Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Esther 6:8
Let the royal apparel be brought which the king [useth] to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head:
8. royal apparel ] The extent of the honour which Haman sought is illustrated by the story in Plutarch’s Lives ( Artaxerxes, 5), where we are told that Tiribazus made a similar request; but in that case, though the king granted him a royal robe, he forbade him to wear it. Other instances of the bestowal of garments upon another in token of favour or amity are to be found in Gen 41:42; 1Sa 18:4; and so with regard to armour in Homer ( Il. vi. 230, of Glaucus and Diomede).
the horse that the king rideth upon ] Cp. David’s direction as to Solomon in 1Ki 1:33.
and on the head of which a crown royal is set ] Assyrian monuments represent the king’s horse as wearing a kind of head ornament resembling a crown. We can easily understand therefore that the same custom may have existed at the Persian court. Josephus ( Ant. xi. 6. 10) adds the thought being perhaps suggested by the story of Joseph (see above) that a chain was to be placed about the favoured person’s neck.
The rendering of the A.V. ‘and the crown royal which is set upon his head,’ though retained in the marg. of the R.V., is impossible.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
The honors here proposed by Haman were such as Persian monarchs rarely allowed to subjects. Each act would have been a capital offence if done without permission. Still, we find Persian monarchs allowing their subjects in these or similar acts under certain circumstances.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 8. Let the royal apparel be brought] Pride and folly ever go hand in hand. What he asked would have been in any ordinary case against his own life: but he wished to reach the pinnacle of honour: never reflecting that the higher he rose, the more terrible would be his fall. The royal apparel was never worn but by the king: even when the king had lain them aside, it was death to put them on. The Targum has purple robes.
And the horse – and the crown royal] Interpreters are greatly divided whether what is called here the crown royal be not rather an ornament worn on the head of the horse, than what may be called the royal crown. The original may be understood both ways; and our version seems to favour the former opinion; but I think it more likely that the royal crown is meant; for why mention the ordinary trappings of the royal steed?
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The royal apparel; his outward garment, which was made of purple, interwoven with gold, as Justin and Curtius relate. The horse that the king rideth upon usually; which was well known, both by his excellency, and especially by his peculiar trappings and ornaments: compare 1Ki 1:33.
Upon his head; either,
1. Upon the kings head; or,
2. Upon the horses head; which seems best to agree,
1. With that ancient Chaldee interpreter, and other Jews, who take it thus.
2. With the signification and order of the Hebrew words.
3. With the following verses, in which there is no further mention of this crown, but only of the apparel, and of the horse, to which the crown belonged, as one of his ornaments.
4. With the custom of the Persians, which some affirm to have been this, to put the crown upon the head of that horse upon which the king rode.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
8. the royal apparel . . . which theking useth to wearA coat which has been on the back of a kingor prince is reckoned a most honorable gift, and is given with greatceremony.
the horse that the kingrideth uponPersia was a country of horses, and the highbredcharger that the king rode upon acquired, in the eyes of his venalsubjects, a sort of sacredness from that circumstance.
and the crown royal which isset upon his headeither the royal turban, or it may be atiara, with which, on state processions, the horse’s head wasadorned.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear,…. Not a whole suit of clothes, but a single garment; the purple robe, as both the Targums, such as kings wore; that which Cyrus appeared in public in was half purple, and half white, and no other person besides might wear such an one p; it was a capital crime with the Persians to wear any of the king’s apparel; Trebazus, an intimate of Artaxerxes, having begged an old gown of him, it was granted, on condition that he would not wear it, it being contrary to the laws of Persia; but he, regardless of the order, appeared in it at court; which affront to the king was so resented by the Persians, that they were for punishing him rigorously, according to the law, had not Artaxerxes declared, that he had ordered him to appear in that dress as his fool q; hence Artabanus, though uncle to Xerxes, was very unwilling to obey his orders, to put on his royal robes, sit on his throne, and sleep on his bed r; so that this was a daring proposal in Haman, which he would never have ventured to have made, had it not been for the great confidence he had in the king’s favour;
and the horse that the king rideth upon: the kings of Persia, as Herodotus s relates, had horses peculiar to them, and those were Nisaean horses, which were brought from Armenia, as Strabo says t, and were remarkable for their beauty u; and if the same law obtained in Persia as did in Judea, no man might ride on the king’s horse any more than sit on his throne, or hold his sceptre w and perhaps this horse here was not proposed for the person to ride on, but to be led in state before him; and though it is afterwards said that Mordecai rode on horseback, yet it might not be on the king’s horse, which might be only led; and what follows seems to confirm it:
and the crown royal which is set upon his head; or, “let it be set”, c. not the head of the man, but on the head of the horse and so Aben Ezra; and which sense is countenanced by the Targum, and by the Syriac version, and is approved of by Vatablus and De Dieu; and which the order of the words requires, the horse being the immediate antecedent; and no mention is made of the crown afterwards, as set on the head of Mordecai; nor would Haman have dared to advise to that, nor could it be granted; but this was what was wont to be done, to put the royal crown on the head of a horse led in state; and this we are assured was a custom in Persia x, as it is with the Ethiopians to this day y; and so, with the Romans, horses drawing triumphal chariots were crowned z which Tertullian calls a public horses with their crowns.
