_AHASUERUS AND VASHTI._
ESTHER i.
The character of Ahasuerus illustrates the Nemesis of absolutism, by
showing how unlimited power is crushed and dissolved beneath the
weight of its own immensity. The very vastness of his domains
overwhelms the despot. While he thinks himself free to disport
according to his will, he is in reality the slave of his own machinery
of government. He is so entirely dependent for information on
subordinates, who can deceive him to suit their own private ends, that
he often becomes a mere puppet of the political wire-pullers. In the
fury of his passion he issues his terrible mandates, with the
confidence of a master whose slightest whim is a law to the nations,
and yet that very passion has been cleverly worked up by some of his
servants, who are laughing in their sleeves at the simplicity of their
dupe, even while they are fawning on him with obsequious flattery. In
the story of Esther Ahasuerus is turned about hither and thither by
his courtiers, according as one or another is clever enough to obtain
a temporary hearing. In the opening scene he is the victim of a harem
plot which deprives him of his favourite consort. Subsequently Haman
poisons his mind with calumnies about a loyal, industrious section of
his subjects. He is only undeceived by another movement in the harem.
Even the jealously guarded women of the royal household know more of
the actual state of affairs in the outside world than the bewildered
monarch. The king is so high above his realm that he cannot see what
is going on in it; and all that he can learn about it passes through
such a variety of intermediary agents that it is coloured and
distorted in the process.
But this is not all. The man who is exalted to the pedestal of a god
is made dizzy by his own altitude. Absolutism drove the Roman Emperor
Caligula mad; it punished the Xerxes of Herodotus with childishness.
The silly monarch who would decorate a tree with the jewellery of a
prince in reward for its fruitfulness, and flog and chain the
Hellespont as a punishment for its tempestuousness, is not fit to be
let out of the nursery. Such conduct as his discovers an ineptitude
that is next door to idiocy. When the same man appears on the pages of
Scripture under the name of Ahasuerus, his weakness is despicable. The
most keen-sighted ruler of millions is liable to be misinformed; the
strongest administrator of a gigantic empire is compelled to move with
difficulty in the midst of the elaborate organisation of his
government. But Ahasuerus is neither keen-sighted nor strong. He is a
victim of the last court intrigue, a believer in the idlest gossip;
and he is worse, for even on the suppositions presented to him he
behaves with folly and senseless fury. His conduct to Vashti is first
insulting and then ungrateful; for fidelity to her worthless husband
would prompt her to decline to risk herself among a crew of drunken
revellers. His consent to the diabolical proposal of his grand vizier
for a massacre, without an atom of proof that the victims are guilty,
exhibits a hopeless state of mental feebleness. His equal readiness to
transfer the mandate of wholesale murder to persons described
indefinitely as the "enemies" of these people shows how completely he
is twisted about by the latest breeze. As the palace plots develop we
see this great king in all his pride and majesty tossed to and fro
like a shuttle-cock. And yet he can sting. It is a dangerous game for
the players, and the object of it is to get the deadly venom of the
royal rage to light on the head of the opposite party. We could not
have a more certain proof of the vanity of "ambition that o'erleaps
itself" than this conversion of immeasurable power into helpless
weakness on the part of the Persian sovereign.
We naturally start with this glaring exhibition of the irony of fate
in our study of Ahasuerus, because it is the most pronounced factor in
his character and career. There are other elements of the picture,
however, which are not, like this, confined to the abnormal experience
of solitary rulers. Next to the revenge of absolutism on its
possessor, the more vulgar effects of extravagant luxury and
self-indulgence are to be seen in the degraded Persian court life.
Very likely the writer of our Book of Esther introduces these matters
with the primary object of enhancing the significance of his main
theme by making us feel how great a danger the Jews were in, and how
magnificent a triumph was won for them by the heroic Jewess of the
harem. But the scene that he thus brings before us throws light on the
situation all round. Xerxes' idea of unbridled power is that it admits
of unlimited pleasure. Our author's picture of the splendid palace,
with its richly coloured awnings stretched across from marble pillars
to silver rods over the tesselated pavement, where the most exalted
guests recline in the shade on gold and silver seats, while they feast
hugely and drink heavily day after day, shows us how the provinces
were being drained to enrich the court, and how the royal treasury was
being lavished on idle festivity. That was bad enough, but its effects
were worse. The law was licence. "The drinking was according to the
law," and this law was that there should be no limit to it, everybody
taking just as much wine as he pleased. Naturally such a rule
ostentatiously paraded before a dissolute company led to a scene of
downright bestial debauchery. According to Herodotus, the Persians
were addicted to drunkenness, and the incident described in the first
chapter of Esther is quite in accordance with the Greek historian's
account of the followers of Xerxes.
