Esther 1 is the first chapter of the Book of Esther in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the ChristianBible. The author of the book is unknown and modern scholars have established that the final stage of the Hebrew text would have been formed by the second century BCE. Chapters 1 and 2 form the exposition of the book. This chapter records the royal banquets of the Persian kingAhasuerus until the deposal of queen Vashti.
The opening section describes the sumptuous 180-day banquet by the Persian king Ahasuerus for officials from all over the Persian Empire.
Verse 1
"Ahasuerus": Generally identified with Xerxes I. In Esther 10:1 the name is written as Achashresh, which shows more resemblance to the name recorded by the Greeks, Axeres or Xerxes.
"From India even unto Ethiopia": from מהדו ועד־כוש, mê- wə--, "from_India and_to Cush ". A foundation stone found at the site of Persepolis palace displays the title and territory of Xerxes I, very similar to those of Ahasuerus, with the words:
Verse 2
"Shushan": or "Susa". The city of Susa served during this time as one of several capitals of Persia, beside Ecbatana, Babylon, and Persepolis. Partly due to the extreme heat of its summers, Susa was a place where Persian kings stayed mainly in the winter months. Strabo wrote that reptiles attempting to cross roads at midday died from the extreme heat of Susa.
"The palace" : from Hebrew word בִּירָה can refer to a castle or palace or temple; NKJV: "citadel" or "fortified palace", and so elsewhere in the book; NAB "stronghold"; NASB "capital"; NLT “fortress”; seemingly pointing to 'the fortified part of the city that might be called an acropolis or citadel'.
Verse 3
"The third year": of Xerxes' reign would be 483 BC. Xerxes succeeded his father, Darius Hystaspes in the year 485 BC, five years after the battle of Marathon. Xerses set out in 481 BC from Susa to attack Greece, staying for winter at Sardis, starting the attack in the spring of 480 BC to see the Battle of Thermopylae against Leonidas and his three hundred men in the summer, but lost to Themistocles at Salamis in the autumn, then at Platæa and Mycale in 479 BC. Xerxes fled to Sardis before returning to Persia in the spring of 478 BC. In 464 BC, he was murdered by two of his officers, Mithridates and Artabanus, so Artaxerxes Longimanus, his son, reigned to succeed him.
"The power ": NAB: "Persian and Median aristocracy"; NASB: "the army officers"; NIV: "the military leaders".
"Persia and Media" : a different order from the expression "Media and Persia" in the Book of Daniel, which indicates an earlier time in the history when Media was more prominent within the coalition of the two nations.
The immense size of the banquet, the number of its invited guests, and the length of its duration described here, was not without precedence as C. A. Moore documents a Persian banquet for 15,000 people and an Assyrian celebration with 69,574 guests in ancient times.
Royal banquet for the citizens of Susa (1:5–9)
This section narrows the focus to the subsequent shorter but equally pretentious 7-day banquets, given separately by the king and the queen for the citizens of the Persian capital Susa.
Verse 6
"Fine linen": which is the finest linen called byssus, a fine, costly, white fabric made in Egypt, Palestine, and Edom, and imported into Persia.
"Beds" : from the Hebrew noun מִטָּה refers to a reclining couch spread with covers, cloth and pillow for feasting and carousing.
Vashti's refusal to obey king's command (1:10–22)
On the seventh day of the banquet, the king sent for Queen Vashti to appear before him "to show off her beauty", but she refused to come. This causes histrionic reactions from the king and his seven counselors which resulted in the issuance of punishment for Vashti and a decree involving the 'whole elaborate machinery of Persian law and administration' to spread it in all over Persian lands.
Verse 13
It is an irony, that the king who reigns over a vast empire cannot resolve his domestic problem about his own wife without the help of the sharpest minds of Persia. The seven counselors who advise the king are literally "those who see the face of the king".
Verse 20
"Decree": from Hebrew: pithgam, a loan-word from Old Persian patigâma ; also witten in its Aramaic form in ; ;.
"Published" : from Hebrew "heard"; NIV, NRSV: "proclaimed".
"All the wives shall give": It is recorded in the Masorah of at least three old manuscripts, and noted at least as early as Bachya ben Asher in the thirteenth century, that God's divine name, YHWH, is present in four verses within the Book of Esther, but is deliberately hidden by means of the literary style of acrostics, formed by either the initial or final characters in consecutive and contiguous words in the text. One of these occurrences is found in verse 1:20, with the divine name written by initial characters in 'majuscule' but spelt backward, Bullinger suggests that the significance of the initial letters is because the event was initial in the story and the backward positioning is because here 'God is turning back human wisdom and ambition in order to bring to fruition his eternal purposes', as well as because it is spoken by a non-Jew, who 'instigates the crisis which needs to be reversed'.
