B.C. cir. 509. troubled mariners are seeking the shore. Even in your deepest griefs, rejoice in God. As waves phosphoresce, let joys flash from the swing of the sorrows of your souls."-Beecher. b Calder Campbell. the Jews obey Mordecai a iii. 6, 7. Taylor. A thought of joy, that comes with sudden power, Its passage is invisible! The shower That falls is seen; the lightning o'er the bower Rent boughs and wither'd buds! But air and thought From heaven the solace is ! 23-25. (23) Jews.. begun, i.e. in the keeping of the feast they had instituted. (24) because, etc.,a the reason, a deliverance never to be forgotten. Pur, iii. 7. (25) but.. king," explaining how affairs stood. letters, as before related, ref. to second decree, etc. b vv. 13, 14, vii. 5, f., viii. 3, f. The accursed name.-The Rev. Samuel Clark, writing on the Covetousness feast of Purim, says :-"The reader [of the Book of Esther in swells the princi- the Jewish synagogue] translates the text, as he goes on, into pal to no purpose, and lessens the the vernacular tongue of the place, and makes comments on use to all pur-particular passages. He reads in a histrionic manner, suiting poses. -Jeremy his tones and gestures to the changes in the subject-matter. "If you do not When he comes to the name of Haman, the whole congregation keep pride out cry out, 'May his name be blotted out;' or, 'Let the name of of your souls, and the ungodly perish.' At the same time, in some places, the boys pride, God will who are present make a great noise with their hands, with keep your souls mallets, and with pieces of wood or stone, on which they have written the name of Haman, and which they rub together so as to obliterate the writing." c your souls out of out of heaven.". Dyer. c Smith, Dic.of Bib. the feast called the feast of Purim a On the day of Esther is read. 6, 13; Buxtorf, Syn. Jud. cxxix.; Winer, R. W. B. ii. 289; Jahn, Arch. 358; Allen, Judaism, 418. b C. Simeon, M.A. the feast 26-28. (26) Purim, see Intro. letter, v. 20. (27) ordained, etc., incorporated this with the other national feasts. (28) days.. generation, as they are, in all lands, to this day. The feast of Purim.-We shall consider-I. The feast itself. 1. The occasion on which it was instituted; 2. The manner of its observance. II. The end and reasons for which it was appointed. It doubtless was designed-1. As a memorial of God's goodness to them; 2. As an incentive to love and serve Him; 3. As an encouragement to trust in God. Address-(1) Those who make a profession of religion; (2) Those who show hostility to the people of God; (3) Those who in the midst of a persecuting world have been preserved. Dangers in life.-I think we ought to buoy for ourselves in our course, as we buoy a harbour. Off this shoal a black buoy floats, and says to those who sail by, as plainly as if it spoke in all languages, "Keep to the right here; and over against it floats another, and says, Keep to the left here." Now, in life's ocean, wherever we know the quicksands are, wherever we have once been stranded, let us sink the buoy and anchor of memory, and keep to the right or the left, as the shoal may be. 66 29-32. (29) Esther.. Purim,a this not a Persian decree, would have force as coming fr. a Jewess in high authority. (30) words.. truth, congratulations. (31) matters.. ery, not only was the deliverance to be remembered, but also those religious acts by wh. it was preceded. (32) decree, v. 29. written.. book, this Book of Esther. A pacific minister.-George Wishart, one of the first Scottish martyrs at the time of the Reformation, being desired to preach on the Lord's-day in the church of Mauchline, went thither with that design; but the sheriff of Ayr had, in the night time, put a garrison of soldiers into the church to keep him out. Hugh Campbell, of Kinzeancleugh, with others in the parish, were exceedingly offended at this impiety, and would have entered the church by force; but Wishart would not suffer it, saying, "Brethren, it is the word of peace which I preach unto you; the blood of no man shall be shed for it this day. Jesus Christ is as mighty in the fields as in the church, and He Himself, while He lived in the flesh, preached oftener in the desert and on the sea-side, than in the temple of Jerusalem." Upon this the people were appeased, and went with him to the edge of a moor, on the south-west of Mauchline, where, having placed himself upon a mound of earth, he preached to a great multitude. He continued speaking for more than three hours, God working wondrously by him, insomuch that Laurence Ranken, the Laird of Shield, a very profane person, was converted by his discourse. The tears ran from his eyes, to the astonishment of all present; and the whole of his after life witnessed that his profession was without hypocrisy.c CHAPTER THE TENTH. land.. 1-3. (1) tribute, to replenish his exchequer; perh. to provide means to repel the Greek invasion under Cimon." see, either all his dominions, or those especially threatened. (2) written.. Persia, when, prob., this Bk. of Esther was extracted, see Intro. (3) next, as grand vizier, or prime minister. accepted, favourably regarded, as their leading and representative man. seeking.. people, by his influence making their property secure, and their trading safe. and.. seed, seeking for them immunity fr. danger. b Ge. xli. 40; 2 Ch. xxviii. 