Discovery BoxDaniel 5:3 
Context5:3 So they brought the gold and silver 1 vessels that had been confiscated from the temple, the house of God 2 in Jerusalem, and the king and his nobles, together with his wives and concubines, drank from them.
Daniel 5:10
Context5:10 Due to the noise 3 caused by the king and his nobles, the queen mother 4 then entered the banquet room. She 5 said, “O king, live forever! Don’t be alarmed! Don’t be shaken!
Daniel 6:17
Context6:17 Then a stone was brought and placed over the opening 6 to the den. The king sealed 7 it with his signet ring and with those 8 of his nobles so that nothing could be changed with regard to Daniel.
1 tc The present translation reads וְכַסְפָּא (vÿkhaspa’, “and the silver”) with Theodotion and the Vulgate. Cf. v. 2. The form was probably accidentally dropped from the Aramaic text by homoioteleuton.
2 tn Aram “the temple of the house of God.” The phrase seems rather awkward. The Vulgate lacks “of the house of God,” while Theodotion and the Syriac lack “the house.”
3 tn Aram “words of the king.”
4 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 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.
6 tn Aram “mouth.”
7 sn The purpose of the den being sealed was to prevent unauthorized tampering with the opening of the den. Any disturbance of the seal would immediately alert the officials to improper activity of this sort.
8 tn Aram “the signet rings.”
