Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Esther 1:12
But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s commandment by [his] chamberlains: therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him.
12. refused to come ] as being aware of the insults likely to be put upon her in a scene of drunken revelry, and by a king so capricious and uncontrolled in temper.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Verse 12. Vashti refused to come] And much should she be commended for it. What woman, possessing even a common share of prudence and modesty, could consent to expose herself to the view of such a group of drunken Bacchanalians? Her courage was equal to her modesty: she would resist the royal mandate, rather than violate the rules of chaste decorum.
Her contempt of worldly grandeur, when brought in competition with what every modest woman holds dear and sacred, is worthy of observation. She well knew that this act of disobedience would cost her her crown, if not her life also: but she was regardless of both, as she conceived her virtue and honour were at stake.
Her humility was greatly evidenced in this refusal. She was beautiful; and might have shown herself to great advantage, and have had a fine opportunity of gratifying her vanity, if she had any: but she refused to come.
Hail, noble woman! be thou a pattern to all thy sex on every similar occasion! Surely, every thing considered, we have few women like Vashti; for some of the highest of the land will dress and deck themselves with the utmost splendour, even to the selvedge of their fortunes, to exhibit themselves at balls, plays, galas, operas, and public assemblies of all kinds, (nearly half naked,) that they may be seen and admired of men, and even, to the endless reproach and broad suspicion of their honour and chastity, figure away in masquerades! Vashti must be considered at the top of her sex: –
Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno.
A black swan is not half so rare a bird.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Vashti refused to come; being favoured in this refusal by the laws and customs of Persia, which was to keep mens wives, and especially queens, as much as might be from the view of other men.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
But the queen refused to came at the king’s commandment by his chamberlains,…. Even though he sent by them again, as the Targum; and so says Josephus o; which might not purely arise from pride in her, and contempt of him, but because she might conclude he was drunk, and knew not well what he did; and therefore had she come at his command, when he was himself and sober, he might blame her for coming, nay, use her ill for it, and especially if she was to come naked, as say the Jews p; and besides, it was contrary to the law of the Persians, as not only Josephus q, but Plutarch r observes, which suffered not women to be seen in public; and particularly did not allow their wives to be with them at feasts, only their concubines and harlots, with whom they could behave with more indecency; as for their wives, they were kept out of sight, at home s; and therefore Vashti might think it an indignity to be treated as an harlot or concubine:
therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him; which was the more fierce, as he was inflamed with wine.
o Antiqu. l. 11. c. 6. sect. 1. p Targum in loc. Midrash Esther, fol. 90. 1. q Antiqu. l. 11. c. 6. sect. 1. r In Themistoele. s Macrob. Saturnal. l. 7. c. 1.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
The queen refused to appear at the king’s command as delivered by the eunuchs, because she did not choose to stake her dignity as a queen and a wife before his inebriated guests. The audacity of Persians in such a condition is evident from the history related Herod. Est 1:18.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
WOMANS RIGHTS IN THE HOME
Est 1:12
THIS general theme of Womans Rights has not been selected simply for the sake of attracting women to these services, as you have long been here in great numbers, but because the general subject is one most worthy of attention, one in which the Bible itself takes great interest.
Preachers are wont to address any number of sermons to men; sometimes to men only, and quite often to young men. I wonder why we have been so partial to the stronger sex. The sisters are oftener at church, more attentive to the Word, and deserve discourses addressed specifically to them. It is no wonder that the little girl, who went to some Womens Rights meetings, and listened to the oratory of the seniors of her sex, came away feeling that they were neglected indeed, and made up her mind to observe and see how the preachers behaved regarding the matter. It was not long ere she returned from church indulging righteous wrath, and said, Mamma, I do not see why our preacher cannot be fair. He is always saying Amen, and I think a part of the time, at least, he ought to say Awoman.
That is my purpose for this evening to say A-woman, and so far as able, compel my sex to consider her and her rights.