7. c Ne. ii. 10; Ps. cxxii. 8, 9. "This is a great fault in a chronologer, to turn parasite; an abshould be in fear of none; neither should he write anything more friendship, or else for hate; but keep himself stant in all his equal and condiscourses." -Lingua. Folute historian Ancient chronicles.-Many corroborative and illustrative anecdotes might be adduced, not only from the ancient accounts of Persia, but from the usages of other Oriental nations. Two or three of the shortest will suffice for our present purpose. Herodotus, in describing the review made by Xerxes of his vast army, states that he was attended by secretaries, who wrote down the answers which he received to the various questions which he put as he rode along the ranks in his chariot (vii. 100). The same historian represents this monarch as seated on Mount Ægaleos, to view the battle of Salamis, and whenever he saw any one of his own people displaying peculiar valour in the fight he inquired about him, and the secretaries in attendance made a note of the answer, which usually specified the name and city of the person whose deed had attracted the royal notice (viii. 90). There is no very distinct notice of the attendance of secretaries at the royal feasts; they seem rather to have been called when anything occurred for them to record-at least, at the private meals of the king; but it appears that they attended at public feasts. The travellers of the middle age, in their ampler descriptions of the "On passing state of the Mongol emperor, tell us that when he dined four through the secretaries were seated under his table to write down his words-little portal, wh. than truth, for Esther's tomb. B.C. cir. 495. we did in an arched chamber, in which dimensions pre the end of this vestibule, that we were constrained to enter it on our hands and knees, and then, standing up, we found ourselves in a under its con dark wood, which he might never revoke (Ranking`s Historical Researches, p. 75). As the king's word was also an unalterable law among almost doubled the Medes and Persians, we may infer a similar usage. These position, we facts serve to illustrate the mode in which materials were entered a small collected. Perhaps the final preparation was not unlike that in Abyssinia, as described by Bruce :—The king has near his person seen the graves an officer who is meant to be his historiographer; he is also of several rabbis. keeper of his seal, and is obliged to make a journal of the king's Having trod lightly by their actions, good and bad, without comment of his own upon them. graves, a second This, when the king dies, or at least soon after, is delivered to door of such the council, who read it over, and erase everything false in it, very confined whilst they supply every material fact which may have been sented itself at omitted, whether purposely or not. Bruce's editor (Dr. A. Murray) observes that the "complete chronicle of a reign, written by the king's historiographer, contains all the remarkable transactions at court during every day in the month throughout the whole year."-The tomb of Esther and Mordecai.-Sir John Malcolm tells us that the sepulchre of Esther and Mordecai stands near the centre of the city of Hamadan. It is a square building, terminated larger chamber, by a dome, with an inscription in Hebrew upon it, translated and to which apper- sent to him by Sir Gore Ouseley, late ambassador to the court of tained the dome. Persia. It is as follows: "Thursday, fifteenth of the month Immediately Adar, in the year 4474 from the creation of the world, was finished cave, stand two the building of this temple over the graves of Mordecai and sarcophagi, Esther by the hands of the good-hearted brothers, Elias and Samuel, made of a very the sons of the deceased Ishmael of Kashan." This tomb is carved with regarded by all the Jews who yet exist in the empire as a place of great intricacy particular sanctity; and pilgrimages are still made to it at certain of pattern, and seasons of the year, in the same spirit of holy penitence with which, in former times, they turned their eyes towards Jerusalem. ment, with a line Being desirous of visiting a place which Christians cannot view of inscription in without reverence, I sent to request that favour of the priest Hebrew, running under whose care it is preserved. He came to me immediately on ledge