Daniel 5:27

King James Version

Tekel ; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
‘Tekel’ means that you have been weighed on the balance and found deficient.

Hebrew Names Version
TEKEL; you are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting.

English Standard Version
Tekel , you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting;

New American Standard Bible
"'TEKEL'—you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient.

New Century Version
Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found not good enough.

Amplified Bible
'TEKEL'—you have been weighed on the scales [of righteousness] and found deficient;

Geneva Bible (1587)
Tekel, thou art wayed in the balance, and art found too light.

New American Standard Bible (1995)
" 'TEKEL'—you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient.

Berean Standard Bible
TEKEL means that you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient.

Complete Jewish Bible
‘T'kel' — you are weighed on the balance-scale and come up short.

Darby Translation
TEKEL, Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting;

Easy-to-Read Version
Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found not good enough.

George Lamsa Translation
TEKEL, You are weighed in the balances and found wanting.

Good News Translation
weight, you have been weighed on the scales and found to be too light;

Lexham English Bible
"‘Tekel'—you have been weighed on scales and you have been found wanting.

Literal Translation
A SHEKEL: You are weighed in the balances and found lacking.

Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
Thetel, Thou art weyed in the balaunce, and art founde to light:

American Standard Version
tekel ; thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

Bible in Basic English
Tekel; you have been put in the scales and seen to be under weight.

JPS Old Testament (1917)
TEKEL, Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

King James Version (1611)
TEKEL, thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

Bishop's Bible (1568)
THECEL, thou art wayed in the balauce, and art founde wanting.

Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
Thekel; it has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting.

English Revised Version
TEKEL; thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

World English Bible
TEKEL; you are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting.

Wycliffe Bible (1395)
Techel, thou art weied in a balaunce, and thou art foundun hauynge lesse;

Update Bible Version
TEKEL; you are weighed in the balances, and are found wanting.

Webster's Bible Translation
TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

New English Translation
As for teqel—you are weighed on the balances and found to be lacking.

New King James Version
TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting;

New Living Translation
Tekel means ‘weighed'—you have been weighed on the balances and have not measured up.

New Life Bible
‘TEKEL' means that you have been weighed and found to be too light.

New Revised Standard
tekel , you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting;

J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
T'kel, - thou art weighed in the balances, and found wanting;

Douay-Rheims Bible
THECEL: thou art weighed in the balance, and art found wanting.

Revised Standard Version
TEKEL, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting;

Young's Literal Translation
Weighed -- Thou art weighed in the balances, and hast been found lacking.

THE MESSAGE
"Teqel: You have been weighed on the scales and you don't weigh much.

Contextual Overview

¹⁰ Now the queen by reason of the words of the king and his lords came into the banquet house: and the queen spake and said, O king, live for ever: let not thy thoughts trouble thee, nor let thy countenance be changed: ¹¹ There is a man in thy kingdom, in whom is the spirit of the holy gods; and in the days of thy father light and understanding and wisdom, like the wisdom of the gods, was found in him; whom the king Nebuchadnezzar thy father, the king, I say, thy father, made master of the magicians, astrologers, Chaldeans, and soothsayers; ¹² Forasmuch as an excellent spirit, and knowledge, and understanding, interpreting of dreams, and shewing of hard sentences, and dissolving of doubts, were found in the same Daniel, whom the king named Belteshazzar: now let Daniel be called, and he will shew the interpretation. ¹³ Then was Daniel brought in before the king. And the king spake and said unto Daniel, Art thou that Daniel, which art of the children of the captivity of Judah, whom the king my father brought out of Jewry? ¹⁴ I have even heard of thee, that the spirit of the gods is in thee, and that light and understanding and excellent wisdom is found in thee. ¹⁵ And now the wise men, the astrologers, have been brought in before me, that they should read this writing, and make known unto me the interpretation thereof: but they could not shew the interpretation of the thing: ¹⁶ And I have heard of thee, that thou canst make interpretations, and dissolve doubts: now if thou canst read the writing, and make known to me the interpretation thereof, thou shalt be clothed with scarlet, and have a chain of gold about thy neck, and shalt be the third ruler in the kingdom. ¹⁷ Then Daniel answered and said before the king, Let thy gifts be to thyself, and give thy rewards to another; yet I will read the writing unto the king, and make known to him the interpretation. ¹⁸ O thou king, the most high God gave Nebuchadnezzar thy father a kingdom, and majesty, and glory, and honour: ¹⁹ And for the majesty that he gave him, all people, nations, and languages, trembled and feared before him: whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive; and whom he would he set up; and whom he would he put down.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Thou: Job 31:6, Psalms 62:9, Jeremiah 6:30, Ezekiel 22:18-20

