CRITICAL NOTES.]
Esther 2:15. She required nothing] She made no effort to adorn her person with jewellery or dress to please her own fancy, but left the matter entirely to Hegai, who would be likely to know best what would please the king.
Esther 2:16. Tebeth (answering to part of our December and January), in the seventh year of his reign] Vashti was cast off in the third year of his reign (Esther 2:3); so that four years passed before another queen, or at least before Esther, was crowned in her stead.
Esther 2:18. Made a release to the provinces] Usually understood as a release from tribute. The Persian kings were wont to remit the arrears of tribute due at the time of their accession; and Xerxes may have thought it wise to make such a release just after the disastrous Grecian wars. The feast, release, and gifts were, doubtless, in keeping with kingliness.
Esther 2:19. When the virgins, &c.] Rather, “When virgins.” These words should begin a new paragraph. They stand in contrast with those of Esther 2:8, and serve in the mind of the writer to date the new event here narrated, viz., the discovery, by Mordecai, of the plot against the life of the king.—Speaker’s Com. It appears that there was a second collection of virgins at Shushan, probably made some years after the first. After his unsuccessful wars Xerxes wholly abandoned himself to the pleasures of the court. We may thus understand his second gathering of virgins.
Esther 2:20. Esther had not yet showed, &c.] This verse should be regarded as a parenthesis, and is designed as a circumstantial clause, to show that Esther was obedient to Mordecai as much after she became queen as before. It also shows that this second collection sprang from no prejudice against Esther as a Jewess.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH. Esther 2:15; Esther 2:20
ESTHER’S ELEVATION
God in the mysterious nature of his operations puts down the mighty from their seats, and exalts them of low degree. In all the changes of life, in the rise and fall both of nations and of individuals, we shall only be able to walk with calmness as we see the ruling purpose of the Supreme moving on to its accomplishment. Let the history of God’s movements in the past be the interpreter of the present, and impart settled faith in the unerring wisdom of the Infinite. The Vashtis may fall, but their fall is the Divine stepping-stone by which the orphaned Esthers rise to greatness in order to be of service to humanity. Written history reveals the working of God; and when the history of the present is written it will declare that God is still working. Let us now read the history of Esther’s elevation so as to teach in the present.
I. God’s servants patiently wait his time. That Esther was the servant of God is plain from the whole of this history. She was his chosen vessel. Here she waits the Lord’s time. She is in no hurry; she manifests the calm of conscious greatness. True greatness has nothing to lose by patience. It may be objected that she was compelled to wait her turn. It may, however, be replied that many are unwise enough to try and fight against the force of Providence, and seek to hurry on Divine movements. Esther did not take this course because she had been taught Divine lessons. She could wait. Blessed are they who know how to wait when waiting is the Divine appointment. Blessed are they also that know how to move when the turn has come to go in unto the king. Ready to serve both by waiting and by moving is the characteristic of God’s servants.
II. God’s servants have sustaining confidence. Esther required nothing but what the king’s chamberlain appointed. As a wise woman, she would take what was seemly and necessary for her adornment, but, as one conscious of being sent on a Divine mission, she was not bent upon decking herself with gaudy jewels. She let her beauty tell its own thrilling story, and work in its own magical way. The goodness of her soul shone right through her physical form, and rendered her more attractive than if she had worn the most costly garments. She had a sustaining confidence which made her not over-anxious and exacting in her requirements. A sincere effort to serve God will deliver from the evils of over-anxiety. Nature requires little, and grace less. She required nothing but what was appointed. Oh for grace to lessen the number of our requirements, to learn the difficult lesson, in whatsoever state we are therewith to be content.
III. God’s servants find favour in unexpected quarters. From a human point of view it was a surprising thing that the king should so suddenly find his love drawn out towards this captive and orphaned Jewess. But more surprising still is the fact that Esther obtained favour in the sight of all them that looked upon her. Was green-eyed Jealousy on that occasion conquered? Did none of the on-looking virgins attempt to depreciate her beauty? Did none object to the shape of her nose, the colour of her hair, or the tone of her complexion? Was no whisper heard against this lovely maiden? Women are sharp to find out each other’s defects, and yet Esther escaped because she was Divinely fashioned and Divinely guided. She was admired by all because she was God’s servant. Hatred is sometimes the penalty of faithfulness in God’s service; but if persecuted for Christ’s sake we shall receive the favour of heaven, which is better than the favour of earth. However, we may find this, that God raises up for his servants friends in unexpected quarters. Joseph found friends and helpers in the prison. Daniel had lions for his friends and a king for his comforter. Bunyan was trusted by his jailor.
