Weighed in the Balances, and Found Wanting: Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.

A hand writes four words on a palace wall, in the court's own language, in the king's own house, and the wise men of Babylon cannot read them (Daniel 5:5, 5:8). Daniel reads them as three things done to the king and his kingdom: numbered, weighed, divided (Daniel 5:26-28). The writing is the Most High answering a king who "lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven" (Daniel 5:23, KJV), in his own tongue, with a lesson in primacy, the secret, and words. The chapter is read here as enacting, on one king, the order *Witness and Proof of the Gospel of John* (Stewart, 2026cq) reads in John, with Distinction at El Elyon and man as "the singular place of judgment" (Stewart, 2026cq, §3). The verdict at the center is *ḥassîr*, "found wanting" (Strong's H2627). Its Hebrew counterpart *ḥāsēr* (H2637) is the verb the record uses for the place of man, made "a little lower than" *ʾĕlōhîm* (Psalm 8:5, KJV), and for the one who has a shepherd and "shall not want" (Psalm 23:1, KJV). The same root stands beside the counting verb of MENE in one line: "that which is wanting cannot be numbered" (Ecclesiastes 1:15, KJV). Mathematics names the same verdict a deficiency. A deficient form cannot repair itself by anything it does to itself, and the one datum that repairs it is supplied from outside (*Signature Deficiency and Rank-One Scale Extension*, Stewart, 2026de). The king was found wanting the sign. His father was hewn down to the stump, lifted up his eyes unto heaven, and his understanding returned (Daniel 4:14-15, 4:34). The rule is stated in the first person: "I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal" (Deuteronomy 32:39, KJV). The paper also files five hearings of the wall's words: *mene* as *mîn*, kind; El in *tekel*; shekel as *shem* El; *parsin* as *pardes*, the orchard; and *upharsin* as Pharisee. Each is marked as a hearing and set beside the letters that separate the sound from the root. **Keywords:** Book of Daniel, writing on the wall, Aramaic, Biblical Hebrew, Semitic philology, lexical semantics, paronomasia, divine judgment, weights and measures, Psalms, Ecclesiastes