The worst effect of this vice of drunkenness is its degrading
influence on the conduct and character of men. It robs its victims of
self-respect and manliness, and sends them to wallow in the mire with
swinish obscenity. What they would not dream of stooping to in their
sober moments, they revel in with shameless ostentation when their
brains are clouded with intoxicating drink. Husbands, who are gentle
and considerate at other times, are then transformed into brutes, who
can take pleasure in trampling on their wives. It is no excuse to
plead that the drunkard is a madman unaccountable for his actions; he
is accountable for having put himself in his degraded condition. If he
is temporarily insane, he has poisoned his own intellect by swallowing
a noxious drug with his eyes open. He is responsible for that action,
and therefore he must be held to be responsible for its consequences.
If he had given due consideration to his conduct, he might have
foreseen whither it was tending. The man who has been foolish enough
to launch his boat on the rapids cannot divert its course when he is
startled by the thunder of the falls he is approaching; but he should
have thought of that before leaving the safety of the shore.
The immediate consequence of the disgusting degradation of
drunkenness, in the case of Ahasuerus, is that the monarch grossly
insults his queen. A moment's consideration would have suggested the
danger as well as the scandal of his behaviour. But in his heedless
folly the debauchee hurls himself over the precipice, from the height
of his royal dignity down to the very pit of ignominy, and then he is
only enraged that Vashti refuses to be dragged down with him. It is a
revolting scene, and one to show how the awful vice of drunkenness
levels all distinctions; here it outrages the most sacred rules of
Oriental etiquette. The seclusion of the harem is to be violated for
the amusement of the dissolute king's boon companions.
In the story of Esther poor Vashti's fall is only introduced in order
to make way for her Hebrew rival. But after ages have naturally sided
with the wronged queen. Was it true modesty that prompted her daring
refusal, or the lawful pride of womanhood? If so, all women should
honour Vashti as the vindicator of their dues. Whatever "woman's
rights" may be maintained in the field of politics, the very existence
of the home, the basis of society itself, depends on those more
profound and inalienable rights that touch the character of pure
womanliness. The first of a woman's rights is the right to her own
person. But this right is ignored in Oriental civilisation. The sweet
English word "home" is unknown in the court of such a king as
Ahasuerus. To think of it in this connection is as incongruous as to
imagine a daisy springing up through the boards of a dancing saloon.
The unhappy Vashti had never known this choicest of words; but she may
have had a due conception of a woman's true dignity, as far as the
perverted ideas of the East permitted. And yet even here a painful
suspicion obtrudes itself on our notice. Vashti had been feasting with
the women of the harem when she received the brutal mandate from her
lord. Had she too lost her balance of judgment under the bewitching
influence of the wine-cup? Was she rendered reckless by the excitement
of her festivities? Was her refusal the result of the factitious
courage that springs from an unwholesome excitement or an equally
effective mental stupor? Since one of the commonest results of
intoxication is a quarrelsomeness of temper, it must be admitted that
Vashti's flat refusal to obey may have some connection with her
previous festivities. In that case, of course, something must be
detracted from her glory as the martyr of womanliness. A horrible
picture is this--a drunken king quarrelling with his drunken queen;
these two people, set in the highest places in their vast realm,
descending from the very pinnacle of greatness to grovel in debased
intemperance! It would not be fair to the poor, wronged queen to
assert so much without any clear evidence in support of the darker
view of her conduct. Still it must be admitted that it is difficult
for any of the members of a dissolute society to keep their garments
clean. Unhappily it is only too frequently the case that, even in a
Christian land, womanhood is degraded by becoming the victim of
intemperance. No sight on earth is more sickening. A woman may be
loaded with insults, and yet she may keep her soul white as the soul
of St. Agnes. It is not an outrage on her dignity, offered by the
drunken king to his queen, that really marks her degradation. To all
fair judgments, that only degrades the brute who offers it; but the
white lily is bruised and trampled in the dust when she who wears it
herself consents to fling it away.
The action of Ahasuerus on receipt of his queen's refusal reveals
another trait in his weak character. Jealous eyes--always watching the
favourite of the harem--discover an opportunity for a gleeful triumph.
