QUEEN ESTHER.

The story of Esther belongs to that dark period in Jewish history when the national institutions were to all human view destroyed. The Jews were scattered up and down through the provinces captives and slaves, with no rights but what their conquerors might choose to give them. Without a temple, without an altar, without a priesthood, they could only cling to their religion as a memory of the past, and with some dim hopes for the future. In this depressed state, there was a conspiracy, armed by the regal power, to exterminate the whole race, and this terrible danger was averted by the beauty and grace, the courage and prudence, of one woman. The portrait of this heroine comes to us in a flush of Oriental splendor. Her story reads like a romance, yet her memory, in our very prosaic days, is embalmed as a reality, by a yearly festival devoted to it. Every year the festival of Purim in every land and country whither the Jews are scattered, reminds the world that the romance has been a reality, and the woman whose beauty and fascination were the moving power in it was no creation of fancy.

The style of the book of Esther is peculiar. It has been held by learned Jews to be a compilation made by Mordecai from the Persian annals. The name of Jehovah nowhere occurs in it, although frequent mention is made of fasting and prayer. The king Ahasuerus is supposed by the best informed to be the Xerxes of Herodotus, and the time of the story previous to the celebrated expedition of that monarch against Greece. The hundred and twenty-seven provinces over which he reigned are picturesquely set forth by Herodotus in his celebrated description of the marshaling of this great army. The vanity, ostentation, childish passionateness, and disregard of human life ascribed to the king in this story are strikingly like other incidents related by Herodotus.

When a father came to him imploring that he would spare one of his sons from going to the war, Xerxes immediately commanded the young man to be slain and divided, and the wretched father was obliged to march between the mangled remains. This was to illustrate forcibly that no human being had any rights but the king, and that it was presumptuous even to wish to retain anything from his service.

The armies of Xerxes were not led to battle by leaders in front, but driven from behind with whips like cattle. When the king's bridge of boats across the Hellespont was destroyed by a storm, he fell into a fury, and ordered the sea to be chastised with stripes, and fetters to be thrown into it, with the admonition, "O thou salt and bitter water, it is thus that thy master chastises thy insolence!" We have the picture, in Herodotus, of the king seated at ease on his royal throne, on an eminence, beholding the various ranks of his army as they were driven like so many bullocks into battle. When the battle went against him, he would leap from his throne in furies of impotent rage.

It is at the court of this monarch, proud, vain, passionate, and ostentatious, that the story opens, with a sort of dazzle of Eastern splendor. "Now it came to pass, in the days of Ahasuerus, which reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and twenty and seven provinces, that in those days, when King Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the palace, in the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the powers of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him: when he showed them the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honor of his excellent majesty."

On the last seven days of the feast the royal palace is thrown open to the populace of Shushan. The writer goes on to amplify and give particulars: In the courts of the king's garden were couches of gold and silver, on a pavement of colored marbles, with hangings of white, green, and blue, fastened by cords of purple and fine linen to silver rings in marble pillars. There was wine poured forth in costly goblets of very quaint and rare device. Vashti, the queen, at the same time made a feast to all the women in the royal house which belonged to the king. In the year 1819 Sir Robert Ker Porter visited and explored the ruins of this city of Shushan. His travels were printed for private circulation, and are rare and costly. They contain elegant drawings and restorations of the palace at Persepolis which would well illustrate this story, and give an idea of the architectural splendor of the scenery of the drama here presented.

Of Shushan itself,—otherwise Susa,—he gives only one or two drawings of fragmentary ruins. The "satyrs have long danced and the bitterns cried" in these halls then so gay and glorious, though little did the king then dream of that.

At the close of the long revel, when the king was inflated to the very ultimatum of ostentatious vanity, he resolves, as a last glorification of self, to exhibit the unveiled beauty of his Queen Vashti to all the princes and lords of his empire.