I wish Ahasuerus were yet alive, and here present, that I might say to him some things he ought to have heard; but it is enough that his tribe is not yet extinct. There are too many men that despise all the rights of women, calling in question anything on their part that can possibly cross the masculine will, and so long as this is true our subject is apropos.
There are some of the greater rights of women in the home that we wish to mention this evening.
TO PROTECT HER OWN PERSON
That is a womans right. If lascivious Herodias cares to appear in scant dress and dance before Herod and his bloated lords, that is her own business, and the responsibility is hers as well; but when Vashti declines to do the same, no man, not even her husband, the king, has any moral right to require it. The genuine modesty of this woman ought to send our applause back across the centuries. One of the most sacred things to woman is her sex, and the man who despises that, and seeks only the satisfaction of his own lust, or the favor of his coarse comrades, is degraded himself; and no virtuous woman is under obligation to regard his will or obey his word.
It is claimed by some of our social purity workers that there are men, not a few, who are content to live on the enforced sale of a wifes shame. I never knew but one such, and the sight of him used to stir in me all the mingled contempt and rage that one ought to feel in seeing the noble name of man worn by such a thing.
There are other points at which women have a right to protect their own persons.
The Scriptures say, As the Church is subject unto Christ, so let wives be to their own husbands in every thing (Eph 5:24), and there are not a few men who seem to be familiar with this passage and base their prerogatives upon it, who are purposely ignorant of the passage that follows, Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it.
We have gone into homes where a weak woman shook with fear at the approach of the man she had sworn to love, simply because, in his selfishness, he regarded not her personal rights, nor gave any consideration to her sufferings of mind or body. I know of no martyrdom so terrible as that where woman is wedded to what she supposed to be a man, but what she has discovered to be a fiend.
There is much on this subject that we should like to say; but it is perhaps better suggested than elaborated, and so we pass the matter with the repeating remark, that it is womans right to protect her own person.
TO QUEEN IT IN HER OWN PALACE
Every womans home is her palace, however humble. It is, or at least it ought to be, the place of her throne. There she has special authority. We do not say she is the head of the house. The Scriptures themselves oppose that modern woman-man-nishness which we see sometimes to our disgust. Nothing unsexes her so much as to seek to be the boss, employ herself with budgets of commands, and watch with imperial mien to see if they are executed. The true woman is willing to be counselled by, and is pleased to obey her husband, if he is fit for his office. She rejoices in him as the head of the house, provided he has a head of his own, with any hard sense in it; but, as some one has remarked, Even so, she is the neck of the home, and a wise husband lets her turn him about very much.
There is a good story told of a Scotchman, who, at the marriage altar, insisted upon changing the clergymans service, whereby he could promise to obey his wife, instead of the usual formula. The clergyman was loathe to accept the alteration, but finally consented. A few years later John met him in the streets, and reminded him of the formula under which he entered into the marriage contract, and said, Ye were nair disposed to let me, but I was right, as ye can see now, since Im the only man in the hale town that auns his own huse.
Husbands, love your wives and you will cease commanding. Take counsel with them and the happy courtship days will come back. It is their right to give counsel as well as accept it, and it is no more your right than theirs to give commands.
There are not a few questions that come up in the administration of every well regulated home touching which wisdom is with women. Perhaps the most serious problem of every model house is that of influencing for good, properly educating the minds and expanding the hearts of the God-given children. In that whole question, the average woman knows more in a minute than man could learn in a month, and I feel with Dr. Gifford, that the husbands of this day have largely made scapegoats of their wives upon whom to lay the sins of the children, and have them carried out of their sight. While there is no defense of that, some of us are still grateful for the fact that when as boys, growing up with teasing sisters and trying brothers, and having our good temper often put to a test, our fathers used to say, Here, mother; come to your children, and she came, and under her hand things were set to rights.
