Verse 7. “He saw that there was evil determined against him by the king."-He saw not only that he had cause to apprehend evil, but that evil was determined, and he saw this by the king's rising abruptly and going out. At this day it is a signal of death when the king rises abruptly and withdraws: the offender knows then that evil-death-is determined against him. Probably the eunuchs would have seized Haman immediately, had he not at the instant appealed to the queen.

8. "Fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was."-The couch on which she reclined (see the note on ch. v. 11). In the agony of his spirit he had probably fallen down to embrace her knees in supplication. There may however be something more in this than appears, for it was a capital crime to sit on the royal seat. Quintus Curtius relates an anecdote of Alexander, who, when sitting in his chair warming himself by a fire in the open fields, saw a soldier who had almost lost the use of his limbs and senses through cold. The king instantly set the man in his own seat, and exerted himself actively in recovering him. When he came to himself and saw where he was seated, with the king standing near, he was greatly alarmed, but was cheered by the monarch, who observed, “Had you rested in the Persian king's chair, it would have cost you your life; but by rest in my chair it has been saved."

"They covered Haman's fuce."-The meaning of this impressive, and even awful, action, seems to have been to place him as a criminal before the king, whose face he was no longer thought worthy to behold—and to receive from him his doom. Criminals were anciently, and are still in some parts of the East, brought to receive judgment with their hands bound and faces covered. There is a striking illustrative passage in Q. Curtius:-" Alexander ordered Philotas to be brought before him. He had his hands bound and his head covered with an old veil. The assembly were moved with pity to see in that lamentable guise one whom they had been wont to behold with envy. The day before, they had seen him general of the horse; they knew that he had supped with the king: and now, on the sudden, they saw him not only accused but condemned and bound” (1. vi. 9).

Or, who wrote.

mandment to be given in every province was published unto all people, and that the Jews should be ready against that day to avenge themselves on their enemies.

14 So the posts that rode upon mules and camels went out, being hastened and pressed on by the king's commandment. And the decree was given at Shushan the palace.

15 ¶ And Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal apparel of blue and white, and with a great crown

6 Heb. revealed.

of gold, and with a garment of fine linen and purple: and the city of Shushan rejoiced and was glad.

16 The Jews had light, and gladness, and joy, and honour.

17 And in every province, and in every city, whithersoever the king's commandment and his decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a good day. good day. And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon

them.

7 Or, violet.

Verse 10. "Sent letters by posts."-This is one of many intimations in this book calculated to engage the attention of those who take interest in studying the progress of society in the arts of convenience and civilization. The testimony of the Greek writers coincides with this, in directing our attention to Persia for the origin of posts and couriers. It is said, that when the empire became so vast as in the time of Cyrus, that monarch thought of a plan for facilitating the exchange of communications between the court and provincial governments. After having ascertained how far a good horse might go in a day, with ease and expedition, he caused stables to be erected at the determined distances throughout his dominions, each with a suitable establishment of horses, and men to take care of them. There was also a post-master at each of these stages, whose duty it was to receive the packets as they arrived, and immediately despatch them with fresh horses and couriers. Thus the posts travelled night and day, without intermission; and hence it was proverbially said, that they flew swifter than cranes. The expedition with which the king was enabled by this process to obtain intelligence from, and forward edicts to, the remotest parts of his empire astonished the ancient world. Their admiration resembled that with which early European travellers regarded the posting establishments of the Mongol empire, which seems to have been similar to that of the ancient Persians. There is a full and interesting description of it in Marco Polo (ii. 90), a few particulars of which may serve to complete the idea of Oriental estalishments of this class. From the capital (Kambalu) roads extended to every part of the empire, having post-houses, with suitable furniture, at every twenty-five or thirty miles. There were altogether ten thousand of these stations, with two hundred thousand horses. The post rode two hundred, and sometimes two hundred and fifty, miles in a day, on occasions of rebellion in the provinces, or other urgent matters. There were other stations, consisting of a few dwellings, three or four miles asunder, occupied by runners or foot-posts, who, being girded, ran as fast as horses (see the note on 1 Sam. viii. 11). These, in dark nights, ran before the horsemen with links to light them along: they also carried letters, mandates, and parcels, to or from the khan; who thus received news or fruit in two days from places ten stages distant, as from Kambalu to Shangtu. Similar establishments are still kept up in China and Japan.