Now, if we consider the abject condition of all men in that day before the king, we shall stand amazed that there was a woman found at the head of the Persian empire that dared to disobey the command even of a drunken monarch. It is true that the thing required was, according to Oriental customs, an indecency as great as if a modern husband should propose to his wife to exhibit her naked person. Vashti was reduced to the place where a woman deliberately chooses death before dishonor. The naïve account of the counsel of the king and princes about this first stand for woman's rights—their fear that the example might infect other wives with a like spirit, and weaken the authority of husbands—is certainly a most delightful specimen of ancient simplicity. It shows us that the male sex, with all their force of physical mastery, hold everywhere, even in the undeveloped states of civilization, an almost even-handed conflict with those subtler and more ethereal forces which are ever at the disposal of women. It appears that the chief councilors and mighty men of Persia could scarcely hold their own with their wives, and felt as if the least toleration would set them all out into open rebellion. So Vashti is deposed, nem. con., by the concurrent voice of all the princes of the Medes and Persians.

Then comes the account of the steps taken to secure another queen. All the beautiful virgins through all the hundred and twenty-seven provinces are caught, caged, and sent traveling towards Shushan, and delivered over to the keeping of the chief eunuch, like so many birds and butterflies, waiting their turn to be sent in to the king. Among them all a Jewish maiden, of an enslaved, oppressed race, is the favored one. Before all the beauties of the provinces Esther is preferred, and the crown royal is set upon her head. What charmed about Esther was, perhaps, the reflection of a soul from her beautiful face. Every one of the best class of Jewish women felt secretly exalted by her conception of the dignity of her nation as chosen by the one true God, and destined to bring into the world the great prince and Messiah who should reign over the earth. These religious ideas inspired in them a lofty and heroic cast of mind that even captivity could not subdue. At all events there was something about Esther that gave her a power to charm and fix the passions of this voluptuous and ostentatious monarch. Esther is the adopted daughter of her kinsman Mordecai, and the narrative says that "Esther did the commandment of Mordecai, like as when she was brought up with him." At his command she forbears to declare her nationality and lineage, and Mordecai refrains from any connection with her that would compromise her as related to an obscure captive, though the story says he walked every day before the court of the woman's house to know how Esther did, and what should become of her.

In these walks around the palace he overhears a conspiracy of two chamberlains to murder the king, and acquaints Esther of the danger. The conspirators are executed, and the record passes into the Persian annals with the name of Mordecai the Jew, but no particular honor or reward is accorded to him at that time. Meanwhile, a foreign adventurer named Haman rises suddenly to influence and power, and becomes prime minister to the king. This story is a sort of door, opening into the interior of a despotic court, showing the strange and sudden reverses of fortune which attended that phase of human existence. Haman, inflated with self-consequence, as upstart adventurers generally are, is enraged at Mordecai for neglecting to prostrate himself before him as the other hangers-on of the court do. Safe in his near relationship to the queen, Mordecai appears to have felt himself free to indulge in the expensive and dangerous luxury of quiet contempt for the all-powerful favorite of the king.

It is most astounding next to read how Haman, having resolved to take vengeance on Mordecai by exterminating his whole nation, thus glibly and easily wins over the king to his scheme. "There is a nation," he says, "scattered abroad throughout all the provinces of the king's kingdom, and their laws are diverse from all people, neither keep they the king's laws, therefore it is not for the king's profit to suffer them." "If it please the king let it be written that they may be destroyed, and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands of them that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the king's treasury."

It is fashionable in our times to speak of the contempt and disregard shown to women in this period of the world among Oriental races, but this one incident shows that women were held no cheaper than men. Human beings were cheap. The massacre of hundreds of thousands was negotiated in an easy, off-hand way, just as a gardener ordains exterminating sulphur for the green bugs on his plants. The king answered to Haman, "The silver is given thee, and the people also, to do as seemeth to thee good."

Then, says the story, "the king's scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and there was written according to all that Haman had commanded, and the letters were sent by post into all the provinces, to destroy and to kill and cause to perish all Jews, both old and young, little children and women, in one day, of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, to take the spoil of them for a prey. The posts went out, being hastened by the king's commandment, and the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed." And when Mordecai heard this he rent his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went into the midst of the city, and came even before the king's gate, for none might enter into the king's gate clothed in sackcloth. The Oriental monarch was supposed to dwell in eternal bliss and joyfulness: no sight or sound of human suffering or weakness or pain must disturb the tranquility of his court; he must not even suspect the existence of such a thing as sorrow.

