of pomp and power, in the full security of strength; yet he graphically
depicted her desolation and foretold her present state, while he
pronounced her doom--a perpetual desolation. She shall never be rebuilt!
Her towers are fallen and her site marked by ruins.
The decline of Babylon had begun. It was certain, although slow. Years
were to pass before the sentence should be fully executed. At the
period, when the transactions recorded in the book of Esther took place,
Shushan was the royal city of Persia. We are told that in this--the City
of Lilies--the king Ahasuerus held a great feast, probably in
celebration of some recent success, or in commemoration of some great
national event. He assembled all the princes and nobles of his vast
empire, extending from Egypt to India, and gave a feast or succession of
festivities, which continued for more than the third of a year.
All that oriental splendour and magnificence could contribute, all the
expedients that eastern luxury could desire, to multiply the resources
and to heighten the enjoyment of pleasure, were brought to aid the
designs of the monarch and to add to the festivities of his court.
Yet motives of policy may have combined with the designs of pleasure. In
all ages the despot has sought to blind and dazzle the people by a
display of power and magnificence; and the princes and nobles around,
from distant provinces, have swelled the retinue of their attendants.
The amusements of monarchs and of courts have, through all varieties of
manners and degrees of refinement, been much the same. The ancient
Syrian or Persian, like the modern British or French monarch, had his
royal parks and forests for hunting.
All nations have patronized the various trials of skill and strength,
and the mimic fight has ever been an amusement where war was the great
business of life. And the royal pageantry was doubtless intermingled
with the religious ceremonies which allowed a license to criminal
indulgence and at the same time offered a supposed expiation for crime.
While these employed the day, the games of chance, the wine, the music,
the movements of the degraded dancing-girl, and the tricks of the
buffoon and the jester, amused the late hours and varied the festive
scenes of the night.
The feast was drawing to a close, and, at the termination of this long
season of hilarity, Ahasuerus extended the pleasures of the occasion to
all classes of his subjects at Shushan.
He threw open his palaces and pleasure-grounds, his parks and
gardens--always of vast extent around eastern palaces--and admitted all
the citizens to a feast prepared for them. Tents had been erected within
the precincts of the palace for the tables--and these tents were
furnished with all the luxurious appendages of the east--with white and
green and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to
silver rings and marble pillars; while the beds--the couches around the
tables, against which the ancients reclined--were of gold and silver,
upon a pavement of red and blue, and black and white marble; while they
gave them to drink in vessels of gold. Until these last days the princes
and nobles alone had participated in the festive scenes; but now, as we
have said, all ranks were allowed to share, and the citizens of Shushan,
subjects of Ahasuerus, thronged the palace and trod the royal gardens,
and, entering the tents, enjoyed all that royalty could offer in ancient
Persia--far surpassing in costly splendour and elegance the
entertainments of modern courts. And surely the monarch must have had
strong confidence in the security of his government and the loyalty of
his people, as he thus from day to day, for successive days, flung open
to them the recesses of his palace.
While the king thus feasted the men in the gardens and parks of the
palace, Vashti, the queen, held a festival for the women within the
secluded apartments appropriated to the female part of the royal
household. She made them a feast within the house of Ahasuerus; and this
queenly entertainment was conducted with all that regard for retirement
and decorum which accords with Eastern manners. But whatever the
amusements of the queen and her train of attendants, no rumours passed
the carefully guarded bounds of the women's apartments. At length the
long season of pleasure came to a harmonious close. No outbreak of the
people of Shushan, no rising of distant provinces, no plotting of
high-born traitors had marred the festal pomp. Yet the season of
pleasure is always a period of trial, and the seeds of remorse and
repentance are almost invariably sown in the hours of gayety. Amid all
this brightness, a dark cloud hung over Ahasuerus. On the seventh and
last day, when the heart of the king was merry--when he had forgotten
royalty dignity and personal decorum, by sitting too long at the festive
board--excited by pride and vanity, and stimulated by wine, he resolved
to dazzle the eyes of the people by presenting to their admiration a
gem, brighter and more lovely than any which sparkled in the royal
crown. To verify his loud boasts of her matchless charms, he sent his
chamberlain to bid the queen array herself in that royal attire which
befitted her state while it displayed her beauty and proclaimed her
rank, and thus present herself, that the assembled multitudes might
admire her loveliness and confess his happiness.
