Genesis 26:30

26:30 So Isaac ¹  held a feast for them and they celebrated. ² 

Genesis 31:54

31:54 Then Jacob offered a sacrifice ³  on the mountain and invited his relatives to eat the meal. ⁴  They ate the meal and spent the night on the mountain.

Esther 1:3

1:3 in the third ⁵  year of his reign he provided a banquet for all his officials and his servants. The army ⁶  of Persia and Media ⁷  was present, ⁸  as well as the nobles and the officials of the provinces.

¹ tn Heb “and he”; the referent (Isaac) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² tn Heb “and they ate and drank.”

³ tn The construction is a cognate accusative with the verb, expressing a specific sacrifice.

⁴ tn Heb “bread, food.” Presumably this was a type of peace offering, where the person bringing the offering ate the animal being sacrificed.

⁵ sn The third year of Xerxes’ reign would be ca. 483 b.c.

⁶ tc Due to the large numbers of people implied, some scholars suggest that the original text may have read “leaders of the army” (cf. NAB “Persian and Median aristocracy”; NASB “the army officers”; NIV “the military leaders”). However, there is no textual evidence for this emendation, and the large numbers are not necessarily improbable.

⁷ sn Unlike the Book of Daniel, the usual order for this expression in Esther is “Persia and Media” (cf. vv. 14, 18, 19). In Daniel the order is “Media and Persia,” indicating a time in their history when Media was in the ascendancy.

⁸ sn The size of the banquet described here, the number of its invited guests, and the length of its duration, although certainly immense by any standard, are not without precedent in the ancient world. C. A. Moore documents a Persian banquet for 15,000 people and an Assyrian celebration with 69,574 guests (Esther [AB], 6).