Far in the luxurious repose of the women's apartments, sunk upon embroidered cushions, listening to the warbling of birds and the plash of fountains, Esther the queen knew nothing of the decree that had gone forth against her people. The report was brought her by her chamberlain that her kinsman was in sackcloth, and she sent to take it away and clothe him with costly garments, but he refused the attention and persisted in his mourning. Then the queen sent her chief chamberlain to inquire what was the cause of his distress, and Mordecai sent a copy of the decree, with a full account of how and by whom it had been obtained, and charging her to go and make supplication to the king for her people. Esther returned answer: "All the king's servants do know that whosoever, man or woman, shall come in to the king in the inner court, who is not called, there is one law to put them to death, except those to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter that he may live, but I have not been called to appear before the king for thirty days."

We have here the first thoughts of a woman naturally humble and timid, knowing herself one of the outlawed race, and fearing, from the long silence of the king, that his heart may have been set against her by the enemies of her people. Mordecai sent in reply to this a sterner message; "Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another quarter, but thou and thy father's house shall be cut off; and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" And Esther sends this reply: "Go, gather together all the Jews that are in Shushan, and fast ye for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day; and I and my maidens will fast likewise. And so I will go in unto the king, which is not according to law; and if I perish, I perish."

There are certain apochryphal additions to the book of Esther, which are supposed to be the efforts of some romancer in enlarging upon a historic theme. In it is given at length a prayer of Mordecai in this distress, and a detailed account of the visit of Esther to the king. The writer says, that, though she carried a smiling face, "her heart was in anguish for fear," and she fell fainting upon the shoulder of her maid. Our own account is briefer, and relates simply how the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, and she obtained favor in his eyes, and he held out the golden scepter, and said to her, "What wilt thou, Queen Esther, what is thy request? and it shall be given thee, even to half of the kingdom." Too prudent to enter at once into a discussion of the grand subject, Esther seeks an occasion to study the king and Haman together more nearly, and her request is only that the king and Haman would come that day to a private banquet in the queen's apartments. It was done, and the king and Haman both came.

At the banquet her fascinations again draw from the king the permission to make known any request of her heart, and it shall be given, even to half of his kingdom. Still delaying the final issue, Esther asks that both the king and his minister may come to a second banquet on the morrow. Haman appears to have been excessively flattered at this attention from the queen, of whose nationality he was profoundly ignorant; but as he passed by and saw Mordecai in his old seat in the king's gate, "that he stood not up neither moved for him," he was full of indignation. He goes home to his domestic circle, and amplifies the account of his court successes and glories, and that even the queen has distinguished him with an invitation which was shared by no one but the king. Yet, he says, in the end, all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting in the king's gate. His wife is fruitful in resources. "Erect a gibbet," she says, "and to-morrow speak to the king, and have Mordecai hanged, and go thou merrily to the banquet." And the thing pleased Haman, and he caused the gallows to be made.

On that night the king could not sleep, and calls an attendant, by way of opiate, to read the prosy and verbose records of his kingdom,—probably having often found this a sovereign expedient for inducing drowsiness. Then, by accident, his ear catches the account of the conspiracy which had been averted by Mordecai. "What honor hath been shown this man?" he inquires; and his servants answered, There is nothing done for him. The king's mind runs upon the subject, and early in the morning, perceiving Haman standing as an applicant in the outer court, he calls to have him admitted. Haman came, with his mind full of the gallows and Mordecai. The king's mind was full, also, of Mordecai, and he had the advantage of the right of speaking first. In the enigmatic style sometimes employed by Oriental monarchs, he inquires, "What shall be done with the man whom the king delighteth to honor?" Haman, thinking this the preface to some new honor to himself, proposes a scheme. The man whom the king delights to honor shall be clothed in the king's royal robes, wear the king's crown, be mounted on the king's horse, and thus be led through the streets by one of the king's chief councilors, proclaiming, "This is the man whom the king delighteth to honor." "Then said the king: Make haste, and do even so as thou hast said unto Mordecai the Jew that sitteth in the king's gate. Let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken." And Haman, without daring to remonstrate, goes forth and fulfills the king's command, with what grace and willingness may be imagined.

