Queen Esther

“ THE BOOK OF ESTHER This Book takes its name from queen Esther, whose history is here recorded. The general opinion of almost all commentators on the Holy Scriptures makes Mardochai the writer of it: which also may be collected below from chap. 9 ver. 20.
Esther Chapter 1
King Assuerus maketh a great feast. Queen Vasthi being sent for refuseth to come: for which disobedience she is deposed.
1:1. In the days of Assuerus, who reigned from India to Ethiopia over a hundred and twenty seven provinces:
1:2. When he sat on the throne of his kingdom, the city Susan was the capital of his kingdom. ”

“ And sit in majesty upon a throne.
Esther
[Dejectedly.]
Four years I have been queen, which time I have
Not heard the voice of any one I love;
And though disguised, I hardly dare to speak
My heart even to you. This palace is
A gloomy prison cell. The Persian crown
[12] Is meaningless to me. The hundred gems
That blaze upon its field of gold are dull
And heavy lead. I would exchange it all
For but a glint of sunshine on the hills
Where I was born. But why this interview?
Mordecai
My royal niece, I know that you are queen.
Esther
A queen? ”

“ This is no time to cloud the royal brow!
Bring forth the vintage from the deepest vault.
Here are a hundred irised pearls. They cost
A million sesterces. Let each man crush
A lustrous shell and drink it to the health
Of Esther, beauteous queen of all the East.
Arise! She comes! A blaze of splendor. Now
Let every instrument be sounded.
The revels shall continue till the dawn!
[74] Zeresh
[Rushing in with uplifted dagger and thrusting it into the heart of Esther, crying as she flourishes it before the astonished court.]
The dawn, O king, is breaking in the east!
[Curtain.] ”

“ The queen's consent has not yet been obtained
To this decree that puts the Jews to death.
Zeresh
What do you mean? The queen's consent? My Lord
Has naught to do with Xerxes' wife, and why
Should he be troubled for a woman's whim?
Besides, who knows but Esther does approve
This slaughter of the Jews?
[21] Parshandatha
Approve, madam?
She is a queen, but still a woman!
Zeresh
So
Am I, though not a queen! A woman, yes
But with no stomach for that hated race!
Parshandatha
'Tis whispered in the court that Esther is
Herself a Jew.
Zeresh
The Persian queen a Jew! ”

“ Queen Esther was the widow of a great chief, whose authority she had taken up at his grave, and never laid down during twenty-five years, when Gi-engwa-tah, her eldest son, had earned a right to wear the eagle plume and fill his father’s place on the warpath and at the council table. The great secret of this woman’s power over her tribe lay in her superior intelligence and the remnants of an early education; for she was a white woman, brought in the bloom of girlhood from Canada, where she had been taken prisoner in the wars between the French and the Six Nations. ”

“ Then Queen Esther begged Mordecai to gather all the Jews together who were in Shushan, and to bid them fast and pray for three days; and she and her maidens would fast too; and at the end of that time, she said, "I will go in to the King, which is not according to the law, and if I perish, I perish."
Esther was brave because she knew that she had God on her side; and she believed that He would answer the prayers they were all offering up.
QUEEN ESTHER BEFORE AHASUERUS.
So on the third day Queen Esther put on her Royal robes, and went into the Inner Court and stood before the King. ”

“ To this was added jealousy of the influence and power which the younger woman had soon obtained over the chief and his tribe. In the intelligence, beauty, and stern will of Catharine, Queen Esther found a rival whom she could neither overpower, despise, or intimidate. Both as a white woman and an Indian princess, she soon learned to regard her daughter-in-law with intense hate.
Like her son, Queen Esther had resolved to strengthen herself by an alliance with Tahmeroo and some partisan of her own. ”

“ Last night the queen invited me
To banquet with her lord. The necklace that
She wore of iridescent pearls was like
A rainbow over polar snows. Ah, she
Was fair to look upon! And now my cup
Was filled to overflowing—
[Zeresh shows great emotion.]
(Zeresh, are
You ill?) —when Esther begged that I would come
Again to-morrow to another feast
Her hand would lay for Haman and the king.
My wealth is multiplied beyond my ken;
The sceptre is almost within my grasp.
But all these things avail me naught, so long
As yonder hated Jew remains unbent.
A Friend
Destroy the brute at once! ”

“ This remarkably well-preserved piece of Embroidery represents various incidents in the life of Queen Esther. In the centre the King stretches forth his sceptre to the Queen; in the various corners are portrayed the banquet, the hanging of Haman, and Mordecai and the King. It will be noticed that the King and Queen are likenesses of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, and the costume is that in vogue towards the end of his reign, when the big boots worn by the men came in for much ridicule, the tops of the King’s being “very large and turned down, and the feet two inches too long.” ”

“ The modern Queen Esther did hear of the trouble, and, unlike her great namesake, faltered and pouted and would have nothing to do with the affair, so at a late hour a new queen had to be hastily chosen, who marred the occasion by forgetting some of her parts; and this is only a hint of the sea of trials which encompassed the executive committee that evening. Still, as I said, they lived, and came to the hour when they sat down to count their gains. From this exercise they rose up sadder and wiser girls. ”

“ How can I endure to see the destruction of my relatives?"
7 Then King Ahasuerus said to Esther the queen and to Mordecai the Jew, "See, I have given Esther the house of Haman, and him they have hanged on the gallows, because he laid his hand on the Jews. 8 Write also to the Jews, as it pleases you, in the king's name, and seal it with the king's ring; for the writing which is written in the king's name and sealed with the king's ring may not be reversed by any man." ”