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15. "In royal apparel of blue and white."-This was doubtless the dress which Haman had recommended the king to give to the man he delighted to honour; and this corroborates the conclusion that it was really the king's own dress, and not merely the common Median dress of honour, which was, as to its make, like the king's. This mixture of blue (or purple) and white was peculiar to the king, and for that reason is doubtless here noticed. It is well to compare this description of Mordecai's appearance on leaving the palace, with Xenophon's description of the attire in which Cyrus himself appeared in public. Cyrus himself then appeared, wearing a turban, which was raised high above his head, with a vest of a purple colour, half mixed with white; and this mixture of white none else is allowed to wear. On his legs he had yellow buskins; his outer robe was wholly of purple; and about his turban was a diadem or wreath." (Cyrop. viii. 23.) Every one of these things occur in the description of Mordecai's royal attire, except the yellow buskins. Xenophon however adds, that the diademed turban was not peculiar to the king, but was allowed to his relations. This doubtless answers to the "great crown " which Mordecai wore. The description does not correspond with the appearance of the cap which the king wears in the sculptures of Persepolis, as represented in the cuts to Nehem. i. This difference, which has perplexed antiquarians, is probably owing to the fact that the sculptures represented the king as he usually appeared in his palace; whereas the description refers to his appearance when he went abroad, or on occasions of high state within doors.

CHAPTER IX.

1 The Jews (the rulers, for fear of Mordecai, helping them) slay their enemies, with the ten sons of Haman. 12 Ahasuerus, at the request of Esther, granteth another day of slaughter, and Haman's sons to be hanged. 20 The two days of Purim are made festival.

Now in the twelfth month, that is, the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king's commandment and his decree drew near to be put in execution, in the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have power over them, (though it was

VOL. II. 3 o

turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them ;)

2 The Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them fell upon all people.

3 And all the rulers of the provinces, and the lieutenants, and the deputies, and 'officers of the king, helped the Jews; because the fear of Mordecai fell upon them.

4 For Mordecai was great in the king's

1 Heb. those which did the business that belonged to the king.

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house, and his fame went out throughout | thereof, and on the fourteenth thereof; and all the provinces: for this man Mordecai waxed greater and greater.

5 Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.

6 And in Shushan the palace the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men.

7 And Parshandatha, and Dalphon, and Aspatha,

8 And Poratha, and Adalia, and Aridatha,

9 And Parmashta, and Arisai, and Aridai, and Vajezatha,

10 The ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews, slew they; but on the spoil laid they not their hand.

11 On that day the number of those that were slain in Shushan the palace was brought before the king.

12 ¶ And the king said unto Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the palace, and the ten sons of Haman; what have they done in the rest of the king's provinces? now what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: or what is thy request further? and it shall be done.

13 Then said Esther, If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews which are in Shushan to do to morrow also according unto this day's decree, and 'let Haman's ten sons be hanged upon the gallows.

14 And the king commanded it so to be done: and the decree was given at Shushan; and they hanged Haman's ten sons.

15 For the Jews that were in Shushan gathered themselves together on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men at Shushan; but on the prey they laid not their hand.

16 But the other Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand, but they laid not their hands on the prey.

17 On the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same rested they, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.

18 But the Jews that were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day

on the fifteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.

19 Therefore the Jews of the villages, that dwelt in the unwalled towns, made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.

20 ¶ And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all the Jews that were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both nigh and far,

21 To stablish this among them, that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly,

22 As the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.

23 And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written unto them;

24 Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to 'consume them, and to destroy them;

25 But when Esther came before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he devised against the Jews, should return upon his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.

26 Wherefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur. Therefore for all the words of this letter, and of that which they had seen concerning this matter, and which had come unto them,

27 The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not 'fail, that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time every year;

28 And that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not 10fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them "perish from their seed.

29 Then Esther the queen, the daughter

4 Heb. le men hang.
5 Heb. in it. 6 Heb. crush, 7 Heb, when she came
9 Heb. pass.
10 Heb. pass.
11 Heb, be ended.

of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote with all authority, to confirm this second letter of Purim.

30 And he sent the letters unto all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace and truth,

31 To confirm these days of Purim in

12 Heb. all strength.

their times appointed, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them, and as they had decreed for themselves and for their seed, the matters of the fastings and their cry.