IV. God’s servants are royal. The king set the royal crown upon Esther’s head, and made her queen instead of Vashti. But Esther needed no earthly insignia to set forth her royalty. She was God’s servant, and all his servants are royal. A kingly seed, a royal race are the children of God. She was a queen by virtue of a Divine creation. She was royal by reason of the queenly magnificence of her character. Her virtues were her crown. They shone with brilliancy far surpassing the virtue of pearls or rubies. The crown which Ahasuerus placed on her head will crumble to dust, but the crown of her virtues will never suffer any tarnishing of its lustre. What ambition there is to receive royal crowns from earthly kings! What commotion in the seraglio when the whisper went forth, Esther has received the crown royal! How soldiers will fight, and what hardships officers will endure in order to receive the decorating ribbon or medal from an earthly sovereign! But this is as nothing to the position of those who are to receive the heavenly crown from the hand of the King eternal. Happy day when Jesus shall set the royal crown of his approval upon the heads of his favourites.
V. God’s servants are instruments of good. We are not now about to refer to Esther’s great life-work in the deliverance of her people from a great danger, but to the facts here stated. In order to celebrate Esther’s elevation to the crown, the king made a great feast, called Esther’s feast, to all his princes and servants, and granted release to the provinces. This release may be understood either of a remission of labour or a remission of taxes. It is highly probable that it refers to the appointment of a holiday, on which there would be a resting from labour. Finally, the king gave gifts with royal munificence.—Keil. When the righteous are exalted the nation has reason to rejoice. Even material benefits result from their elevation. The country owes more to the presence in it of the righteous than it either understands or is prepared to admit. The king’s former feast ended disastrously, but we do not read of any evil resulting from the joyful festivities on this occasion. May we suppose that Esther’s presence exerted a salutary and restraining influence? The righteous should be saving forces.
VI. God’s servants are fitted for the positions to which they are raised. Esther was gifted with the power of silence, and this is a rare gift. She did not show her kindred nor her people, for the set time had not yet arrived for the announcement. Intoxicated with her success, she might have made an untimely boast of the lowness of her origin. But she did not, for she was Divinely fitted. She knew both when to speak and when to keep silence. God fashions and educates his servants for the particular spheres they are designed to fill, and for the special duties they are intended to discharge.
VII. God’s servants in highest positions do not overlook the minor moralities. It would, we may suppose, have been called a minor immorality had Esther neglected the commandment of Mordecai. She was now a queen, and was she to be in subjection to her uncle? There may be minor and major in moralities, but unfaithfulness in the least leads to unfaithfulness in the greatest. Esther was convinced of Mordecai’s wisdom and impressed with a sense of his kindness, and therefore felt that his commandment was binding. We cannot afford, even in highest positions, to be deaf to the voice of wisdom. The commandments of wise old men have in them a Divine force. Those Esthers are Divinely wise who pay respectful attention to the weighty words of the aged Mordecais.
Observe that all Christians are the servants of God, whether the earthly position be high or low. They are royal, whether dwelling in a cottage or reigning in a palace. They should not be over-anxious about the good or great things of this life. Esther required nothing. They should move with quiet faith and restful confidence in their God. They should seek, above all, to fit themselves to be instruments of good to their kind.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Esther 2:15
Now when the turn of Esther, &c.—Then, and not till then. So when Joseph was sufficiently humbled, the king sent and loosed him; the ruler of the people let him go free. When David was become weaned from the world, when his heart was not haughty, nor his eyes lofty, then was he advanced to the kingdom. He that believeth maketh not haste. God’s time is best; and as he seldom cometh at our time, so he never faileth at his own.—Trapp.
She required nothing.—As other maids had done to set out their beauty, but contenting herself with her native comeliness, and that wisdom that made her face to shine, she humbly taketh what Hegai directed her to, and wholly resteth upon the Divine providence.—Trapp.
Undazzled by splendour and royalty, the tender virgin rejected all these things. With noble simplicity she took the ornaments, neither selecting nor demanding anything, which the chief chamberlain brought to her. Even after she became queen above all the wives of the king, her heart still clung, not only with gratitude, but with childlike obedience, to her pious uncle and foster-father, as in the time when he trained her as a little girl.—Stolberg.