of each. my message, and seemed pleased with the respect manifested toMany other in- wards the ancient people of his nation, in the manner with which scriptions, in the I asked to be admitted to their shrine. I accompanied the priest same language, are cut on the through the town, over much ruin and rubbish, to an enclosed walls, while one piece of ground, rather more elevated than any in its immediate of the oldest anti- vicinity. In the centre was the Jewish tomb; a square building quity, engraved of brick, of a mosque-like form, with a rather elongated dome at the top; the whole seems in a very decaying state; falling fast to the mouldered condition of some wall-fragments around, which, in former times, had been connected with, and extended had been rescued the consequence of the sacred enclosure. The door that admitted from the ruins of us into the tomb is, in the ancient sepulchral fashion of the the first edifice, country, very small; consisting of a single stone of great thick by the Tartars; ness, and turning on its own pivots from one side. Its key is and, with the always in possession of the head of the Jews resident at Hamasarcophagi dan; and doubtless has been so preserved, from the time of the themselves, was holy pair's interment, when the grateful sons of the captivity, whose lives they had rescued from universal massacre, first erected a monument over the remains of their benefactors, and obeyed Sir R. K. Porter. the ordinance of gratitude, in making the anniversary of their preservation a lasting memorial of heaven's mercy, and the just faith of Esther and Mordecai.e richness of twisted orna round the upper on slab of a white marble, is let into the wall itself. The priest assured me it at its demolition preserved on the вате conse crated spot." d Dr. Kitto. e Sir R.K. Porter. Introduction. I. Title. So called fr. name of the patriarch whose life and experience it narrates. II. Author. Opinion much divided. Some (as Lightfoot, fr. erroneous version of xxxii. 16, 17) say Elihu ; some (Ilgen) a descendant of Elihu ; some (as Luther, Grotius, and Doederlein), Solomon; and some (as Huet, Kennicott, Heath, Bp. Warburton, and Dr. Good) say Moses. This is the more generally received view; but see Abp. Magee (Dis. on Atonement, ii. 63-80). In opp. to this theory (1) characters of antiq. place the bk. many cents. bef. time of Moses. (2) There is total absence of any allusion to manners, customs, and hist. of Israel. (3) The style of Job (as observed by Bp. Lowth) is very dif. fr. poetical style of Moses. Some eminent authorities (Schultens, Peters, Dr. Hales, Bp. Tomline, Bp. Lonth) suppose it to have been written by Job himself, or a contemporary. III. Time. The period in wh. Job lived has occasioned much discussion. Prob. this was earlier than Abraham. If so, this bk. may be read betw. caps. xi. and xii. of Gen. Several things strengthen this view. (1) The long life of Job,-200 yrs. (2) Absence of all ref. to Israelitish affairs. (3) No ref. to destr. of cities of the plain, of wh. Job, had he lived after that event, must have heard. (4) Only one form of idolatry, and that the most anc., the worship of heavenly bodies, is mentioned,-xxxi. 26-28. (5) Manners and customs are those of anc. patriarchs. (6) Job's religion is like that of the patriarchs, one of sacrifices without priests, etc. (7) Dr. Hales uses an argument founded on astronomy-on ix. 9, and xxxviii. 31, 32-to show that the time of the bk. is B.C. 2130 or ab. 184 yrs. bef. birth of Abraham. IV. Style. Poetical (see note on i. 1). Even "the very existence of Job as a real person has been questioned, but without reason. He is classed in the O. T. (Ez. xiv. 14) with Noah and Dan.; and alluded to in the N. T. (Ja. v. 11) in terms wh. forbid the supposition of the history being mythical. We have no reason to doubt that, in the main, the narrative is one of facts.”—(Litton). V. Scope. The precise object much controverted. Mercenary selfishness, charged against Job (i.), is disproved in the end. Job believes that what God does is right; and resolves to trust Him (xix. 23-26). Thus the nature of real faith, and true piety, in every age are illustrated. The providence of God in its inscrutableness and mercy, and the glory of the Divine attributes, are set forth in unrivalled magnificence. "It also illus. human depravity (xxxiii. 8, 9, xxxiv. 5, 9, 35), exhibits faith in a coming Redeemer and a future life (xix. 25-28), speaks of sacrifice as the appointed means of acceptance (i. 5, xlii. 9, xxxiii. 23-28), and shows the benefit of intercessory prayer (xlii. 8, 9). Not all, of course, that even Job said in these discussions, is to be commended. The principles advanced are sometimes erroneous, and sometimes also the conclusions. Inspiration describes accurately what was said or done, without necessarily sanctioning either.”— Angus. |