Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him, Let there be fair young virgins sought for the king:
Ver. 2. Then said the king's servants] His friends, saith Josephus, to whom he had opened his mind; the young courtiers, say others (green wood is ever shrinking and warping), but most probably those seven chief counsellors, Esther 1:14, who had persuaded him to cast off Vashti, and now feared, lest if not some way diverted, he should fall as foul upon them as his predecessor Darius did upon those claw backs, Dan 6:24 or as the Athenians did upon Timagoras, Demagores, and Euagoras, whom they condemned to die, for flattering Darius Hystaspes, the father of this Ahasuerus.
Let there be fair young virgins sought for the king] They knew him to be a sensualist and effeminate; they therefore agree to feed his humour, to drown him again in pleasure, so to drive away his melancholy. Such miserable comforters are carnal physicians; so wretched is our nature, to endure no other medicine; so justly doth God fit the physician to the patient, the helve to the hatchet; so do the wicked help each other forward to their deserved destruction. Ahasuerus's courtiers and counsellors become brokers to his lusts; neither is this anything unusual with such. Lenocinantur, produnt, blasphemant, peierant, toxica miscent, &c., saith an expositor here. What is it that such parasites and sycophants will not do to ingratiate with great ones? It was not therefore without good cause, that the primitive Christians prayed hard for the emperor, as Tertullian testifieth, that God would send him Senatum fidelem, a faithful council, and free him from flatterers.