Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews.
Ver. 13. Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther] He would not take her excuse, but seems to say unto her, as one once did to a philosopher (Aul. Gell.), that in a great tempest at sea asked many trifling questions: Are we perishing, and doest thou trifle? Hμεις απολλυμεθα, και συ παιζεις. So, dost thou cast off the care of community, and provide for no more than thine own safety?
Think not with thyself, that thou shalt escape in the king's house] Any more than Serena, that Christian empress, wife to Dioclesian, did, or Elizabeth, queen of Denmark, glad to flee for her life, because a Lutheran; or Queen Catharine Parr, who hardly escaped the fire by the favour of her husband, Henry VIII. Sure it is, that the fear of man bringeth a snare (as fearful birds and beasts fall into the hunter's toil), "but he that trusteth in the Lord" (as good Mordecai did, and as he would have Esther to do), "shall be safe," Proverbs 29:25, or shall be set on high, out of harm's way; his place of defence shall be munitions of rocks, Isaiah 33:16. Like as the coney, that weak but wise creature, Proverbs 30:24; Proverbs 30:26, flees to the holes in the rocks, and doth easily avoid the dogs that pursue her; when the hare, that trusteth to the swiftness of her legs, is at length overtaken, and torn in pieces.
More than all the Jews] The law was general and irreversible. Darius sought to deliver Daniel, and could not. And Haman's (as once Medina's here in 1588) sword knew no difference, nor would make any in that general massacre; like as in that at Paris, they poisoned the queen of Navarre, murdered the most part of the peerless nobility in France, their wives and children, with a great sort of the common people.