Esther 1:1

Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus,.... Who he was is not easy to say; almost all the kings of Persia are so named by one or another writer.

Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces:) Ahasuerus , [ 'Achashweerowsh (H325)

ESTHER CHAPTER 1 Ahasuerus and Vashti make a royal banquet, Esther 1:1-9. He sends for Vashti, Esther 1:10,1. She refuseth to come, Esther 1:12. He consulteth his wise men about it, Esther 1:13-15. Their judgment and advice to put her away, Esther 1:16-20. He maketh the decree of men's sovereignty in their own houses, Esther 1:21,22. Quest. Who was this king? Answ. It is confessed and manifest that this was one of the kings of Persia; but which of them it was is not yet agreed, nor is it of any necessity for us now to know. But it is sufficiently evident that this was either, 1. Darius Hystaspes, as divers both Jewish and Christian writers affirm; for his kingdom was thus vast, and he subdued India, as Herodotus reports; and one of his wives was called Atossa, which differs little from Hadassah, which is Esther's other name, Esther 2:7. Or, 2. Xerxes, whose wife, as Herodotus notes, was called Amestris, which is not much differing from Esther; by whom all these things were transacted whilst he was potent and prosperous, before his unhappy expedition against the Grecians. Or, 3. Artaxerxes Longimanus, to whom the characters of Ahasuerus represented in this book do not disagree. And whereas it is objected, that by this account Mordecai must be a man of about a hundred and forty years, and consequently Esther, who is called his uncle's daughter, Esther 2:7, must be too old to make a wife for the king; as for Mordecai, it may be granted, there being divers instances of persons of greater age than that in sacred and profane historians; and for Esther, it may be said that she was his uncle's granddaughter, nothing being more frequent than for the names of sons or daughters to be given to more remote posterity. An hundred and seven and twenty provinces; so seven new provinces were added to those hundred and twenty mentioned Daniel 6:1.

Esther 1:1 Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this [is] Ahasuerus which reigned, from India even unto Ethiopia, [over] an hundred and seven and twenty provinces:)Ver. 1. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus] This book is in the Hebrew called Esther, because she is a chief party therein mentioned and memorized. The Rabbis call it Megillath Esther, that is, the volume of Esther; and further tell us that there be five such volumes of Scripture books; viz. Solomon’ s Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and this of Esther: which they use to read all over in their synagogues, five times a year. 1. Solomon’ s Song at the Passover; in remembrance of their one time deliverance out of Egypt, and their future salvation by the Messiah. 2. Ruth at Pentecost; because therein is set down the genealogy of David their first king. 3. The Lamentations of Jeremiah on the ninth day of the fifth month (that is, of August); in regard to the Babylonian captivity, and ruin of the Temple. 4. Ecclesiastes, at the feast of Tabernacles; in a thankful remembrance of the Divine providence asserted in that book; and exercised over them in a special manner, when they wandered in the wilderness. 5. Lastly, this of Esther, on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month Adar, or February; and as often as they hear mention of Haman, they do, even to this day, with their fists and hammers beat upon the benches and boards, as if they did beat upon Haman’ s head (R. Abraham, Hispanus cognom, σοφος). They tell us that this book was written by Mordecai himself, an eyewitness and a main party, according to Esther 9:20, and have ever reckoned it among the Chetubin or Hagiographa, that is, the books of Holy Scripture. Indeed, because they find not the name of God or Lord in this whole book, they have a custom to cast it to the ground before they read it. But they need not; for as the ancient heathens used to write upon their books, Yεος, Yεος, God, God, so might the Jews upon this; there being nowhere in Scripture found more remarkable passages and acts of God’ s immediate providence for his calamitous people than in this. Surely (saith a great divine) like as a man by a chain made up of several links, some of gold, others of silver, some of brass, iron, or tin, may be drawn out of a pit; so (it may here be seen that) the Lord, by the concurrence of several subordinate things which have no manner of dependence or natural coincidence among themselves, hath wonderfully wrought the deliverance of his Church; that it might appear to be the work of his own hand. In the days of Ahasuerus] That is, of Xerxes, the terror of Greece, called Ahasuerosh, that is, a hereditary, begotten by king Darius, and born of a king’ s daughter, viz. Atossa, daughter to Cyrus, and heir of the kingdom by lineal descent.