art: Matthew 22:11, Matthew 22:12, 1 Corinthians 3:13

Reciprocal: 1 Samuel 2:3 - by him Proverbs 16:2 - but Ezekiel 5:1 - then Revelation 3:2 - thy works

Gill's Notes on the Bible

TEKEL,.... As for the meaning of this word, and what it points at, it is this:

thou art weighed in the balances: of justice and truth, in the holy righteous law of God; as gold, and jewels, and precious stones, are weighed in the scales by the goldsmith and jeweller with great exactness, to know the worth of them:

and art found wanting; found to be adulterated gold, reprobate silver, bad coin, a false stone; found to be a worthless man, a wicked prince, wanting the necessary qualifications of wisdom, goodness, mercy, truth, and justice. The Scriptures of truth, the word of God, contained in the books of the Old and New Testament, are the balances of the sanctuary, in which persons, principles, and practices, are to be weighed; and sad it is where they are found light and wanting: men, both of high and low degree, when put here, are lighter than vanity. The Pharisee, or self-righteous person, when weighed in the balance of God's law, which is holy, just, and good, will be found wanting of that holiness and righteousness he pretends to, and appear to be an unholy and an unrighteous man; his righteousness, neither for the matter of it, nor manner of performing it, being agreeable to that law, and so no righteousness in the sense of it, Deuteronomy 6:25, it being imperfect, and so leaves him to the curse of it, Galatians 3:10, and not being performed in a pure and spiritual manner that it requires, is rejected by it; and miserable will be the case of such a man at the day of judgment, when his works will be found wanting, and not answerable to the demands of a righteous law, and he without the wedding garment of Christ's righteousness, and so naked and speechless. The hypocrite, and formal professor, when weighed in the balance of the Scripture, will be found wanting the true grace of God; his faith will appear to be feigned, and his hope groundless, and his love to be in word and in tongue only, and not at all to answer to the description of true grace given in the word of God; and bad will it be with such persons at last, when at the bridegroom's coming they will be destitute of the oil of true and real grace; only have that which is counterfeit, and the mere lamp of an outward profession, which will then stand them in no stead, or be of any avail unto them: in the same balances are the doctrines and principles of men to be weighed; and, such as are according to them are solid and weighty, and are comparable to gold, silver, and precious stones; but such as are not are light, and like wood, hay, and stubble, which the fire of the word will reveal, try, and burn up, not being able to stand against it; and if these are weighed in the balances, they will be found wanting of real truth and goodness, and be but as chaff to wheat; and what is the one to the other? there is no comparison between them; and dreadful will be the case of false teachers, that make and teach an abomination and a lie; and of those that are given up to believe them, these will not be able to stand the trying hour of temptation, and much less the last and final judgment. Sad for preachers of the word to be found wanting in their ministry, and hearers to be wanting in their duty; not taking care neither what they hear, nor how they hear, or whether they put in practice the good they do hear.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Tekel - This word (תקל t^eqēl) is also, according to Gesenius, a passive participle (from תקל t^eqal - “to poise, to weigh”), and means “weighed.” It would be used with reference to anything placed in a balance to ascertain its weight; and hence, like the word “measure,” would denote that the extent, dimensions, true worth, or character of anything was ascertained. As by the use of scales the weight of anything is known, so the word is applied to any estimate of character or of actions, and a balance becomes the emblem of justice. Thus God, in his judgments of men, is represented as “weighing” their actions. 1 Samuel 2:3, “the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.” Compare Job 6:2 :

“O that my grief were thoroughly weighed,

And my calamity laid in the balances together.”

