The book of Esther belongs, to the writings of the Captivity. Ezekiel, Daniel and Esther were all written beyond the Euphrates, but Esther after the seventy years had ended and a portion of the race had returned to Palestine. A large part of the people never returned but continued to observe the Jewish law, as nearly as it could be kept in a foreign land, and were always spoken of by the Jews of Palestine as the Captivity. They continued to be a numerous people down to the time of the Savior, and there are proofs in the Epistles of Peter that the same apostle who first offered the gospel to the Jews of Jerusalem, and the Gentiles of Cæsarea, also offered it to the Jews of the Captivity.

      The book of Esther differs in some respects from most other portions of the Scriptures. The name of God is not once named in it, Jerusalem is not spoken of, and it is devoid of religious teaching, but seems to be a true and reliable [70] account of a great peril to the Jewish race and of the means providentially provided for their preservation, a preservation that has been annually commemorated ever since, even to the present time, in the feast of Purim. The author is not known; some have conjectured that it was Mordecai, but this is uncertain.

      The capital of the world had changed with the Persian conquest from Babylon to Susa, or as it is spelled in the Scriptures, Shushan. Babylon had lost its pre-eminence and was only the capital of a province. Not only does the book of Esther belong to the Persian capital, but the customs are all in harmony with what we know of ancient Persia. Of Esther we know nothing except what is related in the book. King Ahasuerus has been satisfactorily identified with the vain glorious, voluptuous and capricious Xerxes, who led two millions of men to attempt the conquest of Greece. The name Ahasuerus means etymologically the same as the Greek word Xerxes; in the third year of the reign of Xerxes he called a great council of his governors to take steps to carry on the war against Greece; in the third year of the reign of Ahasuerus he made a great feast to which the governors of 127 provinces were invited; in the seventh year of Xerxes he returned to Susa from his Grecian expedition and abandoned himself to pleasure; in the seventh year of king Ahasuerus he chooses Esther for queen out of a large number of beautiful virgins who had been gathered for his harem. The characters also correspond well. The man who chastised the Hellespont because a storm arose, put to death the builders of a bridge of boats across an arm of the sea because it was broken by the fury of the waves, ordered his uncle to death because he gave him wise counsel, and offered a reward to a man who would invent a new pleasure, is just the kind of a man who would order his queen to expose herself, in a fit of intoxication, decree that a subject race should be murdered to please a favorite, or hang that favorite with his change of mood. On the other hand the resolution of Esther to peril herself, and to die, if need be, for her race, lifts her high in the rank of noble women, even if her character is somewhat sullied by her revengeful spirit-towards the sons of Haman.

      10. Again Esther spoke unto Hatach, and gave him commandment unto Mordecai. In order to understand this lesson all the preceding chapters ought to be read. Esther, an orphan, raised by Mordecai, a Jew, and probably an inferior officer of the Persian court, had, by her singular beauty, been chosen for queen. At this time the chief minister of the king was Haman, of Amalekite ancestry, an ambitious and cruel man. All the courtiers and servants fawned upon the great man and showed him every kind of honor, except Mordecai. He, a stern Jew, probably remembered the ancient enmity of the Amalekite race, and perhaps also he was so confident of advancement through the queen's influence, that he cared little for the good will of Haman. The latter, to take vengeance upon Mordecai, induced the king to consent to the slaughter of the Jews and the confiscation of their property, promising him ten thousand silver talents. At this time we know that the royal treasury was depleted by the great expenses and disasters of the Grecian war, and this fact induced the king to consent more readily. Mordecai, ascertaining the plot, appeared in mourning at the king's gate, and when Esther sent to know the reason, informed her and requested her to secure from the king [71] the reversal of the murderous decree. Up to this time the king knew nothing of the race of Esther nor her relationship to Mordecai, a not surprising circumstance when it is borne in mind that he had many hundred wives and concubines. Esther, in her reply to Mordecai's request, tells him of the difficulty of approaching the king.

      11. There is one law of his to put him to death. The person of a Persian king was held to be sacred, and none could intrude on his privacy under peril of death, unless invited. Even then etiquette required subjects to crawl prone upon the earth, concealing even their hands in their sleeves. Herodotus, the Greek historian who visited Persia, notes this custom and the penalty of intrusion into the king's presence. Esther declares that this law applies to every one, man or woman, even the queen. Except . . . shall hold out the golden sceptre. All the ancient representations of the Persian kings show them holding a long, tapering staff, the golden sceptre, the emblem of power. If one came into the royal presence and the sceptre was extended, it implied mercy and favor; if it was not extended, it was a signal of death. I have not been called in unto the king these thirty days. Even the queen only saw the king at rare intervals. Court etiquette did not allow her to seek him, and it was only at long intervals, amid a crowded harem, that she was bidden to come to the royal presence. Thirty days had passed since Esther had seen him and a long interval might pass before she would be invited again. With the free and easy ways of Western life and the social equality of women under Christianity, we find it hard to imagine the repression and isolation of the sex in the East.

      12, 13. Think not that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. In order to strengthen the indecision of Esther, and to overcome her timidity and womanly reserve, Mordecai assures her that the decree involves her as well as the rest of her race. The king may not be aware of that fact, but her jealous rivals in the king's household have doubtless learned it, and means will be taken under the decree to get rid of her. Not only for the preservation of the race, but for self-preservation, she must act. [72]

      14. Then shall enlargement . . . arise . . from another place. Mordecai's message conveys the idea that God, in his providence, has exalted Esther and placed her near the king, in order to be the deliverer of her imperiled people. If she shall prove faithless to her high trust and shrink from the responsibility God will find some other way for their deliverance, for they have not yet accomplished their destiny, but Esther and her father's house, including Mordecai, her cousin, but father by adoption, shall be destroyed. Mordecai knew well that he was destined to death by Haman, his great enemy, and that he must die unless his wicked schemes were thwarted. He predicts that Esther will be involved in his own calamity because she did not make the effort in her power to save her race. Though she was queen, and he only a servant of the king, he speaks with all the freedom of a father.

