Esther 2

1. After these things. How soon this occurred we know not. The intervening time had been spent in the expedition to Greece. The battle of Platæa, in which Xerxes was finally defeated, took place in the sixth year of his reign (480 B.C.). We learn that after his defeat and return from Greece, Xerxes indulged his licentious passions (Herodotus, ix. 108).

2. Let there be fair young virgins. This narrative shows that the higher men are raised in power and wealth, the lower they often sink in subjection to their own sensual appetites. And it shows how much the Gospel of Christ was needed to give woman her right place in society, and to restore marriage to its original purity.

5 the son of Kish. Some infer from this that Mordecai was of the Benjamite royal family of Saul. But it is not unlikely that the names of Saul’s family were favourites in the tribe. The word Mordecai means “belonging to Merodach,” a Babylonian deity, and was no doubt a substitute by the heathen for some Jewish name. Cp. Daniel i. 7. Note, it was Kish, Mordecai’s great-grandfather, who was carried away in captivity, not Mordecai himself. That captivity (598 B.C.) took place 120 years before this.

7. Hadassah. “Hadassah” (myrtle) was her Hebrew name; “Esther” (star) her Persian name. Some, however, identify the latter with the Assyrian Istar, the Assyro-Babylonian form of the goddess Ashtoreth, symbolising youth and beauty (Sayce). In the Hebrew Prayer Book she is described as “Hadassah, the flower blossoming from the palm.”

8. Esther was brought. It was not left to the choice of Esther, or of her guardian, whether she should be brought to the palace (3). A disclosure of her lineage might have kept her from being chosen as queen, but would not have saved her from concubinage. Every one whom the king thus took was considered a secondary wife; and her situation was not, according to the custom of those times and of those countries, deemed unlawful or dishonourable.

11 walked . . . before the court, etc. Mordecai appears to have been a keeper of the gate of the harem, an office held only by the highest of “the chamberlains” or eunuchs.

18 he made a release. This is understood by the Septuagint and the Chaldee to mean a remission of tribute. This was the practice of the Persian kings on festal occasions, as weddings. Moffatt renders: “he granted a holiday.”

20 did the commandment of Mordecai. As a chief guardian of the harem, Mordecai would still have access to his niece, although, after the manner of the Persians, she was now secluded from the outer world.