“ But the king being angry rose up, and went from the place of the banquet into the garden set with trees. Aman also rose up to entreat Esther the queen for his life, for he understood that evil was prepared for him by the king. ”

“ Esther is leaning against her husband, her bright face full of content and happiness; once or twice her eyes have gone skywards, and the light in them has deepened. Essie is in her arms, saucy and dimpled: she knows she is the undisputed queen of that gathering, and is taking advantage of her power by giving all manner of sweet little commands. ”

“ To perish and be slain.
Ahasuerus
[Surprised and dazed.]
O where is he—
Oh, who is he, that dare presume to lay
The hand of violence upon my queen!
[41] Esther
There stands this adversary, O my king,
The wicked Haman!
Ahasuerus
Haman! Haman! What
Can be the meaning of this speech? This man
I have advanced to be my premier?
Esther
I mean this craven whom you have advanced
To put to death with your own royal seal
The queen, as well as every other Jew
That breathes the Persian air, both young and old
Alike, the laughing child and gray-haired sire.
Ahasuerus
What! ”

“ It is certain, as bishop Patrick says, that those who suggest that she committed a great sin to come at this dignity do not consider the custom of those times and countries. Every one that the king took to his bed was married to him, and was his wife of a lower rank, as Hagar was Abraham's; so that, if Esther had not been made queen, the sons of Jacob need not say that he dealt with their sister as with a harlot. Concerning Esther we must observe,
1. Her original and character. (1.) She was one of the children of the captivity, a Jewess and a sharer with her people in their bondage. ”

“ Is not the golden sceptre of a king.
I have no doubt that she has long since ceased
To think of youthful dreams. She rules the king,
And what more does a woman want?
Mordecai
I did
Not hope to make her understand at once.
My reasons were too subtle for her heart.
And so I kept my counsel, for I knew
No girl would ever sacrifice her love
To save the remnant of a nation's life.
[53] Zeresh
[Justifying.]
And why might even Esther not forget
When once she felt the spell of royal power—
The tinsel show and glamour of the court?
No woman lives that would not be a queen. ”

“ The seven (no longer virgins) now washed the king and queen, and then themselves, after which all were refreshed and reinvigorated by stimulating wines and viands. Esther again excited her Royal spouse, till his pego was as a bar of iron; she made him enter the bottoms of all her maids, but without spending his Royal seed, till at last presenting her own lovely buttocks, she received the weapon of love in her anus, and kept him there till he rewarded her devotion by another copious emission. ”

“ It appeared, by the event, that she did come to the kingdom that she might be an instrument of the Jews' deliverance, so that Mordecai was right in the conjecture. Because the Lord loved his people, therefore he made Esther queen. There is a wise counsel and design in all the providences of God, which is unknown to us till it is accomplished, but it will prove, in the issue, that they are all intended for, and centre in, the good of the church. ”

“ Zeresh
[Who has been concealed in a corner of the hall, advancing.]
At Esther's feet! An Aggagite! Ha, Ha!
A hater of the Jews! You hypocrite!
A lover of this queen! A paramour
Of her who boasts that she can trace her blood
An unpolluted stream a thousand years
To one who watched his humble flocks on bleak
Judean hills. A shepherd queen that rules
The Persian throne, and you, O Haman, you
That fed on venom for her race, are now,
Though premier, a cringing, craven wretch,
Begging this Jewish girl for worthless life.
"A rainbow over polar snows," ha, ha! ”

“ Zeresh
And Esther's life
Was forfeit then through Haman's wicked hate.
Mordecai
I wear the royal robe of blue and white.
Zeresh
Does Esther think because her vanity
Is flattered by the jewels of a queen
That Mordecai is moved by pomp and show?
[55] Mordecai
'Tis not the kingly trappings but the seal—
Not sceptre merely but the signet ring,
Not rank, but rule that Mordecai would have.
I can not understand her tears no more
Than she knows why I wear the crown. But I
Am justified. Jehovah wrought through me.
[Exit Mordecai.] ”

“ Her position as queen was but an added distinction of her lord and master.
Esther, the orphaned and adopted daughter of Mordecai the Jew, was the favored maiden. She was "fair and beautiful." The truth of the historic record of the men of those days is indisputable. Down to the present the average man sums up his estimate of woman by her "looks." Is she fair to look upon is the criterion. Esther was destined to play an important part in the salvation of her people from the destructive purposes of Haman, who had been "set above all the princes who were with him." ”

“ There was method of reason in God’s taking His prophets to lone places, to fit them for understanding the rapturing visions with which He filled them.”
“’Tis so, true; but what thinks the knight of Esther, the beautiful Queen? She’s the idol and ideal in Israel in all times and places.”
“Wondrous woman! A girl, petted, ill-trained, from poverty suddenly exalted, surrounded by the skilled intriguants of court, a jealous, exacting, conceited, harem-demoralized old king for a spouse, she was then burdened with the salvation of a nation. ”

“ Is on his throne. I go, and if I die,
I can but perish. Peace to Israel.
[Exit Mordecai.]
[The curtain back rises and discloses Ahasuerus on his throne surrounded by court. Esther approaches to center of hall before the king, and extends her hands as though supplicating. The king seems dazed for a moment and then deeply moved; slowly he lifts the golden sceptre and extends it toward the queen who approaches and touches it.] ”