For [this] deed of the queen shall come abroad unto all women, so that they shall despise their husbands in their eyes, when it shall be reported, The king Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be brought in before him, but she came not.
Ver. 17. For this deed of the queen shall come abroad] The least aberration in a star is soon observed; so the miscarriages of great ones are quickly both noted and noticed. Public persons are by Plutarch compared to mirrors, according to which others dress themselves; to pictures in a glass window, wherein every blemish is soon seen; to common wells, which if they be poisoned, many are destroyed. The common people commonly are like a flock of cranes; as the first flies, all follow.
So that they shall despise their husbands] Which indeed ought not to be, no, not in their hearts. Let the wife see that she reverence her husband, Ephesians 5:33. God hath a barren womb for mocking Michel; when Sarah is crowned and chronicled for this, that she obeyed her husband, calling him Lord. It is here taken for confessed, that Vashti despised her husband; and that others would thereby take heart to do the like, is therehence inferred. But doth that necessarily follow? and must the queen therefore be presently deposed, yea, put to death, as the Jew doctors tell us she was? King Asa deposed his grandmother, Maacha; but that was for idolatry. Our Henry VIII beheaded his wife, Anne Bullen, but that was for (supposed, and but supposed) adultery. Queen Elizabeth narrowly escaped with her life, because she was accused (but falsely) of conspiracy against the queen, her sister. But what had Vashti done? Condemned she is without reprival; and the country must come in (but was never called) to give in evidence against her, that haply never saw her, nor heard of her offence. Is this fair dealing?