²¹ But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee.^(A)

¹⁸ Then the king gave a great banquet to all his officials and ministers: “Esther’s banquet.” He also granted a holiday^[a] to the provinces and gave gifts with royal liberality.^(A)

²⁰ On the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, he made a feast for all his servants and lifted up the head of the chief cupbearer and the head of the chief baker among his servants.^(A)

¹⁰ and the inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and exchange presents, because these two prophets tormented the inhabitants of the earth.^(A)

³ You have already spent enough time in doing what the gentiles like to do, living in debauchery, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.^(A)

² He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword.^{(A) 3} After he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. (This was during the Festival of Unleavened Bread.)^{(B) 4} When he had seized him, he put him in prison and handed him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover.

The Proclamation of John the Baptist

3 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene,^(A)

Belshazzar’s Feast

5 King Belshazzar made a great feast for a thousand of his lords, and he was drinking wine in the presence of the thousand.^(A)

² Under the influence of the wine, Belshazzar commanded that they bring in the vessels of gold and silver that his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple in Jerusalem, so that the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines might drink from them.^{(B) 3} So they brought in the vessels of gold that had been taken out of the temple, the house of God in Jerusalem, and the king and his lords, his wives, and his concubines drank from them. ⁴ They drank the wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, bronze, iron, wood, and stone.^(C)