Introduction. I. Title. Taken fr. name of the person whose hist. it records, called by the Jews Megil lah Esther, the vol. of Esther. II. Author. Opinions much divided. Some (Augustine, etc.) say Ezra : others ascribe it to the joint labours of the Gt. Synagogue: while Philo assigns it to Joachin, S. of Joshua, H. priest, who returned with Zerubbabel: and others think it was written by Mordecai, and found their view on ix. 20-23. Prob. it is a translated extract fr. a Persian record of the time: hence (1) absence of name of God; (2) use of Persian word Purim; (3) minute acquaintance with details of Pers. Empire, and names of officials; (4) designation of Esther as "the queen;" (5) and of Mordecai as "the Jew." III. Canonicity. This has never been doubted. The Feast of Purim, observed to present time, is proof of reality of events recorded. It may be placed betw. vi. and vii. caps. of Ezra. In our copies the bk. ends with . 3 of cap. x: but in Gk, and Vulg. there are ten verses more, together with six more chapters wh. the Gk. and Lat. Churches regard as canonical. These are supposed to have been compiled by some Hellenistic Jew, and as they are not extant in Hebrew, they are expunged fr. the sac. canon by Protestants. IV. Purpose. It shows how the Jews, scattered among the heathen, were preserved, though doomed to destruction. "Though the name of God is not found in the bk., His hand is plainly seen, anticipating threatened evil, defeating and overruling it to the greater good of the Jews, and even of the heathen. The Jews in Babylon were not alone in peril. Had Haman succeeded, the Jews throughout the world inust have perished, and with them the whole visible Ch. of God, since the power of Persia was then supreme at Jerusalem, and throughout Asia. CHAPTER THE FIRST. 1--4. (1) Ahasuerus, the well-known Xerxes who figures in Grecian hist. This name-Ahas.-was an official title of kings of Persia.a (2) Shushan, Susa.b (3) third.. feast, etc., in this yr. Xerxes was preparing for his Grecian expedition. (4) when, etc., Persian custom to unite great councils with great festivities. B.C. 521. the feast of Czar, Pharaon, banks Indus, called istan land or Hindustan, i.e. land of the Hindoos, as AfghanAfghans, etc. Neh. i. 1. Herodotus (vii. 6, 135, 136, ix. 107) speaks of it as Xerxes; see also Eschylus, Pers. 15, residence of teric, Antiq. 385. The feast of Ahasuerus.-The duration of the feast recorded in the above passage is, however, very extraordinary. It continued for half a year, as the Persian year consisted of 360 days. There are few examples of any festivals of such long duration. The apocryphal book of Judith records that Nabuchodonosor the Assyrian, after his victory over Arphaxad, banqueted all his army, comprising a multitude of men out of various nations for 120 days at Nineveh. The most remarkable parallel instance of protracted and abundant feasting is that of a Gaul named Ariamnes, who undertook to feast all the Gaulish nation, for an entire year. And he performed his promise; for he caused tents, each capable of containing 300 men, to be pitched at regular distances on all the principal roads, keeping in each of them 124, 563. boilers furnished with all kinds of meats in abundance, as wellc Diodorus Sicuas vessels full of wine, and a great number of attendants to wait lus, xi. 2. upon the guests, and supply all their wants."-Evils of gluttony. v. 3. J. C. Die-It is no slight argument of the dishonour we incur by gluttony, that nothing is more carefully avoided in a well-bred company. Nothing would be thought by such more brutal and rude than the discovery of any marks of having eaten intemperately, of having exceeded that proportion of food which is requisite for our nourishment. The influence that our food has upon our health, its tendency to preserve or impair our constitution, is the measure of its temperance or excess. He is alone temperate who eats not to gratify his taste but to preserve his life; who is the same at every table as his own; who when he feasts is not cloyed, and sees all the delicacies before him that luxury can accumulate, yet preserves a due abstinence in the midst of them. To govern our appetite is necessary; but there is no necessity that we should always mortify it. Life is no more to be passed in constant selfdenial than in a round of sensual enjoyments. We should endeavour that it may not be, at any time, painful to us to deny ourselves what is improper for us; and, on that as well as other accounts, is it most fitting that we should frequently practise self-denial-that we should often forego what would delight us. But to do this continually cannot be required of us, because it is not reasonable to think that it should be our duty wholly to debar ourselves of that food which our palate is formed to relish, and which may be used without any prejudice to our virtue or our health. Experience proves that nothing contributes more to the preservation of life than temperance; and they who describe the golden age, or the age of innocence, and near a thousand years of life, represent the customary food of it as the plainest and most simple. The dissuasives from eating intemperately, that appear of the greatest weight, are these: It is the grossest abuse of the keeps a medium borch. stored with pro- bodies of those "Such whose sole bliss is eating, who can give but that one brutal reason why they live." Juvenal. "Some men are born to feast, and not to fight; whose sluggish fair honour's field, still on minds, e'en in B.C. 521. gifts of Providence. It is the vilest debasement of ourselves. Our bodies owe to it the most painful diseases, and generally a turn."- Joanna speedy decay. It frequently interrupts the use of our nobler their dinner Baillie. e Dean Bolton. the feast made to people a Eschylus (Pers. 3) applies Poluchrusos to 6 Ezek. xxvii. 