After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased, he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against her.
Ver. 1. After these things] After the wine was out, the fuel of his anger spent, and the lust thereof satisfied.
When the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased] There is nothing that a man is more ready to keep than his wrath; therefore the Hebrews put servare for servare iram, to keep for to keep his anger, as Jer 3:5 Psa 103:9 Leviticus 19:18. Ahasuerus, by invading Greece, had so incensed them, that their wrath αειμνηστος, unappeasable, for they thenceforth hated all barbarians for the Persians' sake, and forbade them their sacrifices, as they used to do murderers. But Ahasuerus's wrath against Vashti was after a time assuaged.
He remembered Vashti] Not without some remorse, but without all true repentance. He forsook not his rash anger as a sin, but regretted it for a time, and laid it asleep, to be raked up again upon as slight an occasion. In graceless persons vitia raduntur, non eradicantur; absconduntur saepius, non exscinduntur; vices may be barbed or benumbed, not mastered and mortified. A merchant may part with his goods, and yet not hate them. A man may part with his sins for self-respects, and yet retain his affection to them; as Phaltiel did to Michal, when he went weeping after her afar off. He may remember his Vashti, his bosom sins from which he seemeth divorced, and by such a sinful remembering of them, recommit them. See Eze 23:21 compared with Esther 2:8 .
And what was decreed against her] But whose fault was that? Wine and anger are the worst of all counsellors, say the ancients? and Ahasuerus found it so; as did also Alexander the Great, and many others, but all too late. Hence they came in afterwards with their Non putaram, Had I known; which Scipio said should never be heard out of a great man's mouth (Plutarch). Augustus also was wont to say, that nothing doth so ill become a commander as hastiness and rashness (Sueton.). Cicero taxeth him for a fool, qui eundem laedit et laudat, who first wrongeth a man, and then commendeth him.