32 And the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book.

13 Heb. for their souls.

Verse 17. "And made it a day of feasting and gladness."”-The Jews, in the progress of time, instituted various festivals and fasts in commemoration of remarkable occurrences in their history, and for which, of course, the law of Moses offers no sanction. The authority for the establishment of such additional celebrations would seem not to have been at first admitted without dissenting voices; and, if we may believe the Rabbinical writers, not fewer than eighty-five elders protested against the institution of the feast of Purim as an unauthorized innovation. (Lightfoot's' Exercit. on John xx. 22.) The feast, however, has, to the present day, continued to occupy a very conspicuous place in the Hebrew calendar. The festival has been observed on the fourteenth and fifteenth of the month Adar; but when the year happened to be an intercalary one, there are two celebrations-the first, called the Little Purim, with comparatively little ceremony, in the month Adar, and the other, in the usual manner, in the intercalated month of Ve-Adar. On each day of the feast the book of Esther is read in the synagogues from beginning to end, and all Jews of every sex and age, to whom attendance is not quite impracticable, are required to be present, for the better preservation of the memory of the important deliverance which it records. The copy of Esther which is read on this occasion must be written on vellum, as a single roll, by itself; and where the names of Haman's ten sons occur (and indeed in other copies of the book, manuscript and printed), they are disposed in a peculiar order, intended, as they explain, to suggest the idea of ten bodies hanging on a gibbet. The reader pronounces all these names with great rapidity, as if in one breath, to intimate that they were all hanged, and expired in the same moment of time. Whenever the name of Haman himself occurs there is a terrible uproar raised in the synagogue: the whole congregation clap with their hands, and stamp with their feet, exclaiming, "Let his name be blotted out; may the memory of the wicked rot!" The children, at the same time, are instructed to hiss, and to strike the forms with wooden mallets provided for the occasion. When the reading is finished, the whole congregation exclaim, "Cursed be Haman! Blessed be Mordecai! Cursed be Zeresh! Blessed be Esther! Cursed be all idolaters! Blessed be all the Israelites! And blessed also be Harbonah, at whose instance Haman was hanged!" It is said to have been formerly customary to write Haman's name upon a great stone, and regarding it as his representative, to batter it with other stones till the writing was effaced or the stone broken, exclaiming as before,

"Let his name be blotted out," &c.

The days of this festival have formed the carnival and bacchanalia of the Jews, in which they give way to riotous carousing, remarkable in a people so much distinguished for general sobriety. The Talmud indeed seems to indicate it as a matter of duty that a man should be so far gone in liquor as to be unable to distinguish between "Cursed be Haman!" and "Blessed be Mordecai!" This direction has been pretty well acted upon. Among other extravagancies, on this occasion, "Some put on fool's coats, and raked like pickled herrings about the streets, and danced in the very synagogues while the book of Esther was reading. Others disguised themselves in strange antick dresses-men in the habit of women, and women dressed like men, with their faces disfigured." (Lewis's Origines, vol. ii. p. 622.) At present, and particularly in England, the feast is celebrated with great hilarity, but not with greater excess or riot than usually attends the common festivities of Christmas. "Alms are given to the poor; relations and friends send presents to each other; and all furnish their tables with every luxury they can command. The modern Jews think it no sin then to indulge largely in their cups, some of them indeed to intoxication, in memory of Esther's banquet of wine, in which she succeeded in defeating the sanguinary designs of Haman." (Allen's Modern Judaism,' p. 419.) This carnival is preceded by a feast, in memory of that of Esther (chap. iv.); it should last three days, but is usually confined to one. Besides the authorities already quoted, see Buxtorf, Synag. Jud.' c. xxix.; and Calmet's Dictionary (folio, 1732), Art. Pur.

CHAPTER X.

1 Ahasuerus's greatness. 3 Mordecai's advancement. AND the king Ahasuerus laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the sea.

vanced him, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia?

3 For Mordecai the Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, 2 And all the acts of his power and of and accepted of the multitude of his brehis might, and the declaration of the great-thren, seeking the wealth of his people, and ness of Mordecai, whereunto the king 'ad- speaking peace to all his seed.