18; the mountain dOften pos influence; as Atossa, Queen of Darius, the mo. of Xerxes. Hero sessed of great dotus, iii. 134, vii. 7, Eschylus, Pers. 158-160. vv.7-9. J.C. Die- Memoirs. "Honour's a -Beaumont and f Harmer. Vashti is summoned, and refuses to obey faculties, and is certain, at length, greatly to enfeeble them. The straits to which it often reduces us, occasion our falling into crimes which would otherwise have been our utter abhorrence.e 5-9. (5) garden, park, paradise. (6) hangings, curtains of marquees, or pavilions. beds, couches, divans. (7) in.. gold, hence profusion of the precious metal." royal wine, it. wine of the kingdom; prob. Chalybonian. (8) compel, to begin, or refrain. (9) queen, the supreme queen. Gold and silver beds.-These beds of gold and silver may receive illustration from modern Asiatic furniture; the divan, or hall of audience, as also the room for receiving guests in private houses, is generally covered with a Persian carpet, round which are placed cushions of different shape and size, in cases of gold and silver rincob, or of scarlet cloth embroidered; these are occasionally moved into courts and gardens, and placed under the shahmyanah for the accommodation of company.e The marble pavement.—Dr. Russel does not represent the pavement of the courts as all mosaic work, and equally adorned, but he tells us that it is usually that part that lies between the fountain and the arched alcove on the south side that is thus beautified, supposing that there is but one alcove in a court; however, it should seem in some other parts of the East there are several of these alcoves opening into the court. Maundrell, who calls them duans, in his account of the houses of Damascus, says expressly, that they have generally several on all sides of the court, "being placed at such different points, that at one or other of them you may always have either the shade or the sun, which you please." Are not these alcoves, or duans, of which, according to this, there might be several in the court of the palace of Ahasuerus, what the sacred writer means by the beds adorned with silver and gold? (Esth. i. 6.) I shall else where show that the bed where Esther was sitting, and on which Haman threw himself, must more resemble the modern Oriental duans, or divans, than the beds on which the Romans reclined at their entertainments; and, consequently, it is more natural to understand those beds of these alcoves, or duans, richly adorned with gold and silver, while on the lower variegated pavements, carpets were also laid, for the reception of those that could not find a place in these duans; on which pavements, Dr. Shaw tells us, they are wont, in Barbary, when much company is to be entertained, to strew mats and carpets. 10-12. (10) Mehuman, etc., writer of this bk. minutely acquainted with palace affairs. (11) Vashti.. beauty, her name beautiful woman. (12) refused,a her modesty and rank forbade that she should make a spectacle of herself to gratify a crowd of drunken and licentious revellers. wroth, v. 12. H. Hughes, this was like that Xerxes who flogged the sea for destroying his Fem. Char. Vash-bridge of boats. a See Herodotus, v. 18. ti, ii. 497. "Men cannot la- The deposition of Vashti.-In this scene we have sundry bour on always persons to contemplate. I. The first person who rivets attention They must have is the king, Ahasuerus. In him we observe-1. The loss of laxation. They self-respect; 2. Disregard of the rights of others; 3. Loss of cannot sleep self-control. II. Let us now consider the noble queen, whose intervals of re feelings, position, and relations, he had so grossly outraged. III. Glance at some other persons in this history-lesson. The whole was intended to show-1. What were the circumstances against which Providence was making provision; 2. To remind us that this God is the same for ever. Historical parallel.—Every classical reader will remember the parallel story of the imprudence of Candaules. Candaules, king of Lydia, whose wife was remarkable for personal attractions, promised in a fit of intoxication to "show her beauty" to his favourite, Gyges. This promise he performed by introducing him into the queen's apartment, according to the mythologists, by the use of a ring, which rendered the wearer invisible. The outraged queen, disgusted at the brutal drunkenness of her consort, with a significant look and gesture placed a dagger in the hand of Gyges, who instantly slew the king, and, afterwards marrying his widow, obtained the throne of Lydia.-The queen's feast. The women are not permitted to associate with the other sex at an Eastern banquet; but they are allowed to entertain one another in their own apartinents. When Ahasuerus, the king of Persia, treated all the people of his capital with a splendid feast, Vashti, the queen, we are informed," made a banquet for the women in the royal house, which belonged to King Ahasuerus." This, observes Chardin, is the custom of all the East; the women have their feasts at the same time, but apart from the men. And Maillet informs us, in his letters, that the same custom is observed in Egypt. This is undoubtedly the reason that the prophet distinctly mentions "the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride;" he means that the noise of nuptial mirth was heard in different apartments. The personal voices of the newly-married pair cannot be understood, but the noisy mirth which a marriage feast commonly excites; for in Syria, and probably in all the surrounding countries, the bride is condemned to absolute silence, and fixed by remorseless etiquette to the spot where she has been seated. When the banquet was finished, and the guests had removed, the poor came in and ate up the fragments, so that nothing was lost. This custom will account for the command to the servants, in the parable of the supper, "Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. And the servant said, Lord, it is done as thou hast commanded, and yet there is room. And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." These poor and destitute persons were called to the entertainment only before the time when, according to the custom of the country, they were expected to attend." 