(1) Ahasuerus.—Three persons are called by this name in the Old Testament—(1) the Ahasuerus of Dan 9:1, the father of “Darius the Mede;” if, as is probable, this latter is the same with Astyages, Ahasuerus must be identified with Cyaxares: (2) the Ahasuerus of Ezr 4:6, who is doubtless the same with Cambyses, the son of Cyrus; and (3) the one now before us, whom we have shown in the Introduction to be almost certainly Xerxes. For the history and character of this sovereign reference must be especially made to the contemporaneous writers, Herodotus (vii., viii. 1-90), and Æschylus in his play of The Persians. The spirited lines of Juvenal should also be read (Sat. x. 173-187). We find that Xerxes succeeded his father, Darius Hystaspes, in the year 485 B.C. , five years after the momentous battle of Marathon. Undeterred by his father’s failure, he resolves upon a fresh attack on Greece, and sets out in 481 B.C. from Susa for the West. He winters at Sardis, leaving it in the spring of the following year. The summer sees the fight of the pass of Thermopylæ, which has covered the name of Leonidas and his three hundred, though vanquished and slain, with undying glory; in the autumn Themistocles, by his victory over the Persians at Salamis, changes the history of the world, and the beginning thus made is carried on by the victories at Platæa and Mycale in 479 B.C. From the rout at Salamis, Xerxes had fled to Sardis, which he did not leave till the spring of 478 B.C. All that we know of the further course of the reign of Xerxes is but one unbroken tale of debauchery and bloodshed, which came to an end in 464 B.C, when he was murdered by two of his officers, Mithridates and Artabanus, and Artaxerxes Longimanus, his son (see Ezra 7; Nehemiah 2), reigned in his stead. This is Ahasuerus.—This is added to make clear which particular sovereign we are here dealing with. We have seen that three of the name are mentioned in the Old Testament. Ethiopia.—Herodotus tells us that Ethiopia paid tribute to Xerxes (iii. 97). An hundred and seven and twenty.—In Daniel 6:1. we find that Darius the Mede appointed a hundred and twenty satraps, but probably the similarity in numbers is quite accidental. There seem to have been a gradually increasing number of satrapies in the kingdom of Darius—20, 21, 23, 29 (Herod, iii. 89-94), and the nations in the empire of Xerxes are said to be sixty (ib. vii. 61-95). Thus the provinces here mentioned must include subdivisions of these.

THE BOOK OF ESTHER Chronological Notes relative to this Book -Year from the Creation, according to Archbishop Usher, 3540. -Year before the birth of Christ, 460. -Year before the vulgar era of Christ's nativity, 464. -Year of the Julian Period, 4250. -Year since the flood of Noah, 1904. -Year of the Cali Yuga, or Indian era of the Deluge, 2638. -Year from the vocation of Abram, 1458. -Year from the destruction of Troy, 721. -Year from the foundation of Solomon's temple. 547. -Year since the division of Solomon's monarchy into the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, 511. -Year of the era of Iphitus, 421. -Year since Coroebus won the prize at the Olympic games, 313. -First year of the seventy-ninth Olympiad. -Year of the Varronian era of the building of Rome, 290. -Year from the building of Rome, according to Cato and the Fasti Consulares, 289. -Year from the building of Rome according to Polybius the historian, 288. -Year from the building of Rome, according to Fabius Pictor, 284. -Year of the era of Nabonassar, 284. -Year since the commencement of the first Messenian war, 280. -Year since the destruction of the kingdom of Israel by Shalmaneser, the king of Assyria, 258. -Year since the commencement of the second Messenian war, 222. -Year from the destruction of Solomon's temple by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, 125. -Year since the publication of the famous edict of Cyrus, king of Persia, empowering the Jews to rebuild their temple, 72. -Year since the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses, 62. -Year since the abolition of the tyranny of the Pisistratidae at Athens, 43. -Year since the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome, which put an end to the regal government of the Romans, 44. -Year since the famous battle of Marathon, 26. -Year after the commencement of the third Messenian war, 2. -Year before the commencement of the first sacred war concerning the temple at Delphi, 17. -Year before the commencement of the celebrated Peloponnesian war, 34. -Year before the celebrated retreat of the ten thousand Greeks, and the expulsion of the thirty tyrants from Athens by Thrasybulus, 65. -Year before the commencement of the era of the Seleucidae, 152. -Year before the formation of the famous Achaean league, 183. -Year before the commencement of the first Punic war, 200. -Year before the fall of the Macedonian empire, 296. -Year before the destruction of Carthage by Scipio, and of Corinth by Mummius, 317. -Year before the commencement of the Jugurthine war, which continued five years, 354. -Year before the commencement of the Social war, which continued for five years, and was finished by Sylla, 374. -Year before the commencement of the Mithridatic war, which continued for twenty-six years, 376. -Year before the commencement of the Servile war, under Spartacus, 392. -Year before the extinction of the reign of the Seleucidae in Syria, on the conquest of that country by Pompey, 399. -Year before the era of the Roman emperors, 433.

