Some have seen a contradiction between this statement and the account of the preceding verse that records an address of the king to the wise men. The most natural explanation is that the king’s address recorded in v. 7 was spoken to the wise men who were already present at the banquet when the handwriting appeared on the wall. Verse 8 would then apply to “all the king’s wise men,” including those who came into the banquet hall in response to Belshazzar’s command.

 The reason is not stated, and any explanation that may be offered is only conjecture. The words were apparently in Aramaic (see on vs. 26-28). But the words were so few and so cryptic that even a knowledge of their individual meanings would not reveal the message concealed in them. Whether the king himself could not read because of excessive use of wine, or whether the letters themselves were indistinguishable because of their dazzling brilliance (see EGW, Supplementary Material, on vs. 5-9), or whether the script was singular, decipherable only by divine illumination, is not stated. The conjecture that the characters were in the ancient Hebrew script and consequently illegible to the Babylonians does not appear plausible. It is extremely unlikely that the wise men of Babylon should not have known these old Semitic characters, which had been used not only by the Hebrews but also by the Phoenicians and other peoples of Western Asia.