In Western lands, and in modern days, this command would convey no idea
of shame or impropriety. The royal consort and her train of fair
attendants have often graced the presence and shared the honours of the
monarch and his court, and added refinement to luxury. But no offer
could be more opposed to all ideas of Eastern delicacy and
propriety--more degrading to the woman, or more offensive to the queen.
By thus unveiling herself before the crowd, she would sink herself to
the level of the most unworthy of her sex--while the violation of an
established usage, in the time of such excitement and excess, might lead
to the wildest disorder, and the queen might be exposed to every insult
from crowds maddened by wine and ripe for disorder; while the monarch
himself might not be able to protect her in a position so strange and
unfitting.
The modesty of the woman and the dignity of the queen alike forbade
compliance with the strange order--and Vashti might well presume that,
in the hour of reflection, when his senses had returned, the monarch
would thank her for a prudence which probably alone preserved her
dignity and his honour.
But the passions of the king were inflamed. His reason was blinded, and
artful courtiers, from motives of intrigue or pique, stimulated his
anger. There are ever those who stand ready to administer to unholy
passions, and who are watching for the fall of such as are high in place
or favour. And still under the influence of wine, the rash monarch, by
his own act, placed an inseparable barrier between himself and her whose
charms had so lately been his proudest boast, and whose conduct had
proved that she well deserved all honour and all affection. Vashti was
separated from the king's favour; and flattering sycophants extolled the
act of folly, as a measure which gave peace and security to every
household in the realm. "All the wives shall give to their husbands
honour, both to great and small." And thus the day closed by an edict
that brought sorrow to many hearts, and desolation even to the gates of
the palace.
The excitement was past. The hour of reflection arrived, and "the king
remembered Vashti." His resentment was appeased. "He remembered what she
had done, and what was decreed against her." That which had been
magnified into a crime and had given such deep offence, was now seen to
be an act of wisdom and prudence--the result of true modesty, and that
deep affection which sought alone the love of her husband, which shrank
from the admiration of the crowd, and which ventured to disobey rather
than forfeit self-respect and womanly pride--preferring to lose his love
rather than expose his honour. An immutable decree--his own--separated
him from one lately so beloved, and so truly worthy of high honour.
The darkened and saddened aspect of the monarch declared his late
repentance; and those who had precipitated the fall of the queen, to
screen themselves, were prompt to devise methods of banishing the
remembrance of the divorced Vashti. They would replace her by a new
favourite. Yet, so surpassing was her loveliness, and so rare her
beauty, that the courtiers could with difficulty find one whose charms
might banish from memory the repudiated consort, until they sought
through all the provinces of that vast empire for the fairest of the
daughters of men.
Hadassah, a daughter of Israel, a descendant of Benjamin, of the house
of Kish, the family of Saul, first king of Israel, won the monarch's
favour, and was promoted to the place of the disobedient but high-minded
Vashti. Esther was an orphan, but she had been carefully guarded and
instructed by her kinsman Mordecai; and while we are told that the
maiden was exceeding fair, we may believe that her beauty was of a high
order, stamped too by intellect and feeling, and that the soul which
often sustained and impelled her in her trying exigencies, breathed
through her features and animated her form. Yet Ahasuerus merely bowed
to the fair shrine. He sought not to awaken the response of the soul
that dwelt within.
When the daughter of Israel was placed upon the throne of Persia, and
another royal feast proclaimed the triumph of Esther and the happiness
of Ahasuerus, the king displayed his royal magnificence by the bestowal
of gifts upon his favourites; and the name of Esther was blended with
other and higher associations, as, upon her elevation, the taxes of the
burdened provinces were remitted and pardons granted to the condemned.
