Esther 4

Chap. IV. Ver. 1—17. The effects of this decree, and Mordecai’s plan to counteract it, in which the queen acquiesces.—In the close of the preceding chapter we find, that while the king and his favourite were drinking down all reflection, “the city of Shushan was perplexed” immediately as they heard of it. Many of the people had, perhaps, formed alliances with the Jews, and others connexions in trade or friendship. Mordecai himself was probably much respected, as were others of his countrymen; and this decree, for a general massacre, must fill the city and the country with terror. Much more were the Jews terrified and confounded, and Mordecai himself was the first to excite alarm. There was a law, it seems, that mourning must not enter into the gate of the palace: well were it for them, could kings and courts effectively decree, that sickness and death should not enter there!

However, though a man of rank and wealth, he put on sackcloth and ashes, and cried, with a loud and bitter cry,” before the king’s gate. The alarm thus excited, by means of her maids and chamberlains, reached the queen’s apartments, and Esther was herself deeply affected. The communications between her and her uncle are related in this chapter; also the method which, with some degree of hesitation, she agreed to take, as the only means to save her life and that of her whole nation. Her last expression, “If I perish, I perish,” though very appropriate in her case, has often been far less properly used in reference to petitions for divine mercy. We have Ahasuerus to deal with: there are no peradventures in the gospel.

The sceptre of grace is always extended, and though many a penitent sinner may have fainted, (as is reported of Esther,) never did one perish at his footstool.

Notes on the verses

Ver. 13. By posts.—Cyrus is said to have established posts at certain distances throughout his empire.

Ver. 15. Shushan was perplexed.—The people were shocked at the cruelty, and alarmed, as many of the Persians might be connected with them by trade, and by intermarriages.

Chap. IV. Ver. 1. Loud and bitter cry.—[Mordecai gave every demonstration of the most poignant grief. Nor did he hide this from the city; and the Greek says that he uttered these words aloud: “A people is going to be destroyed who have done no evil.”]—Bagster.

Ver. 3. Great mourning.—[It cannot reasonably be doubted, that the mournings, fastings, and weepings of the Jews, were attended by constant 562 “prayers and supplications; though all mention of them, and of the glorious God whom they worshipped, seems to have been studiously avoided.]—B.

Ver. 5. Whom he had appointed to attend upon her.—These eunuchs were both servants and spies, and often the worst enemies of their ladies; but Hatach seems to have been both kind and faithful.

Ver. 11. Shall come unto the king.—[Herodotus informs us, that ever since the reign of Deioces, king of Media, for the security of the king’s person, it was enacted, that no one should be admitted into his presence; but that if any one had business with him, he should transact it through the medium of his ministers.]—Bagster.—The golden sceptre.—That the Persian monarchs used a golden sceptre, we learn from Xenophon. “It is not, (said Cyrus to