It is evident from the narrative that the king had not even taken the trouble to inquire the name of the people he had given up to extermination any more than he had troubled himself to reward the man who had saved his life. In both cases he goes on blindly, and is indebted to mere chance for his discoveries. We see in all this the same passionate, childish nature that is recorded of Xerxes by Herodotus when he scourged the sea for destroying his bridge of boats. When Haman comes back to his house after his humiliating public exposure, his wife comforts him after a fashion that has not passed out of use with her. "If that Mordecai," she says, "is of the seed of the Jews before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shall surely fall before him."

And now Haman and the king and Esther are once more in a secluded apartment, banqueting together. Again the king says to her, "What is thy request, Esther?" The hour of full discovery is now come. Esther answers: "If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request. For we are sold, I and my people, to be slain and to perish. If we had only been sold to slavery, I had held my tongue." Then the king breaks forth, "Who is he, and where is he that durst presume in his heart to do so?" And Esther answered, "The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was afraid before the king and queen, and he had the best reason to be so. The king, like an angry lion, rose up in a fury and rushed out into the gardens. Probably at this moment he perceived the net into which he had been drawn by his favorite. He has sent orders for the destruction of this people, to whom his wife belongs, and for whom she intercedes. Of course he never thinks of blaming himself. The use of prime ministers was as well understood in those days as now, and Haman must take the consequences as soon as the king can get voice to speak it. Haman, white with abject terror, falls fainting at the feet of Esther upon the couch where she rests, and as the king comes raging back from the gardens he sees him there. "What! will he force our queen also in our very presence?" he says. And as the word went out of the king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. All is over with him, and an alert attendant says: "Behold the gallows, fifty cubits high, that he made to hang Mordecai, the saviour of the king's life." Then said the king, "Hang him thereon."

Thus dramatically comes the story to a crisis. Mordecai becomes prime minister. The message of the king goes everywhere, empowering the Jews to stand for their life, and all the governors of provinces to protect them. And so it ends in leaving the nation powerful in all lands, under the protection of a queen and prime minister of their own nation.

The book of Esther was forthwith written and sent to the Jews in all countries of the earth, as a means of establishing a yearly commemorative festival called Purim, from the word "Pur," or "The lot." The festival was appointed, we are told, by the joint authority of Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen. And to this day we Gentiles in New York or Boston, at the time of Purim, may go into the synagogue and hear this book of Esther chanted in the Hebrew, and hear the hearty curses which are heaped, with thumps of hammers and of fists, upon the heads of Haman and his sons whenever their names occur in the story,—a strange fragment of ancient tradition floated down to our modern times. The palace of Shushan, with its hangings of green and blue and purple, its silver couches, its stir and hum of busy life, is now a moldering ruin; but the fair woman that once trod its halls is remembered and honored in a nation's heart. It is a curious fact that the romantic history of Esther has twice had its parallel since the Christian era, as the following incident, from Schudt's "Memorabilia of the Jews,"[4] witnesses. In this rare and curious work—4th book, 13th chapter—he says: "Casimir the Great, of Poland, in 1431, fell in love with a beautiful Jewess named Esther, whom he married and raised to the throne of Poland. He had by her two sons and several daughters. His love for her was so great that he allowed the daughters to be brought up in their mother's religion." Also it is related that Alphonso VIII., king of Spain, took to himself a beautiful Jewess as a wife. On account of her he gave such privileges to the Jews that she became an object of jealousy to the nobles, and was assassinated.

The book of Esther fills an important place in the sacred canon, as showing the Divine care and protection extended over the sacred race in the period of their deepest depression. The beauty and grace of a woman were the means of preserving the seed from which the great Son of Man and desire of all nations, should come. Esther held in her fair hand the golden chain at the end of which we see the Mother of Jesus. The "Prayer of Esther" is a composition ascribed to her, and still in honored use among the solemn services of the synagogue.

Judith the Deliverer