Let then both men and women learn by this case so to direct all their aims and desires as to please God alone by the ornament of a good conscience, and by the forms of minds well adjusted; but to despise the adventitious bodily ornaments of this world as vain in his sight, and by this piety gain the surer rewards of heaven. For this alone is the true beauty, which is precious in God’s view, and which causes us to be approved by the King of kings, and joined to him in spiritual matrimony.… Surprising that even the heathen saw and taught this, for Crates says: That is ornament which adorns, but that adorns which makes a woman more adjusted and more modest. For this end neither gold, nor gems, nor purple avails, but whatever has the import of gravity, modesty, and chastity.—Fenardent.
That mind is truly great and noble that is not changed with the highest prosperity. Queen Esther cannot forget her cousin Mordecai; no pomp can make her slight the charge of so dear a kinsman; in all her royalty she casts her eye upon him amongst the throng of beholders; but she must not know him; her obedience keeps her in awe, and will not suffer her to draw him up with her to the participation of her honour. It troubles her not a little to forbear this duty, but she must; it is enough that Mordecai hath commanded her not to be known who or whose she was.—Hall.
Nor was Esther behind with her grateful returns. Too many when suddenly exalted forget their former friends, or, what is as bad, forget themselves, become vain and arrogant, and so impatient of admonition and good advice. Children, when they grow up, are apt to think that they are released from all obligation even to their natural parents; they become wise in their own conceits, and spurn advice as if it were an undue assumption of authority. But “Esther did the commandment of Mordecai, like as when she was brought up with him.” The least signification of his will was a law to her; for she knew that he would require nothing of her inconsistent with her duty to God and her husband. He had enjoined her not to make known her kindred or her people; and this she religiously abstained from, not only when she was under the conduct of Hegai, but after she was seated in the affections of Ahasuerus, and had come to the kingdom. “Esther had not yet showed her kindred nor her people; as Mordecai had charged her.” She, no doubt, felt a strong desire to make the avowal, and to use her interest with the king for the advancement of her kind benefactor. But even this generous feeling she repressed, because it would have led to a transgression of his command. To testify her gratitude she would not disobey him, nor run the risk of displeasing him. And she acted thus, though it does not appear that he acquainted her with his reasons for concealment. We may be sure, however, that Mordecai did not impose this silence arbitrarily; and his caution confirms the remark already made, that he looked forward to something more important that was to be accomplished by the elevation of his daughter, and waited for the opportune occasion when the disclosure of her people and relationship to him would be the means of advancing it. “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning,” and “the secret of Jehovah is with them that fear him.”—McCrie.
There is everything about Esther to engage our interest and sympathy. It is sad enough to find ourselves, even in adult years, suddenly in the front rank through the falling of those who stood in nature before us; but “she had neither father nor mother” while still a child, needing all care. And there were serious aggravations of her orphanhood—her sex, her belonging to the race of exiles, her beauty. But the Lover of little children, the Father of the fatherless, who had said to these captives, “Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive,” had provided for Esther one who proved to her both father and mother. And there are early indications that the orphan girl was a daughter of the Lord Almighty; she obeyed Mordecai, even when beyond his control; and she was modestly free from love of display, a feature scarcely to be expected in a favoured beauty unless she had also grace. At length she became queen consort, and Mordecai’s faith had its reward, For we are disposed to think it must have been in faith that he had committed her to the various perils of these twelve months. The parallel between Esther and the child Moses is striking (as McCrie shows in his lectures): each exceeding fair; each raised from lowly station to a place beside the throne; each a deliverer of Israel; each cast upon the waters for a time, although the waters on which Esther was cast were far more perilous than the Nile, and the royal home than the ark of bulrushes; so that we may credit Mordecai with faith like that of Amram and Jochebed. At least it is certain that Esther’s advancement, while it came through the beauty which gave her her name, did not come through that alone or chiefly. God gave “her favour in the sight of all them that looked on her;” her Father sent her to her husband, a poor orphan indeed, but with that “discretion” without which her comeliness would have been in his judgment “as a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout.”—A. M. Symington, B.A.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
Discipline of the passions. The passions may be humoured until they become our master, as a horse may be pampered till he gets the better of his rider; but early discipline will prevent mutiny, and keep the helm in the hands of reason. Properly controlled, the passions may, like a horse with the bit in his mouth, or a ship with the helm in the hand of a skilful mariner, be managed and made useful.
