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 Jeremiah 3:5 Ps 103:9 Le 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 Ezekiel 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.
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, Daniel 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.
Ver. 3. And let the king appoint officers] Praeficiat praefectos. Costly counsel. This could not be done without much trouble and charge to the king. Two or three years are spent in gathering, purifying, and preparing these choice virgins for the impure bed of this heathen prince, while he is following the chase of his ambition, in the wars of Greece. In all the provinces of his kingdom] A large commission they must have, the whole kingdom is their circuit; and note that they went not to foreigners; which those princes that do, while thereby they seek for greatness, they many times miss goodness; while they labour to be strong abroad (and so to have a stake in store, as they say, however the dice chance to turn), they weaken themselves at home, and while by foreign matches they intend unity, it proves an occasion both of civil and foreign dissensions. We of this nation have had sad experience of these mischiefs. That they may gather together] This could not be done without the great grief and general discontent of the king’s best subjects (nimium serviliter huic hirco subiectorum, as one hath it), thus bereft and despoiled of their dearest daughters, the staves of their age. All the fair young virgins] Beauty (the best pearl in a carnal eye) is all that is here looked after, quae plerumque virtute et pudicitia caret, which is oft without virtue and common honesty, as, where they meet, it is a rare mixture. The heathen man saith, Non est formosa mulier cuius crus laudatur aut brachium, sed illa cuius universa facies admirationem singulis partibus abstulit. Now if this be true, long enough might these commissionated officers look for fair young virgins, truly so called, there being very few that are not peccant in some minnum, some tittle of beauty, or other. It is a praise peculiar to the virgin daughter of Zion to be all fair, Song of Solomon 4:7, to be αμωμος, Ephesians 5:26, such as in whom even Momus himself could find no error. Unto Shushan the palace] In which one place there might have been found choice enough, without speaking further; but that lust is unsatisfiable. The eye is not satisfied with seeing; and in such a multitude how could it be but that the king’s mind must needs be distracted, which one to make choice of? To the house of the women] Such as is now the Turk’s Seraglio. See the description of the Grand Signior’s Seraglio, by Master John Greanes, chap. iv. Unto the custody of Hege] Who was their keeper, or rather their jailer. For what was this house of women but a perpetual prison to them, clapped under hatches, as it were, and, haply, held in as great servitude as those in Barbary are at this day; where it is death for any man to see one of the Xeriff’s concubines; and for them too, it, when they see a man, though but through a casement, they do not suddenly screek out. And let their things for purification] σμηγματα, their cleansing, to dry up the filth of the flesh, and to cleanse nature’s infirmities, that they might be six months purified with oil of myrrh, and six other months perfumed with sweet odours, as Esther 2:12. Here the maids were first purified before the king chose one. But Christ first chooseth his spouse, and then purifieth her, Ephesians 5:26.