1. The king's feast 1:1-9

 

Ahasuerus is the Hebrew name of the Persian king, Khshayarsha, whom we know better in ancient history by his Greek name, Xerxes.²²He reigned over the Persian Empire from 486 to 464 B.C. and was the son of Darius I (521-486 B.C.). His vizier, Artabanus, assassinated him.

Xerxes is famous in secular history for two things: his defeat at the hands of the Greeks, and his building of the royal Persian palace at Persepolis. In 481 B.C. he took about 200,000 soldiers and hundreds of ships to Greece to avenge his father Darius' defeat at the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.). However, he suffered defeat in a three-fold manner. His soldiers lost the battle of Thermopylae to the Spartans, his army also lost at the battle of Plataea, and the Greeks destroyed his navy in the battle of Salamis.

The writer mentioned the vast area Xerxes controlled (cf. Esth. 8:9; 10:1). Perhaps he did this to avoid confusion with another Ahasuerus (Dan. 9:1) whose son, Darius the Mede, governed the Babylonian provinces under Cyrus the Great from 539 to about 525 B.C. "India"refers to the territory that is now West Pakistan. "Cush"was the upper (southern) Nile region including southern Egypt, the Sudan, and northern Ethiopia.

The 127 "provinces"(Heb. medina) were governmental units of the empire. These were political subdivisions of the satrapies (cf. 3:12).²³

"Susa"(v. 2) is the Greek name for the Hebrew "Shushan."It was a winter capital and had formerly been the capital of the kingdom of Elam. Susa was the name of both the capital city and the royal fortress that occupied a separate part of the city.²⁴Other Persian capitals were Ecbatana (200 miles north of Susa; modern Hamadan; Ezra 6:2), Babylon (200 miles west; Ezra 6:1), Pasargadae, and Persepolis (both 300 miles southeast).²⁵Persepolis was Xerxes' main residence.²⁶A generation after the events the writer described in the Book of Esther, Nehemiah served as cupbearer to Artaxerxes, Xerxes' son (cf. Neh. 1:1-2:1).

The Hebrew word translated "capital"(NASB) or "citadel"(NIV; habirah) refers to an acropolis or fortified area that stood 72 feet above the rest of the city. A wall two and one-half miles long surrounded it.²⁷

The third year of Ahasuerus' (Xerxes') reign was evidently 482 B.C. For 180 days (six months) he entertained his guests (v. 4). This was evidently the military planning session that Ahasuerus conducted to prepare for his campaign against the Greeks. The Greek historian Herodotus referred to this meeting and said it took Ahasuerus four years (484-481 B.C.) to prepare for his Greek campaign.²⁸

"While labourers received barely enough to live on, even though they were producing works of art that are still unsurpassed, life at court was extravagant beyond imagining. The more lavish the king's hospitality, the greater his claim to supremacy."²⁹

White and violet (blue, v. 6) were the royal colors of Persia.³⁰