A rich landlord once cruelly oppressed a poor widow. Her son, a little boy of eight years, saw it. He afterwards became a painter, and painted a life likeness of the dark scene. Years afterwards, he placed it where the man saw it. He turned pale, trembled in every joint, and offered any sum to purchase it, that he might put it out of sight. Thus there is an invisible painter drawing on the canvas of the soul a life likeness, reflecting correctly all the passions and actions of our spiritual history on earth. Now and again we should be compelled to look at them, and the folly of our acts will sting us, as it did the landlord, and also Ahasuerus.
Control of anger. Socrates, finding himself in emotion against a slave, said: “I would beat you if I were not angry.” Having received a box on the ears, he contented himself by only saying, with a smile, “It is a pity we do not know when to put on the helmet.” Socrates, meeting a gentleman of rank in the streets, saluted him; but the gentleman took no notice of it. His friends in company, observing what passed, told the philosopher “That they were so exasperated at the man’s incivility, that they had a good mind to resent it.” He very calmly replied, “If you met any person in the road in a worse habit of body than yourself, would you think you had reason to be enraged with him on that account? Pray, then, what greater reason can you have for being incensed at a man for a worse habit of mind than any of yourselves?” That was a brave, strong man.
Impressions of sin. The great stone book of nature reveals many records of the past. In the red sandstone there are found, in some places, marks which are clearly the impression of showers of rain, and these are so perfect that it can even be detected in which direction the shower inclined, and from what quarter it proceeded—and this ages ago. Even so sin leaves its track behind it, and God keeps a faithful record of all our sins.—Biblical Treasury.
“If you cut a gash in a man’s head, you may heal it; but you can never rub out, nor wash out, nor cut out the scar. It may be a witness against you in his corpse; still it may be covered by the coffin, or hidden in the grave; but then it is not till decomposition shall take place, that it shall entirely disappear. But, if you smite your soul by sin, you make a scar that will remain; no coffin or grave shall hide it; no fire, not even the eternal flames, shall burn out sin’s stains.”
Counterfeit repentance. Beware that you make no mistake about the nature of true repentance. The devil knows too well the value of the precious grace not to dress up spurious imitations of it. Wherever there is good coin there will always be bad money.—Ryle.
Repentance before pardon. The first physic to recover our souls is not cordials, but corrosives; not an immediate stepping into heaven by a present assurance, but mourning, and lamentations, and a little bewailing of our former transgressions. With Mary Magdalene we must wash Christ’s feet with our tears of sorrow, before we may anoint his head with “the oil of gladness.”—Browning.
In all parts of the East, women are spoken of as being much inferior to men in wisdom; and nearly all their sages have proudly descanted on the ignorance of women. In the Hindoo book called the ‘Kurral,’ it is declared, “All women are ignorant.” In other works similar remarks are found: “Ignorance is a woman’s jewel. The feminine qualities are four—ignorance, fear, shame, and impurity. To a woman disclose not a secret. Talk not to me in that way; it is all female wisdom.”—Roberts.
Degradation of woman. The farmers of the upper Alps, though by no means wealthy, live like lords in their houses, while the heaviest portion of agricultural labour devolves on the wife. It is no uncommon thing to see a woman yoked to the plough along with an ass, while the husband guides it. A farmer of the upper Alps accounts it an act of politeness to lend his wife to a neighbour who is too much oppressed with work; and the neighbour, in his turn, lends his wife for a few day’s work, whenever the favour is requested.—Percy.
Radical reform. A small bite from a serpent will affect the whole body. There is no way to calm the sea but by excommunicating Jonah from the ship. If the root be killed, the branches will soon be withered. If the spring be diminished, there is no doubt that the streams will soon fail. When the fuel of corruption is removed, then the fire of affliction is extinguished.—Secker.
Individual responsibility. Daniel Webster was once asked, “What is the most important thought you ever entertained?” He replied, after a moment’s reflection, “the most important thought I ever had was my individual responsibility to God.” There is no royal road, either to wealth or learning. Princes and kings, poor men, peasants, all alike must attend to the wants of their own bodies, and their own minds. No man can eat, drink, or sleep by proxy. No man can get the alphabet learned for him by another. All these are things which everybody must do for himself, or they will not be done at all. Just as it is with the mind and body, so it is with the soul. There are certain things absolutely needful to the soul’s health and well-being. Each must repent for himself. Each must apply to Christ for himself. And for himself each must speak to God and pray.—Ryle.