Esther 1:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Bible Comments

In the days of Ahasuerus Many suppose this king to have been Darius Hystaspes, for his kingdom was thus vast, and he subdued India, as Herodotus reports: and one of his wives was called Atossa, differing little from Hadassah, which is Esther's other name, Esther 2:7. But the most likely opinion, and that which is approved by Josephus, the Septuagint, and the apocryphal additions to the book of Esther, is, that this Ahasuerus of the Scripture was Artaxerxes Longimanus, as he is called by the heathen writers. One thing is certain, that he was one of the Persian kings, and a successor of Cyrus the Great, for there was no such large empire in those parts, under one king, before Cyrus's time.

Esther 1:1

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:)