Mordecai, the relative who had supplied the place of parents to Esther,
was, as we have said, of the house of Kish. Mordecai was the Jew rather
than the Benjamite. His heart was devoted to his country. When the child
of his adoption was taken to the palace, Mordecai displayed his wise
forethought in cautioning her against making her parentage and kindred
known. He had been as a father to her, and a deep interest in the orphan
of his care led him, day by day, to watch the gate of the palace--to
mingle with the attendants, that he might catch a view of her train or
gather tidings of her welfare. And thus, unknown as the relative of the
fair queen, or as especially interested in the king, Mordecai was
enabled to detect and reveal a plot for the assassination of Ahasuerus.
Esther being informed of the plot, disclosed it to the king--the
criminals were defeated and punished--but no reward was conferred upon
Mordecai.
The passion of Ahasuerus for his fair bride seems to have soon declined.
The fickle voluptuary sought new pleasures, and the bride so lately
exalted to a throne was no longer an object of envy. Many bitter tears
have been shed by the victims of family pride or state policy, when thus
allied to greatness and splendour. The sacred rite has often been
prostituted to purposes of ambition and selfishness, and has thus become
a source of guilt and misery. Esther, in her elevation, may have shed as
bitter tears as fell from Vashti in her banishment and disgrace.
Thus each state has its own trials and its own griefs--and it has its
peculiar alleviations too. Perhaps the progress of the narrative will
show us the source of that influence which seems early to have
estranged Ahasuerus from his bride.
Among the courtiers of the king there was the descendant of a race long
at variance with the Jews. The Amalekites had been the enemies of the
Israelites from the infancy of the nation. When the tribes came up from
Egypt, faint and weary in the desert, the Amalekites had fallen upon
them and attempted to destroy them; and during a series of ages there
had been a war of extermination between the races. Nor had Amalek been
subjected until Saul was raised to the throne and Israel had become a
kingdom.
When Israel and Judah had been destroyed or carried captive by the hosts
of the Assyrians, the remaining Amalekites seem likewise to have been
carried into the east, either as prisoners or allies. And now, from
among all his courtiers, Ahasuerus had chosen, as his chief favourite
and counsellor, Haman, the son of Hammedatha, a descendant of Agag--that
king of Amalek who, as the prisoner of Saul, was condemned to death by
Samuel, the judge of Israel. The descendant of a royal line and of an
ancient race, Haman was as crafty as he was unprincipled and malignant,
and his evil influence seems to have first drawn the king's favour from
Esther. He did not know her lineage, but by plunging the king in every
excess, by keeping all safe counsellors at a distance, he intended to
increase his own influence and perpetuate his own power, while he was
accumulating great wealth from the prodigality of his master and from
the presents offered as bribes to obtain his favour.
As he did not know the lineage of Esther, he did not persecute her; but
as he feared an influence that might compete with his own, he strove to
alienate the heart of Ahasuerus from her. Haman was advanced to honours
far above all the native princes of the kingdom; even to the first seat
in counsel, to the highest honours in the realm, and to constant
companionship of the monarch.
As, with trains of slaves and flatterers, he was hastening to the
audience of the monarch, or returning loaded with marks of royal favour,
he passed Mordecai the Jew, seated alone--unknown, unheeded, without
rank or wealth--by the gate of the palace. "Yet Mordecai bowed not,
neither did reverence to Haman." The two men seemed to represent to each
other their respective nations; as if all the hate and malice of the
race, and of long ages of national bitterness, were concentrated in an
individual. They met as the Israelite and the Amalekite; and the
memories of centuries of aggression and injuries, of shame and defeat,
were crowded into the present moment. Mordecai saw in Haman, not only
the foe to his race, but the crafty, unprincipled, unholy counsellor,
who had already alienated the heart of the monarch from his youthful
bride, and whose pernicious influence was spreading blight and
corruption, misery and destruction--through an empire.