The advisers of the king are cunning enough to set the action of
Vashti in the light of a public example. If a woman in so exalted a
position is permitted to disobey her husband with impunity, other
wives will appeal to her case and break out of bounds. It is a mean
plea, the plea of weakness on the part of the speaker, Memucan, the
last of the seven princes. Is this man only finding an excuse for the
king? or may it be supposed that his thoughts are travelling away to a
shrew in his own home? The strange thing is that the king is not
content wreaking his vengeance on the proud Vashti. He is persuaded to
utilise the occasion of her act of insubordination in order to issue a
decree commanding the subjection of all wives to their husbands. The
queen's conduct is treated as an instance of a growing spirit of
independence on the part of the women of Persia, which must be crushed
forthwith. One would think that the women were slaves, and that the
princes were acting like the Romans when they issued repressive
measures from dread of a "Servile War."
If such a law as this had ever been passed, we might well understand
the complaint of those who say it is unjust that the function of
legislation should be monopolised by one sex. Even in the West, where
women are comparatively free and are supposed to be treated on an
equality with men, wrong is often done because the laws which concern
them more especially are all made by men. In the East, where they are
regarded as property, like their husbands' camels and oxen, cruel
injustice is inevitable. But this injustice cannot go unpunished. It
must react on its perpetrators, blunting their finer feelings,
lowering their better nature, robbing them of those sacred confidences
of husband and wife which never spring up on the territory of the
slave-driver.
But we have only to consider the domestic edict of Ahasuerus to see
its frothy vanity. When it was issued it must have struck everybody
who had the faintest sense of humour as simply ridiculous. It is not
by the rough instrumentality of the law that difficult questions of
the relations between the sexes can be adjusted. The law can see that
a formal contract is not violated with impunity. The law can protect
the individual parties to the contract from the most brutal forms of
cruelty--though even this is very difficult between husband and wife.
But the law cannot secure real justice in the home. This must be left
to the working of principles of righteousness and to the mutual
considerateness of those who are concerned. Where these elements are
wanting, no legislation on matrimony can restore the peace of a
shattered home.
The order of Ahasuerus, however, was too indefinite to have very
serious results. The tyrannical husband would not have waited for any
such excuse as it might afford him for exacting obedience from his
oppressed household drudge. The strong-minded woman would mock at the
king's order, and have her own way as before who could hinder her?
Certainly not her husband. The yoke of years of meek submission was
not to be broken in a day by a royal proclamation. But wherever the
true idea of marriage was realised--and we must have sufficient faith
in human nature to be assured that this was sometimes the case even in
the realm of Xerxes--the husband and wife who knew themselves to be
one, united by the closest ties of love and sympathy and mutual
confidence, would laugh in their happiness and perhaps spare a thought
of pity for the poor, silly king who was advertising his domestic
troubles to the world, and thereby exhibiting his shallow notions of
wedded life--blind, absolutely blind, to the sweet secret that was
heaven to them.
We may be sure that the singular edict remained a dead letter. But the
king would be master in his own palace. So Vashti fell. We hear no
more of her but we can guess too well what her most probable fate must
have been.[263] The gates of death are never difficult to find in an
Oriental palace; there are always jealous rivals eager to triumph over
the fall of a royal favourite. Still Ahasuerus had been really fond of
the queen who paid so dearly for her one act of independence.
Repenting of his drunken rage, the king let his thoughts revert to his
former favourite, a most dangerous thing for those who had hastened
her removal. The easiest escape for them was to play on his coarse
nature by introducing to his notice a bevy of girls from whom he might
select a new favourite. This was by no means a dignified proceeding
for Esther, the maiden to whom the first prize in the exhibition of
beauty was awarded by the royal fancier. But it gave her the place of
power from which to help her people in their hour of desperate need.
And here we come to some redeeming features in the character of the
king. He is not lacking in generosity; and he owns to a certain sense
of justice. In the crowd of royal cares and pleasures, he has
forgotten how an obscure Jew saved his life by revealing one of the
many plots that make the pleasures of a despot as hollow a mockery as
the feast of Damocles. On the chance discovery of his negligence,
Ahasuerus hastens to atone for it with ostentatious generosity. Again,
no sooner does he find that he has been duped by Haman into an act of
cruel injustice than he tries to counteract the mischief by an equally
savage measure of retaliation. A strange way of administering justice!
Yet it must be admitted that in this the capricious, blundering king
means honestly. The bitter irony of it all is that so awful a power of
life and death should be lodged in the hands of one who is so totally
incapacitated for a wise use of it.
[263] On the supposition that the writer is not here recording
historical facts in the life of Amestris, the real queen of Xerxes,
who we know was not murdered.