13-15. (13) which.. times, knew the laws, what custom required. (14) seven.. Media, Ezr. vii. 14. which.. face, his privy council, his cabinet ministers. (15) what.. law, a momentous question for these great lords. Something must be done, but it must be according to law. According to what law, beyond their own muddled wills, was it that the Q. had been summoned ? The beauty of Vashti.-The Persians, on festival occasions, used to produce their women in public. To this purpose Herodotus relates a story of seven Persians being sent to Amyntas, a Grecian B.C. 521. these through intervals. What are they to do? Why, if they do not work or sleep, they must have relaxation, and if they have not relaxation from healthy sources, they will be very likely to take it from the poisoned fountains of intemperance. Or if they have pleathough innocent, sures which, are forbidden by the maxims of public morality, their very pleasures are likely to become poisoned fountains." -Orville Dewey. "Who hath not proved how fee bly words essay to fix one spark of beauty's Who doth not heavenly ray? feel, until his failing sight faints into dimness with its own delight, his changing cheek, his sinking heart confess the might, the ma jesty of loveliness ?"-Byron. Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder." Zimmerman. b Paxton. the king consults with his ministers losopher being asked what were B.C. 521. vens above our heads, and the feeling of duty in our hearts." Bossuet. God dresses the prince, who received them hospitably, and gave them a splendid entertainment. When, after the entertainment, they began to drink, one of the Persians thus addressed Amyntas: "Prince of Macedonia, it is a custom with us Persians, whenever we have a public entertainment, to introduce our concubines and young wives." Beauty is the On this principle Ahasuerus gave command to bring frail and weary his queen Vashti into the public assembly."-The queen's refusal. weed in which-When a person is speaking to you, on almost any subject, he soul which He keeps saying every moment, "Be not angry, my lord;' or, has called into "Let not your anger burn.' Judah said to Joseph, "Let not time." Michael thine anger burn.' "Go not near that man; his anger is on Angelo. Well, well, what is the matter with that fellow?" a Burder. "Not much; some one has put the torch to his anger." Go, throw some water on that fire, or it will not soon be out." 16-18. (16) Memucan, last named in v. 14; prob. he is now bidding for office. (17) so . a eyes, as many of them consciously deserved to be. A hint here of the position of woman at that time and place. (18) ladies, wives. say, they would not be slow to twit their husbands. contempt, in the women. wrath, in the men. b Roberts. Memucan the conduct "Where the telligent, there is always the look of beauty, with a right heart." Leigh Hunt. "What tender force, what dig nity divine, what virtue consecrating every feature; around that neck what fire." 66 66 Position of woman in the East.-The true position of the female sex is still so little understood in the East, and even among the Asiatic Hebrews so little regarded, that the following expression forms part of the daily prayer of the Oriental Jew:"Lord of the world, I thank Thee that Thou hast not made me a woman.' Esther dramatised.-When Racine composed the tragedy of Esther, to please Madame Maintenon, she very strongly recommended it at court, and every one was charmed with the performance except an honest curate, who refused to see it. Being very urgently pressed for his reasons, he told Madame M. that she knew he was in the habit of publicly reprobating the stage from the pulpit, and that though the tragedy of Esther was far different from the generality of plays, yet it was still "All orators are known to be a play; adding, that were he to yield to the request, his hearers would compare his conduct with his sermons, and, in their practice, would pursue the course most suited to their sinful inclinations. dross dumb when beauty pleadeth." -Shakespeare. at his ad vice the king deposes Vashti 8, 12, 15. 19-22. (19) laws. . altered,a for if altered, the Q. with regained power might punish those who degraded her. royal estate, position, title, portion. unto.. she, as they hoped more subservient. (20) wives.. honour, whether they were a viii. 8; Da. vi. worthy of it or no. (21) saying.. princes, they could contrive nothing better. (22) writing, character employed in writing; a peculiar dialect. They would have it made clear to all. man.. house, and be lord and master there. that.. people,d the sense is that a husband should use the language of his people, and constrain his wives-even though foreigners-to do the same. b viii. 9. c Ep. v. 22-24; 1 Ti. ii. 12. d Heb. that one should publish it according to the language of his people. "Beauty of form affects the mind, but then it must be understood that it is not the mere shell that Inconsistency in the family.-I have been in his family, said Christian of Talkative, and have observed him both at home and abroad; and I know what I say of him is the truth. His house is as empty of religion as the white of an egg is of savour. There is neither prayer nor sign of repentance for sin; yea, the brute in his kind serves God far better than he. He is the very stain, reproach, and shame of religion to all that know him; it |