Every feeling of the Jew, every principle of an upright, sincere heart
forbade Mordecai to pay the homage demanded of him by Haman. Every
sentiment of national pride, of family honour, of personal dignity, of
self-respect, arose to deter the descendant of Israel from showing
honour to the hereditary foe of his people and the persecutor of his
faith.
Haman, at the same time, saw in Mordecai the descendant of those who had
triumphed over his nation and destroyed his ancestors. The descendant of
Agag, the captive of Saul, he might naturally vent his indignation upon
the tribe that humbled his house and subjected his nation and destroyed
his ancestors. The contempt with which Mordecai regarded him roused all
the ancient malignity of the Amalekite, and his hot blood called for
vengeance.
Yet he thought it a foul shame to lay hands on Mordecai alone. The ruin
of one man would not heal his wounded pride. He meditated a deeper and
more deadly revenge. He resolves to sweep the remnant of the Jews from
the face of the earth!
The proposed plan displays at once all his cruelty and malignity, and
all his crafty influence over Ahasuerus, while it proves the king too
much immersed in pleasure, or too much subjected to his artful
favourite, to regard the welfare of his subjects or the interests of his
kingdom.
Superstitious and idolatrous, Haman cast lots day after day, for
successive days, that a fortunate one might decide the day to be chosen
for the work of death on which he was bent. And this accomplished, he
hastened to secure the edict from the king. Surely the monarch must have
been sunk in wine and debauchery who could thus unhesitatingly accede to
the proposition to murder, in cold blood, thousands of unresisting
subjects, when the worst allegation preferred by their enemy was "that
their laws were diverse from all people." Yet here was the very
principle of religious persecution; and as sanguinary edicts as these,
enacted against God's ancient people, have been too often issued in more
modern days, and no Mordecai has sat at the gate of the palace, mutely
to plead for mercy--no Esther has staked her life upon the attempt to
avert the doom!
By the offer of an enormous bribe, to be collected from the plunder of
those doomed to death, Haman sought the acquiescence of the king in his
scheme. And though he refused the bribe, yet he bade Haman do with the
people and their possessions as seemed best to him; giving him his
signet ring, he seems to have divested himself of all care and
responsibility, and Haman having issued the edict and commanded the
couriers to distribute the royal mandate, they both returned to their
pleasures. "The king and his counsellor sat down to drink."
No elaborate essay upon the character of Ahasuerus, no analysis of the
arts of Haman, could so display the indolent, luxurious, self-indulgent,
voluptuous monarch, or so illustrate the secret of the favourite's
power. The companion of his pleasures, he was careful to minister to all
the sensual indulgence that could lead him to forget his duty and the
obligations of right and justice incumbent upon the ruler of a great
people.
Of all the cruel and bloody mandates issued by despotic monarchs, and
designed to answer either the purposes of private malice or unholy
policy, few, if any, have exceeded this which was directed against the
ancient people of Jehovah. The Jews who had returned to their own land
were included in this proscription, for Judea was at this time a
tributary of the Persian empire.
"Then were the king's scribes called, the thirteenth day of the first
month, and there was written according to all that Haman had commanded,
unto the king's lieutenants, and to the governors that were over every
province, and to the rulers of every people of every province, according
to the writing thereof; and to every people after their language, in the
name of King Ahasuerus, was it written, and sealed with the king's ring.
And the letters were sent by posts into the king's provinces, to
destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews--both young and old,
little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of
the twelfth month."
Thus we see all the machinery of this powerful government put in motion
to crush the Jews--a people widely dispersed and weak from their recent
captivity and overthrow. As no crime was specified, so there was no
offer of pardon or exemption on any terms; while to make it more
distinctly understood, the terms which indicated their fate were
singularly multiplied. "To _destroy_, to _kill_, to _cause_ to
_perish_." And while the murder of a nation was thus made a legal
execution, the mode was left to the option of the executioners; and
every torment that malignity could devise might be inflicted, while all
were stimulated by the promise of the plunder of their victims--"and to
take the spoil of them for a prey."