      15, 16. Fast for me, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. Esther had made up her mind. She would intrude herself upon the king and ask the salvation of her race, even if she perished. Conscious of her danger in breaking the law, filled with anxiety over the effect of confessing that she belonged to a captive race, she asks a rigid and solemn fast for three days, accompanied by prayer in her behalf, and proposes to keep the fast herself with her maidens. She felt that her success depended upon the favor of God and shows that she had profound faith in prayer. At the close of the fast she would leave all to God, would seek the king's presence, and would succeed or die. There is something peculiarly pathetic in her words, "And so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish."

      17. Mordecai went his way. He had waited at the gate for Esther's decision. When he heard it he was satisfied, and went his way to have all done that she had requested. He did not confer with her in person, or see her, but through a chamberlain (Eunuch) which class were the only males admitted to the king's harem.

      5:1. On the third day Esther put on royal apparel. On the third day from the [73] commencement of the fast she attired herself in fitting robes to appear before the king. Whoever appears in a monarch's presence must wear a court dress. Nobody can be presented to Queen Victoria unless she complies with the regulation style of attire. It was needful that Esther wear the prescribed garments of a queen into the king's presence. Stood in the inner court. The inner court, we learn from chapter 4:11, was the sacred retreat that no one was permitted to approach under penalty of death. It seems to have been a place devoted to audiences of such as the king invited to his presence. An oriental monarch secluded himself from the public gaze as something too sacred to be seen by mortal eyes, and only admitted his confidential ministers and servants and such as he granted an audience. Here he sat on his throne "over against the gate," where he could see all within the court.

      2. The king held out to Esther the golden sceptre. His eyes rested upon her soon after she entered the inner court. He was in one of his most gracious moods, and her beauty and perhaps the anxiety depicted in her countenance, moved him. At once he extended the golden sceptre as a signal that she might approach and she drew near and touched the top of the sceptre, probably the custom of suppliants who were graciously invited to a royal audience.

      3. What wilt thou, queen Esther? What is thy request? Her attitude and expression were those of a suppliant, and the king knew well that she would not have dared, timid and modest as she was, to have taken so dangerous a liberty, except compelled by some urgent necessity. Had his mood been ungracious it would have proved her ruin, but Xerxes never did things by halves, and at once, without learning her request, he promised to grant, "even unto the half of his kingdom." Any one who thinks such a promise extravagant is cited to a statement of Herodotus that this same king once promised one of his wives, when pleased with her, to grant her any request she made, without any limitation whatever. He kept his promise, too, though it involved him in the most cruel of crimes. One will think, at once, of the promise of Herod to Herodias' daughter, and the death of John.

      This verse brings us to the king's promise. The rest of the history moved easily. Esther requested the favor of the king and Haman at a banquet. There she requested the same favor for the next day and promised them to make known her secret. Then she asked life for herself and people. The king, at [74] once, asked what enemy had endangered her, on which she pointed out the plot of Haman. The king, off ended at the course of Haman, and at the liberty he took with the queen, ordered him hanged on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. The decree of the king could not be reversed, because the "laws of the Medes and Persians were unchangeable," but the Jews all over the kingdom were notified and directed to stand on their defence if attacked. Mordecai, who had before rendered the king a signal service by the detection of a conspiracy against the king's life, was advanced to the post of Haman.

      1. Lofty positions only increase dangers and responsibilities. "Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown." Those who climb to giddy heights are in most danger of a fall. In a humble, lowly life there is the least anxiety and the most content.

      2. God sometimes exalts his creatures that they may discharge some signal service in the day of trial. Moses was providentially prepared to be the leader of his people; Joseph was exalted to save the chosen race; Washington to be the Father of his country; Abraham Lincoln to emancipate the colored race; Esther to save her people in the hour of danger.

      3. Esther shows us "what one woman did." Deborah was judge of Israel; Huldah one of the prophets; the Marys and Salome among the truest, fastest and bravest friends of Jesus. Under Christianity and in our age the opportunities for female usefulness have greatly enlarged. Godly women are foremost in every good work. All have heard of the three Mrs. Judsons, of Miss Dix, Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton.

      4. There is often a crisis big with the fate of a people. If the man, or the woman can be found, when the hour is at hand, all is well; if not the moment passes and never returns. Esther had the self-devotion and courage that made her a savior of her race.

      5. The wicked plots of conspirators, who seek to compass the destruction of others, often break on their own heads. The adage runs, "Hoist with his own petard." Many a Haman has prepared a gibbet for a Mordecai, and finally been hung upon it himself.

      6. There is a time to fast and pray. Nations are still wont to engage in fasting and prayer when any calamity is impending. It is fitting, when the human arm seems too short to deliver, that a people should humble themselves before God and cry to him for succor. So, too, every individual should, in his emergency, wait humbly before God.

      7. Evil is continually destroying itself, as those demons in entering the swine. So Haman hanged himself on his own gallows. So liquor-sellers, in injuring their fellow-men, ruin their own bodies as well as souls, and often find their own sons are their victims. One has well said, "The Good has one enemy, the Evil; but Evil has two enemies, the Good, and itself."--P. [75]

[CLC01 70-75]