The sound-minded mother makes the most serious impression upon the children, physical, mental and moral; and it is no fools trick for a husband to commit his own children so largely into their mothers keeping. The world would be poorer, and darker today, if Mrs. Luther had had less to do with Martins training; if Mother Wesley had turned over Charles and John to their fathers hand; if Mother Washington had enjoyed less liberty in educating George; if Mrs. Spurgeon had died when Charles first saw the light; if Mrs. Adams had had less to do with the education of John Quincy; if Mrs. Beecher had not practiced her Puritan principles upon Henry Ward; if Mrs. Breckenridge had put those three prominent preachers, her sons, in anothers hands; and so we might go on naming almost every great man of the past or present, and saying, as one said of John Quincy Adams, I know now who made you what you are, for I have just read your mothers biography.
When Mrs. Wesley was dying, she turned that calm Christian face to her children, and said, Dears, when I am gone, sing a song of praise unto God. There was never a better occasion for the long-meter doxology than the life and counsels of such a mother as God had given.
TO CONTROL HER CONDUCT BY HER OWN CONSCIENCE
It is hers to think and act for herself. She is capable of both. The time is passed when men arrogate to themselves the claim of all the brains. Our sisters in college have too often swept the prizes from us; in trade, have shown us how to be shrewd; in professions, have proven their genius.
You know it was told of Senator Ingalls, that one of his colleagues in the house, seeing him in a meditative position, punched his associate and said, See, Ingalls is thinking. No, replied the comrade, he only thinks he is thinking, but the man who so regards woman will yet wake to his error. She is thinking. She has a right to think, and if civilization continues, that right will yet be regarded the world around; and as they think, they act.
Dr. Henson once said, The fantastic featherhead fool that some people call the modern woman is a trial to the eyes; still, the genuine new woman, the woman who is the product of our latest civilization, and our highest Christianity is an individual for whose sweet-tempered independence God ought to be praised. She thinks for herself. She acts for herself. She ought so to do, or else man ought never for one moment charge her with sin. Sin, and its opposite, righteousness, can only be predicated of the independent person.
There is a saying in the Talmud that puts to shame some of our modern mannish conceptions. It runs like this: Woman was made out of a rib taken from the side of a man; not out of his head to rule him; not out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be his equal; from beneath his arm to be protected; from near his heart to be loved.
Finally, it is a womans right in the home,
TO FREELY ENJOY HER RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS
If there is one thing of which my sex is guilty that makes me ashamed, it is that oft discovered opposition to womans Christian convictions. If I were asked what is the chief agent of evil among the unchurched women of our cities, what the mightiest influence in keeping wives from accepting Christ, uniting with the church and engaging in Christian service, I think I should be compelled to answer, Godless men.
You will find in half of the unchristian houses the wife is a secret disciple who would joyfully speak her convictions and accept the Lords commission of service, if her husband would willingly consent. Some men seem to think it an evidence of their superiority to show themselves boss about the business of religion, and it is not an unusual thing for me to meet a woman who says, My husband says I shall not attend church. That is a bossism concerning which even vile men ought to blush, and regarding which good men are righteously indignant. When in passing the streets, you see a big boy bullying a little one, you find it hard to refrain from taking a hand, and when one becomes familiar with the conditions in a home and discovers that the husband is that same big boy, grown up to one hundred sixty or seventy pounds, and possibly to forty of fifty, years, and now bullies his wife, your sense of outrage is only intensified.
Then there are husbands who are too cultured to assume any such positions, but who slyly give the wives to understand that they do not want any religion in the home. Their opposition is more often expressed in a look than by language, and a curl of the lip than by a cross-fire of words. The methods of these are more humane, but not more tolerant, scarce more kind even than those of their bullying brethren.
We do not say that a man should be indifferent to his wifes convictions, any more than he should be indifferent to anything else that affects her life, but we do find it impossible to lend anything of sympathy to any man, angel or devil who opposes what he himself knows to be right; and that many of these know the wifes convictions to be right, there is no question.
