It may be convenient to add that the .^d ye r of Xerxes, in which the banquet that was the (^cciision of Yashti's divorce was held, was B.C. 488, his 7th, B.C. 479, and his 12th, B.C. 474 (Clinton, F. L .), and that the simultaneous battles of Platiea and Jlycale, which frightened Xerxes from Sardis (Diod. Sic. xi, 36) to Susa, happened, according to Prideaux and Clinton, in September of his 7th j'ear. For a fuller discussion of the identity of Esther, and different views of the subject, see Prideaux's Connexion, i, icG, 243, 297 sq., and Petav. Be doctr. tewji. xii, 27, 28, who make Esther wife of Artaxcrxes Longim., following Joseph. Ant. xi, 6, as he followed the Sept. and the apocrj'phal Esther; J. Scalig. {.De emend, temp, vi, 5S1 ; Ai-.imadv. Eusfh. p. 100) making Ahasuerus, Xerxes ; Usher {An- nnl. Vet. Test.) making him Darius Hystaspis; Loltus, ChaldcBa, etc. Eusebius {Canon. Chron. £38, ed. Mcdi- ol.) rejects the hypothesis of Artaxerxes Lout im. en the score of the silence of the books of Ezra and Nehe- miah, and adopts that of Artaxerxes Blnemon, follow- ing the Jews, who make Darius Codomannus to be the same as Darius Hystaspis, and the son of Artaxerxes by Esther ! It is most observable that all Petavius's and Prideaux's arguments against Scaliger's view ap- ply solely to the statement that Esther is Amestris. See Xerxes.
4. The character of Esther, as she appears in the Bible, is that of a woman of deep piety, faitii, courage, patriotism, and caution, combined with resolution; a dutiful daughter to her adoptive father, docile and obedient to his counsels, and anxious to share the king's favor with him for the good of the Jewish peo- ple. That she was a virtuous woman, and, as far as her situation made it possible, a good wife to the king, her continued influence over him for so long a time warrants us to infer. There must have been a singu- lar grace and charm in Iter arpcct and manners, since she "obtained favor in the sight of all that looked upon her" (ii, 15). That she was raised up as an instrument in the hands of God to avert the destruction of the
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Jewish people, anu to afford them protection, and for- ward their wealtli and peace in their ca])tivity, is also manil'ost from the Scripture account. But to impute to her tiie sentiments put in her mouth by the apocrj^- phal author of ch. xiv, or to accuse her of cruelty be- cause of the death of Haman and his sons, and the sec- ond day's slaughter of the Jews' enemies at Sliushan, is utterly to ignore the manners and feelings of her age and nation, and to judge her b}' the standard of Chris- tian morality in our own age and country instead. In fact, the simplicit}^ and truth to nature of the scriptu- ral narrative afford a striking contrast both with the forced and florid amplifications of the apocryphal ad- ditions, and with the sentiments of some later com- mentators.— Kitto, s. V. ; Smith, s. v. See Debaeza, Historiii Esther {in his Comment. Allego}; vi) ■ Anon.Z>e Assiiero (in the Crit. Sac. Thes. Nov. i, 761) ; Robinson, Script. Char, ii ; Hughes, Esther and her People (Lend. 1846); Justi, Ueb.d. Ahasuerus in Esther (in Eiehhorn's Repertor. xv, 1 sq.) ; Tyrwhitt, Esther and Ahasuerus (Lond. 1868, 2 vols. 8vo).
ESTHER, Book of, the last of the historical books of the O. T., according to the arrangement in tiie Auth. Engl. Version. (See Davidson, in Home's Inirod., new ed., ii, 697 sq.)
I. Contents, Name, and Place in the Canon. — In this book we have an account of certain events in the his- tory of the Jews under the rule of the Persian king Ahasuerus (Achashverosh), doubtless the Xerxes of the Greek historians. See Ahasuerus 3. The writ- er informs us of a severe persecution with which they were threatened at the instigation of Ham in, a favor- ite of the king, that sought in this way to gratify his jealousy and hatred of a Jew, Mordecai, who, though in the service of the king, refused to render to Haman the homage which the king had enjoined, and which his other servants rendered ; he describes in detail the means by which this was averted through the influ- ence of a Jewish maiden called "Hadassali, that is, Esther," the cousin of Mordecai, who had been raised to be the wife of the king, along with the destruction of Haman and the advancement of Mordecai ; he tells us how the Jews, under the sanction of the king, and with the aid of his ofiicors, rose up against their ene- mies, and slew them to the number of 75,000; and he concludes by informing us that the festival of Pnrim was instituted among the Jews in commemoration of this remarkable passage in their history. From the important part played by Esther in this history, the book bears her name. It is placed among the hagio- grapha (q. v.) or Kethuhini' (O'^a^inS) by the Jews, and in that first portion of them which they call the five Megi'loth (riS^'O, rolls), or books read in the syn- agogue on special festivals ; the season appropriate to it being the feast of Purini, held on the 14th and loth of the month Adar, of the origin of which it contains the account. Hence it stands in the Hebrew Canon after Koheleth or Ecclesiastes, according to the order of time in wiiich the ^Megilloth are read. By the Jews it is called the Megillah, by way of eminence, either from the importance they attach to its contents, or from the circumstance that from a very early period it came to be written on a special roll (HSS::) for use in the synagogue (Hottinger, Thes. Phil. p. 494). In the Sept. it appears with numerous additions, prefixed, interspersed, and appended ; many of which betray a later origin, but which are so inwrought with the orig- inal story as to make with it a continuous and, on the whole, harmonious narrative. By the Christians it has been variously placed ; the Vulgate places it be- tween Tobit and Judith, and appends to it the apocry- phal additions [see next article] ; the Protestant ver- sions commonly follow Luther in placing it at the end of the historical books.