel 5:26–8 might have distinctively influenced 1 Enoch 41:1, most recently made by Nickelsburg,37 is not without substance, but neither is it strictly necessary when the imagery was so common in relation to concepts of justice ..."

Macaskill, Grant Meteorology and Metrology: Evaluating Parallels in the Ethiopic Parables of Enoch and 2 (Slavonic) Enoch (pp. 79-99) Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha, Vol. 29, No. 2, 2019

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