Some years ago, a poor, disconsolate, discouraged woman came to the pastors study and told him how her husband had said that she should not again attend the church services. The pastor went to visit him in consequence, and on the second visit, he confessed that he knew Christianity to be right, was convicted of sin himself, and had only opposed his wife because he had been unwilling to let Jesus Christ convert him, and had rather desired to let the devils bidding be done in his life.
In Chicago we baptized a sorrowful household, a sister of the one deceased, and also the bereft husband. Their acceptance of Christ was not that joyful experience through which so many pass, but a tearful turning about from the way in which they had been walking, and the occasion of their sorrow was this, that the dear woman who had died, had a year before begged to be baptized, and they had rather opposed than approved.
The darkest hour that can ever come into your life, my brother, if you be in love with your wife, will be the hour when you follow her corpse to the burial and bid her good-bye, while memory reminds you that you suppressed, by spoken or silent opposition, her convictions of right, cheated her out of the privilege of confessing Jesus Christ, and rendered it impossible for her to offer herself in service to the One she so much loved.
Such action is also the more inexplicable in view of what Christ has done for women. I once read, The World Through a Womans Eyes, by Miss Ackerman, and unless one is dead to all the finer sentiments of human life, he must hate with intense hatred the heathenism that debases, disregards, and destroys women in China, Japan and Africa; and love with larger and larger affection the Lord Jesus Christ, whose truth has put her upon the pedestal of honor, virtue and happiness she enjoys in Christian lands. Every particle of pleasure, pure and simple, into which the younger and older women in any country can come, is only possible because of what Christ has said and done. Is it any wonder that they should love Him? The most amazing marvel is that any woman could be content to lead a Christless life.
In some measure, this may account for the fact, to which Dr. Talmage has somewhere called attention, that woman is in the vast majority in our churches; three-fourths, he says, of our church-members are women. I doubt that; but nobody doubts their majority. He continued, So God puts them to be the chief agents in bringing this world back to God. I may stand here and say the soul is immortal. There is a man here who will refute it. I may stand here and say, We are lost and undone without Christ. There is a man here who will refute it. I may stand here and say, There will be a judgment day after a while. Yonder is some one who will deny it! But a Christian woman, in the Christian home, living in the faith and constancy of Christs Gospel, nobody can refute that. The greatest sermons are not preached on celebrated platforms, they are preached with an audience of two or three, and in private home life. The one argument that breaks down the barrier, overcomes natural stubbornness and sweetly subdues the spirit of many a man, is his Christian wife.
The story is told of an elevated railroad man, who said to the man standing out on the platform, Did you see that, mister? pointing to a window where three little children, in their night-dresses were kneeling at a trunk, and over them the mother was bending. Yes, added the man, I did. What does it mean? Well, sir, it means this, that those babies are about to go to bed, and before they go, she teaches them to pray for me. Yes, sir, and she brings them there every night so that I can see them, and, he added, as a half sob stifled his words, she has told me what she tells them to say. What? inquired the auditor.
Well; sir, you may think me foolish, that Im so overcome, but I guess you are a married man and a father, and you know. My train goes by just at nine, and at that moment she brings the little ones up to that trunk and she makes them kneel down there, with their hands clasped, and their faces toward Heaven, and she tells them to pray. For you? asked his companion. Yes, sir; you are right; they pray for me. They pray that papa will be good and kind and sober, and bring home all his money, and give his heart to Christ. The big guards voice trembled, but he continued with an effort, Im rough and tough, and all that; but I love her, and them, and they are the only ones on this earth who can keep me straight. Bless her, if ever Im a Christian, it will be herGods angel who saved me. Good-night, sir, and the man left the train, but went knowing how tender was the heart of the guard, touched, not by theology, not by preaching from the pulpit, not by a study of the Word of God from a printed page, but from his knowledge of that living epistle, her he loved, even his wife.
