[437] Doubtless suggested by Gen. xli. 42 (comp. Herod., iii. 20; Xen., _Anab._, I. ii. 27; _Cyrop._, VIII. v. 18), as other parts of Daniel's story recall that of Joseph. Comp. Esther vi. 8, 9. The word for "scarlet" or red-purple is _argona_. The word for "chain" (_Q'rî. ham'nîka_) is in Theodotion rendered μανιάκης, and occurs in later Aramaic. The phrase rendered "third ruler" is very uncertain. The inference drawn from it in the _Speaker's Commentary_--that Nabunaid was king, and Belshazzar second ruler--is purely nugatory. For the Hebrew word _taltî_ cannot mean "third," which would be תְּלִיתַי. Ewald and most Hebraists take it to mean "rule, as one of the board of three." For "triumvir" comp. vi. 2.
[438] 1 Kings xv. 13. She is precariously identified by the apologists with the Nitocris of Herodotus; and it is imagined that she may have been a daughter of Nebuchadrezzar, married to Nabunaid before the murder of Neriglissar.
[439] Isa. xliv. 25.
[440] The word _Qistrîn_, "knots," may mean "hard questions"; but Mr. Bevan (p. 104) thinks there may be an allusion to knots used as magic spells. (Comp. Sen., _Œdip._, 101, "_Nodosa_ sortis verba et _implexos_ dolos.") He quotes Al-Baidawi on the Koran, lxiii. 4, who says that "a Jew casts a spell on Mohammed by tying knots in a cord, and hiding it in a well." But Gabriel told the prophet to send for the cord, and at each verse of the Koran recited over it a knot untied itself. See _Records of the Past_, iii. 141; and Duke, _Rabb. Blumenlehre_, 231.
[441] So Elisha, 2 Kings v. 16.
[442] The _Menê_ is repeated for emphasis. In the _Upharsîn_ (ver. 25) the _u_ is merely the "and," and the word is slightly altered, perhaps to make the paronomasia with "Persians" more obvious. According to Buxtorf and Gesenius, _peras_, in the sense of "divide," is very rare in the Targums.
[443] _Journal Asiatique_, 1886. (Comp. Nöldeke, _Ztschr. für Assyriologie_, i. 414-418; Kamphausen, p. 46.) It is M. Clermont-Ganneau who has the credit of discovering what seems to be the true interpretation of these mysterious words. _M'nê_ (Heb. _Maneh_) is the Greek μνᾶ, Lat. _mina_, which the Greeks borrowed from the Assyrians. _Tekel_ (in the Targum of Onkelos _tîkla_) is the Hebrew _shekel_. In the _Mishnah_ a half-mina is called _peras_, and an Assyrian weight in the British Museum bears the inscription _perash_ in the Aramaic character. (See Bevan, p. 106; Schrader, _s.v._ "Mene" in Riehm, _R.W.B._) _Peres_ is used for a half-mina in _Yoma_, f. 4, 4; often in the Talmud; and in _Corp. Inscr. Sem._, ii. 10 (Behrmann).
[444] The word occurs in _Perez_ Uzza. There still, however, remain some obviously unexplored mysteries about these words. Paronomasia, as I showed long ago in other works, plays a noble and profound part in the language of emotion; and that the interpretation should here be made to turn upon it is not surprising by any means. We find it in the older prophets. Thus in Jer. i. 11, 12: "What seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of _an almond tree_. Then said the Lord unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will _hasten_ My word to perform it." The meaning here depends on the resemblance in Hebrew between _shaqeed_, "an almond tree" ("a wakeful, or early tree"), and _shoqeed_, "I will hasten," or "am wakeful over."
And that the same use of plays on words was still common in the Maccabean epoch we see in the Story of Susanna. There Daniel plays on the resemblance between σχῖνος, "a mastick tree," and σχίσει, "shall cut thee in two"; and πρῖνος, "a holm oak," and πρίσαι, "to cut asunder." We may also point to the fine paronomasia in the Hebrew of Isa. v. 7, Mic. i. 10-15, and other passages. "Such a conceit," says Mr. Ball, "may seem to us far-fetched and inappropriate; but the Oriental mind delights in such _lusus verborum_, and the peculiar force of all such passages in the Hebrew prophets is lost in our version because they have not been preserved in translation."