Charles Ellicott Commentary Esther 2

After these things. —We have seen that the great feast at Susa was in the year 483 B.C., and that in the spring of 481 B.C. Xerxes set out for Greece. The proposal now initiated, then, is to be placed at some unspecified time between these limits. The marriage of Esther, however (Esther 2:16), did not occur until after the return from Greece. The king’s long absence explains the otherwise curious delay. Moreover, even in this interval, he was entangled in more than one illicit connection.

The house of the women. —The harem, then as now, a prominent feature in the establishment of an Eastern king.

Hege. —Called Hegai in Esther 2:8; a eunuch whose special charge seems to have been the virgins, while another, named Shaashgaz (Esther 2:14), had custody of the concubines. The whole verse shows, as conclusively as anything could, how degradingly Eastern women, as a whole, were viewed.

It was reserved for Christianity to indicate the true position of woman: not man’s plaything, but the help meet for him, able to aid him in his spiritual and intellectual progress, yielding him intelligent obedience, not slavery.

Mordecai. —Canon Rawlinson is inclined to identify Mordecai with Matacas, who was the most powerful of the eunuchs in the reign of Xerxes. It may be assumed that Mordecai was a eunuch, by the way in which he was allowed access to the royal harem (Esther 2:11; Esther 2:22). The name Mordecai occurs in Ezra 2:2; Nehemiah 7:7, as one of those who returned to Judea with Zerubbabel.

The son of Jair. —It is probable that the names here given are those of the actual father, grandfather, and great-grandfather of Mordecai; though some have thought that they are merely some of the more famous ancestors, Shimei being assumed to be the assailant of David, and Kish the father of Saul. The character of Mordecai strikes us at the outset as that of an ambitious, worldly man, who, though numbers of his tribe had returned to the land of their fathers, preferred to remain behind on the alien soil.

The heroic lament of the exiles by Babel’s streams, who would not sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, who looked with horror at the thought that Jerusalem should be forgotten—such were not Mordecai’s thoughts. Far from it.

Why endure hardships, when there is a chance of his adopted daughter’s beauty catching the eye of the sensual king, when through her he may vanquish his rival, and become that king’s chief minister?

Who had been ... —The antecedent is obviously Kish, though as far as the mere grammar goes it might have been Mordecai.

Jeconiah. —That is, Jehoiachin. (See 2 Kings 24:12–16.)

Nebuchadnezzar ... had carried away. —This was in 598 B.C., 117 years before this time, so that the four generations are readily accounted for.

Hadassah. — This is evidently formed from the Hebrew hadas, the myrtle: Esther is generally assumed to be a Persian name, meaning a star. Unless we assume that this latter name was given afterwards, and is used here in anticipation, we have here an early case of the common Jewish practice of using two names, a Hebrew and a Gentile one — e.g., Saul, Paul; John, Mark; Joses, Justus, etc.

Uncle. — Abihail .