And Memucan answered before the king and the princes, Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the king only, but also to all the princes, and to all the people that [are] in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus.
Ver. 16. And Memucan answered before the king] Heb. Mumchan; the junior likely, and therefore spake first, the rest concurred, Esther 1:21. A bold man he was surely (whatever else he was) that durst deliver his mind so freely of such a business, and in such a presence, &c. What if the king and queen should have grown friends again, where had Memucan been? If his cause and his conscience had been as good as his courage was great, all had been as it ought to be.
And the princes] Inter pocula de rebus arduis consultabant, saith Herodotus concerning the Persian princes. In the midst of their cups they use to consult of the greatest affairs. Here they accuse and condemn the queen unheard and unconvicted, which was against all law, divine and human. King Henry VIII, though a boisterous man, dealt more civilly with his first wife, Catherine of Spain, when he had a mind to rid his hands of her; her cause was heard before the two cardinals, Wolsey and Campaine, ere the divorce was pronounced, and she sent out of the kingdom.
Vashti the queen hath not done wrong to the king only] That she had done wrong or dealt perversely against the king, he taketh for granted; because the king's commandment was not obeyed. But was that a sufficient reason? Was the king's bare word a law, or rule of right? and is not a wife in case of sin commanded by her husband, rather to obey God than men? Or say she had done wrong, must it needs be out of perverseness? might it not be out of fear, modesty, or for some other civil reason which she might allege for herself, if called to her trial? But, here you may see (saith one) when flattery and malice gives information, shadows are made substances, and improbabilities necessities; so deceitful is flattery, malice so unreasonable. And yet herein also the Lord is exceeding righteous, who meets hereby with other sins of this insolent queen; that whereas (no doubt) she was an example of pride and vanity more generally to other women than she was likely to be in this point, therefore is she hereby found out in her sin, and by this unlikely accusation, condemned of a true fault.
But also to all the princes, and to all the people] Against the king she had offended by her disobedience, against all others by her example. And indeed the sins of great ones fly far upon those two wings, scandal and example; they prove both patterns and privileges to their interiors, for the like. Howbeit we must necessarily distinguish between scandal given and scandal taken only; neither may we judge of a thing by the ill consequences that biassed and disaffected persons can draw from it; there being nothing so well carried, but that it may be liable to some men's exceptions.