You men who are without salvation tonight, and have Christian wives, should recognize their rights to entertain their Christian convictions, and should despise not their efforts to bring you to the salvation that is in the Son of God, so that when the train of time shall have stopped and you step off of it into eternity, the home that you had here will be translated and transfigured there, and eternity will be none too long for you to experience this holy joy.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
12. Vashti refused to come Assuming the dignity and boldness of a queen, she refused to be treated as an ordinary concubine, and to suffer her person to be immodestly exposed to the promiscuous crowd of half drunken revellers. “The summons,” remarks Tyrwhitt, “probably found her with a crowd of female guests before her. She might have been loth at another time to obey; but while they looked on, it was a severer trial to be required to abdicate her dignity, and, confessing her royal state his bounty, to cast, as it were, her crown before his footstool.” Only such a king as Xerxes would have made such a demand upon a favourite concubine, but it is perfectly in keeping with his character.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Est 1:12. Therefore was the king very wroth His anger was the more immoderate because his blood was heated with wine, which made his passion too strong for his reason; otherwise he would not have thought it decent for the queen to have her beauty, which was very great, exposed in this unusual manner. See Bishop Patrick.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Est 1:12 But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s commandment by [his] chamberlains: therefore was the king very wroth, and his anger burned in him.
Ver. 12. But the queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s commandment] She peremptorily and contumaciously refused, (Septuag.), though sent for again and again (as Josephus hath it), by her lord and husband, who had in his cups boasted of his wife’s beauty, courtesy, and obedience, whereof he would now make proof to the company, sending for her by such an honourable convoy; yet she would not, that she would not, as the Hebrew word signifieth, but carried herself as if she had been his mistress, and not his wife, to his great grief, and the marring of all their mirth. What if the king were not so well advised? what if he were in his cups? what though she had the law on her side and a pretence of modesty, and lest she could, by coming, occasion the king’s jealousy, &c.? yet Vashti was to have submitted herself unto her own husband (such a husband especially), as it was fit in the Lord, Col 3:18 , to yield obedience to all his lawful commands and restraints, seem they never so unreasonable. If woman were given to man for a comforter, and in some cases for a counsellor, yet in no case for a controller, as they are apt to be that are fair ( fastus inest formae ), rich ( argentum accepi, dote imperium vendidi, saith he in Plautus), better descended, &c., si vis nubere, nube pari. An insolent wife is an insufferable evil; and he hath lost half the comfort of his life who is married to such a one.
Therefore was the king very wroth
And his anger burned in him
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
refused. Probably because sent for by servants; not by the nobles (Est 1:3), and before the “peoples” (Est 1:5).
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
the queen: This refusal of Vashti’s, to expose herself to the view of such a group of drunken Bacchanalians, was highly praiseworthy, and became the dignity of her rank and the modesty of her sex.
refused: Gen 3:16, Eph 5:22, Eph 5:24, 1Pe 3:1
by his chamberlains: Heb. which was by the hand of his eunuchs
was the king: Pro 19:12, Pro 20:2, Dan 2:12, Dan 3:13, Dan 3:19, Nah 1:6, Rev 6:16, Rev 6:17
burned: Exo 32:19, Exo 32:22, Deu 29:20, Psa 74:1, Psa 79:5
Reciprocal: Gen 44:18 – anger 2Sa 14:29 – but he would Est 2:1 – what was decreed Est 3:5 – full of wrath Est 4:4 – chamberlains Est 4:5 – appointed to attend upon her Est 7:7 – in his wrath Pro 31:30 – Favour
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Est 1:12. The queen Vashti refused to come Being favoured in this refusal by the law of Persia, which was, to keep mens wives, and especially queens, from the view of other men. His anger burned in him It was the more immoderate, because his blood was heated with wine, which made his passion too strong for his reason. Otherwise he would not have thought it decent for the queen, nor safe for himself, to have her beauty, which was very great, exposed in this unusual manner, and would have thought she had acted prudently in refusing.