1 Heb. made him great.

We introduce a cut of the alleged tomb of Esther and Mordecai at Hamadan, the ancient Ecbatana (see the note on Ezra vi. 1). The site is very likely to have been that of the interment of one or both of those eminent personages. Ecbatana was one of the seats of the royal court to which they were attached; and the Jews, who always, from the time of the captivity, have abounded in this region, have distinguished the spot of their burial, and preserved the memory of it by tradition. The existence of this honoured sepulchre has rendered Hamadan a place of pilgrimage to the Jews from time immemorial; and some of their number have always been resident there. Benjamin of Tudela makes mention of it, and says that there were then fifty thousand Jews in the town: but little confidence is to be placed in his statements concerning the numbers of Jews he found at different places. In the note referred to, we have

stated, on the authority of a resident Jew, the number now to be found there. Although the tomb now standing is more ancient than that of Ezra, it is on essentially the same plan, both in its exterior and interior appearance, with such differences as proceeded from the difference of situation, one being in the midst of a town, and the other on the borders of the desert. The present tomb is seen in the cut without the inclosing wall, which conceals the proportions of Ezra's tomb. The bell-shaped dome is also in an older taste than that which the other tomb exhibits. The stork's nest, by which it is surmounted, frequently appears upon the highest points of public buildings in that country. The tomb stands on ground somewhat more elevated than any in the immediate neighbourhood, and is in rather a decayed condition. The entrance to the building is by a stone door of small dimensions, the key of which is always kept by the chief rabbi. This door conducts to the ante-chamber, which is small, and contains the graves of several rabbis. A second door, of still more confined dimensions than the first, leads to the tomb-chamber, which is larger than the outer apartment. In the midst of this stand the two sarcophagi of Mordecai and Esther, of dark and hard wood, like that of Ezra. They are richly carved, and have a Hebrew inscription along the upper ledge, taken from ch. ii. 5, and x. 3. The wood is in good preservation, though evidently very old. The present building is said to occupy the site of one more magnificent, which was destroyed by Timour Beg, soon after which this humble building was erected in its place, at the expense of certain devout Jews; and it is added, that it was fully repaired about 160 since by a rabbi named Ismael. If this local statement be correct, some of the inscriptions which now appear must, as the resident Jews state, have belonged to the preceding building, which however could not have been the original mausoleum, since one of these inscriptions describes it as having been finished posterior to the Christian era. This inscription is on the present dome, and has thus been translated by Sir Gore Ouseley: "Thursday, fifteenth of the month Adar, in the year 4474 from the creation of the world, was finished the building of this temple over the graves of Mordecai and Esther, by the hands of the good-hearted brothers Elias and Samuel, the sons of the deceased Ismael of Kashan." According to the vulg. Jewish era, this would have been not more than about eleven centuries ago; but the date is probably after the computation of the eastern Jews, which would make the date answer to about 250 A.D.

Sir Robert Ker Porter has given copies, with the following translations, of the other inscriptions, which are at least curious.

From a marble slab in the Sepulchre.-" Mordecai, beloved and honoured by a king, was great and good. His garments were those of a sovereign. Ahasuerus covered him with this rich dress, and also placed a golden chain around his neck. The city of Susa rejoiced at his honours, and his high fortune became the glory of the Jews."

On the sarcophagus of Mordecai." It is said by David, Preserve me, O God! I am now in thy presence. I have cried at the gate of heaven, that thou art my God; and what goodness I have received came from thee, O Lord;Those whose bodies are now beneath in this earth, when animated by thy mercy, were great; and whatever happiness was bestowed upon them in this world came from thee, O God!-Their grief and sufferings were many; but they became happy, because they always called upon thy holy name in their afflictions. Thou liftedst me up, and I be came powerful. Thine enemies sought to destroy me, in the early times of my life; but the shadow of thy hand was upon me, and covered me, as a tent, from their wicked purposes.'-MORDECAI."

From the sarcophagus of Esther.-"I praise thee, O God, that thou hast created me. I know that my sins merit punishment, yet I hope for mercy at thy hands: for whenever I call upon thee, thou art with me; thy holy presence secures me from all evil.-My heart is at ease, and my fear of thee increases. My life became, at the last, through thy goodness, full of peace.-O God! shut not my soul out from thy divine presence. Those whom thou lovest never feel the torments of hell. Lead me, O merciful Father, to the life of life; that I may be filled with the heavenly fruits of Paradise-ESTHER."