What scenes of horror, of suffering, would have followed the execution
of this barbarous edict! The whole empire had probably been deluged in
blood--for man, like the inferior animals, seems maddened by the taste
of blood--and one cruelty is but the prelude and provocation of another;
and in the time of strife, while all were made executioners of the law,
private malice would confound others with the proscribed, and few could
be safe in the hour of commotion.
When this edict was published, and while Ahasuerus and Haman sat down to
indulge in the pleasures of the table, all the city of Shushan was
perplexed, confounded, and troubled--wondering what motives, what state
policy, what strange conspiracy, had led to this sanguinary enactment
against a people long dwelling among them--a nation who had furnished
counsellors and ministers to their wisest monarchs.
When Mordecai saw what was done, he rent his clothes and put on
sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city and cried
with a loud and bitter cry. He published--he could not conceal--his
grief and terror; and his crafty foe perhaps exulted in his misery. The
long struggle between the Amalekite and the Israelite seemed now to be
concluded. The fall of the Jews seemed to be sealed. All the power of
the Persian empire was arrayed against them. They were prisoners in her
different provinces, appointed to execution! All human power and
authority and presumption of success was on the side of Haman, and
against his intended victims.
Mordecai had no hope on earth. His trust was alone in the God of his
fathers--the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob--the God often
defied by Amalek. In his distress he presented himself, clothed in
sackcloth, at the gate of the royal palace; but no one arrayed in the
garb of sorrow might enter the haunts devoted to luxurious pleasure. Yet
the sight of his distress and the tones of his deep grief arrested the
attention of the attendants of the queen, and her chamberlain reported
the circumstances to her.
No tokens of sympathy, no expression of condolence, however grateful,
could assuage the grief of Mordecai in this hour of terror and alarm;
and even though commanded by the queen, he declined to lay aside the
tokens of wo, while he diligently sought to convey to the secluded
Esther an account of all the machinations of Haman, and the assurance of
the imminent danger to which her nation was exposed, and in which she
was involved. He not only sent her a copy of the edict which condemned
the Jews, but he charged her to supplicate the king on their behalf.
The young queen must have felt like one awakened from a sleep to find
herself upon the brink of a precipice. Her situation was full of danger.
The flush of royal favour was past. She was neglected and forgotten. Her
splendid palace was indeed but a prison, and her lordly consort might
prove her executioner. For a long time she had not seen the king or
received the least token of royal favour or remembrance, and a new
favourite might have succeeded her in the court of the capricious
voluptuary. Yet she was sternly charged by Mordecai to rouse herself,
meet the peril, and, if possible, save her people, while he taught her
to recognise the designs of a wise Providence in her elevation.
"Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that
thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if
thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there
enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but
thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether
thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
In the appeals of Mordecai to Esther, we may recognise the principles
upon which he had trained her. The sense of duty, the obligations of
religion, the call to self-sacrifice and exertion, had all been
instilled while Esther was in private life, and they bear their fruit on
the throne. Yet there must have been a conflict in the heart of Esther,
before she could adopt the decision which might accelerate the doom of
her people, while, if her appeal failed, her own fate was scaled with
their's.
Surrounded by all the splendour of the court, with all the pleasures
that pomp and power can command, with troops of menials treading marble
halls, with the more genial luxuries of fair flowers and pure fountains
and soft music--Esther felt the insufficiency of all that earth can
yield in the hour of sorrow and trial. We may almost fancy that we see
her, with lofty brow and pale cheek, her dark soft eye fixed in thought,
and the compressed lip telling of the firm resolve. She has decided! She
will venture the loss of royal favour, and life itself, to secure the
safety of her people. "I WILL GO IN TO THE KING, AND IF I PERISH--I
PERISH." Words more simple, yet sublime in their high meaning, have
seldom been recorded. Strong purpose and high resolve call for but few
words.