Job 31:6 :

“Let me be weighed in an even balance,

That God may know mine integrity.”

The balance thus used to denote judgment in this life became also the emblem of judgment in the future state, when the conduct of men will be accurately estimated, and justice dealt out to them according to the strict rules of equity. To illustrate this, I will insert a copy of an Egyptian “Death Judgment,” with the remarks of the editor of the “Pictorial Bible” in regard to it: “The Egyptians entertained the belief that the actions of the dead were solemnly weighed in balances before Osiris, and that the condition of the departed was determined according to the preponderance of good or evil. Such judgment scenes are very frequently represented in the paintings and papyri of ancient Egypt, and one of them we have copied as a suitable illustration of the present subject. One of these scenes, as represented on the walls of a small temple at Dayr-el-Medeeneh, has been so well explained by Mr. Wilkinson, that we shall avail ourselves of his description, for although that to which it refers is somewhat different from the one which we have engraved, his account affords an adequate elucidation of all that ours contains. ‘Osiris, seated on his throne, awaits the arrival of those souls that are ushered into Amenti. The four genii stand before him on a lotus-blossom (ours has the lotus without the genii), the female Cerberus sits behind them, and Harpocrates on the crook of Osiris. Thoth, the god of letters, arrives in the presence of Osiris, bearing in his hand a tablet, on which the actions of the deceased are noted down, while Horus and Arceris are employed in weighing the good deeds of the judged against the ostrich feather, the symbol of truth and justice. A cynocephalus, the emblem of truth, is seated on the top of the balance. At length arrives the deceased, who appears between two figures of the goddess, and bears in his hand the symbol of truth, indicating his meritorious actions, and his fitness for admission to the presence of Osiris.’

“If the Babylonians entertained a similar notion, the declaration of the prophet, ‘Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting!’ must have appeared exceedingly awful to them. But again, there are allusions in this declaration to some such custom of literally weighing the royal person, as is described in the following passage in the account of Sir Thomas Roe’s embassy to the great Mogul: ‘The first of September (which was the late Mogul’s birthday), he, retaining an ancient yearly custom, was, in the presence of his chief grandees, weighed in a balance: the ceremony was performed within his house, or tent, in a fair spacious room, whereinto none were admitted but by special leave. The scales in which he was thus weighed were plated with gold: and so was the beam, on which they hung by great chains, made likewise of that most precious metal. The king, sitting in one of them, was weighed first against silver coin, which immediately afterward was distributed among the poor; then was he weighed against gold; after that against jewels (as they say), but I observed (being there present with my ambassador) that he was weighed against three several things, laid in silken bags in the contrary scale. When I saw him in the balance, I thought on Belshazzar, who was found too light. By his weight (of which his physicians yearly keep an exact account), they presume to guess of the present state of his body, of which they speak flatteringly, however they think it to be. ‘“

Thou art weighed in the balances - That is, this, in the circumstances, is the proper interpretation of this word. It would apply to anything whose value was ascertained by weighing it; but as the reference here was to the king of Babylon, and as the whole representation was designed for him, Daniel distinctly applies it to him: “thou art weighed.” On the use and application of this language, see 1 Samuel 2:3 : “The Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed.” Compare also Job 31:6; Proverbs 16:2, Proverbs 16:11.

And art found wanting - This is added, like the previous phrase, as an explanation. Even if the word could have been read by the Chaldeans, yet its meaning could not have been understood without a Divine communication, for though it were supposed to be applicable to the monarch, it would still be a question what the result of the weighing or trial would be. That could have been known to Daniel only by a communication from on high.