Chap. Esther 1:1-9. The great feast given by Ahasuerus at Susa 1. Now it came to pass] Heb. And it came to pass. ‘And’ is a strange word with which to begin a book. In the case of similar openings to other historical Books (Joshua, Judges, etc.) it implies the continuation of a former narrative. Here, on the other hand, as probably at the commencement of Ezekiel and Jonah, it only denotes a connexion in the writer’s own mind with preceding history in general or with the period of Ahasuerus in particular. It may even have become established as an opening formula, irrespective of its strict applicability. Ahasuerus] The Heb. Aḥ ?ashvηrτsh represents the Persian Khshayarsha (mighty eye, or, mighty man), whence was derived the Greek Xerxes, who is no doubt the monarch intended. The Ahasuerus of this Book has indeed been identified with (a) Cambyses (b.c. 529), father of Darius Hystaspes, on the strength of Dan 9:1, a passage, however, which in reality lends no aid to this hypothesis (see Driver in Camb. Bible, ad loc.), or (b) Artaxerxes Longimanus, the son and successor of Xerxes (b.c. 465–425), with whom the LXX., followed by Josephus, identifies him, or (c) Cyaxares, a Median ruler, or (d) ‘Darius the Mede’ of Daniel 5:31 (where see note in Camb. Bible). The last two identifications may be at once dismissed. Ahasuerus was evidently a king of Persia, as is shewn by the extent of his dominions as well as from other considerations, such as the whole atmosphere of the Book. Moreover (b) is precluded by the Hebrew, which uses the form Artaḥ ?shashta for Artaxerxes (Ezra 4:7). Accordingly there can be little or no doubt that Xerxes (b.c. 485–465), conspicuous in history for the defeat of his gigantic armaments at Salamis (b.c. 480) and Plataea (479), is the king of whom we here read. Further, (i) the capricious and sensual character of Ahasuerus corresponds with the notices of Xerxes in Herodotus (ix. 108 ff.), (ii) the extent of his empire agrees with the account here, (iii) the gathering at Susa in the third year of his reign (Esther 1:3) harmonises with the statement of Herodotus (vii. 8) that after Xerxes’ subjugation of Egypt there was a great assembly of satraps at Susa to make arrangements for the attack on Greece about two years later, while the interval of four years between Vashti’s disgrace and Esther’s promotion (Esther 2:16) leaves time for the king’s return from that ill-fated expedition to comfort himself for its ignominious ending with sensual gratifications. from India even unto Ethiopia] The word in the original for India (Hτddu) appears to represent the Persian Hidush. Both have lost the n which has been retained by the Greek (LXX. τῆςἸνδικῆς), and so (through the Latin) by ourselves. The name was originally confined to the land watered by the seven streams of the Indus, and was later extended eastward and southward. Ethiopia, here and elsewhere, is the Heb. Cush.

Ahasuerus - . Xerxes, the son of Darius Hystaspis. His empire is rightly described as from India even unto Ethiopia. The satrapies of Darius Hystaspis reached 29 in number, and the nations under Xerxes were about 60.

THE ROYAL FEAST AT SHUSHAN, Esther 1:1-9. 1. This is Ahasuerus — Our author is careful to distinguish this Ahasuerus from other monarchs of the same name who are mentioned in the Hebrew books.