p Xenophon Cyropaedia, l. 8. c. 23. q Plutarch. in Artaxerxe. r Herodot. Polymnia, sive, l. 7. c. 15, 16. s Clio, sive, l. 1. c. 192. t Geograph. l. 11. p. 365. u Julian. Opera, par. 1. Orat. 2. p. 94. w Misn. Sanhedrin, c. 2. sect. 5. x Brisson. apud Castell. Lexic. col. 4008. y Alvarez Hist. Ethiop. c. 105. apud ib. col. 3869. z Paschal. de Coronis, l. 8. c. 5. p. 536. a De Corona Militis, c. 13.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
(8) Let the royal apparel be brought . . .These exceedingly great distinctions Haman suggests, thinking with unaccountable vanity (for nothing is said or implied as to any service rendered by him to the king) that the king must necessarily have been referring to him, and in a moment he is irretrievably committed. Whether Hainans character had at its best estate much discretion, or whether he rose to his high position, not by the qualities that should commend a statesman to a king, but, like many another Eastern Vizier, had by flattery and base arts gained the royal favour, we cannot say; here he shows the lack of the most ordinary discretion, his vanity is so inordinate that he cannot see the possibility of any ones merits save his own. The request which Haman made may be illustrated by the permission granted by Xerxes to his uncle Artabanus to put on the royal robes and sleep in the royal bed at Susa (Herod, vii. 15-17).
The horse that the king rideth upon.Thus Pharaoh, desiring-to honour Joseph, made him ride in his own chariot (Gen. 41:43): David, wishing to show that Solomon had really become king in his fathers lifetime, commands that he should ride on the kings mule (1Ki. 1:33; 1Ki. 1:44).
And the crown royal which is set upon his head.If we take the Hebrew here quite literally, the meaning must be and on whose (i.e., the horses) head a royal crown is set. The only objection to this view is, that there appears to be no evidence of such a custom among the Persians. Some render, and that a (or the: the Hebrew is necessarily ambiguous in such a case) royal crown be set, but this we consider does violence to the Hebrew. It must be noted that both the king in his reply, and the writer in describing what actually took place, make no mention of a crown as worn by Mordecai, nor does Haman in the following verse.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
8. Royal apparel horse the crown royal This was a rare honour to be bestowed on any subject, even on a royal benefactor. Haman would hardly have proposed it had he not thought that he himself would be the favoured one. But Xerxes was just the man to bestow honour’s which would have been treasonable if self-assumed on the part of the subject. This same monarch, according to Herodotus, (vii, 17,) once ordered Artabanus, his uncle, to put on the royal apparel, sit on the royal throne, and then sleep in the royal bed.
The crown royal upon his head That is, upon the horse’s head; for this is clearly the import of the Hebrew text. We translate literally: And a horse on which the king is wont to ride, and on whose head is set a royal crown. Most readers would naturally suppose that the crown would be placed on the head of the rider, not of the horse; but Est 6:10-11, which make special mention of Mordecai’s array, say nothing of a crown. “We do not, indeed, find among the classical writers any testimony to such an adornment of the royal steed; but the circumstance is not at all improbable, and seems to be corroborated by ancient remains, certain Assyrian and ancient Persian sculptures representing the horses of the king, and apparently those of princes, with ornaments on their heads, terminating in three points, which may be regarded as a kind of crown.” Keil.
Est 6:8. Let the royal apparel be brought, &c. To form a notion of that height of pride and arrogance at which Haman (who thought that all the honours he specified were designed for himself) was arrived, we may observe, that for any one to put on the royal robe, without the privity and consent of the king, was among the Persians accounted a capital crime. To this purpose Plutarch, in his Life of Artaxerxes, tells us, that one day when, in hunting, the king happened to tear his garment, and Tiribazus told him of it, the king asked him what he should do? “Put on another,” said Tiribazus, “and give that to me;””That I will,” replied the king, “but then I enjoin you not to wear it.” Tiribazus, however, who was rather a weak man, ventured to put it on with all its splendid ornaments; and when some of the nobles began to resent it as a thing not lawful for any subject, “I allow him,” said the king, laughing at the figure he made, “to wear the fine trinkets as a woman, and the robe as madman.” There was a custom among the Hebrews, not unlike that of placing the Persian designed to be honoured on the king’s horse, as appears from the history of Solomon, 1Ki 1:33 the person declared to be successor to the crown being mounted on the king’s horse on the day of his inauguration. Some have thought that the crown, keter, denotes not the king’s crown, nor the royal turban, which it was death for any one to put on without the king’s order, but the ornament that the king’s horse upon which he rode wore upon his head. It must be acknowledged, that this application of the thing agrees best with the signification and order of the Hebrew words with the following verses, wherein no mention is made of the keter, but only of the robe and the horse to which this crown belonged; and with the custom of the Persians, who used to put a certain ornament, in Italian called fiocco, upon the head of that horse whereon the king was mounted. See Patrick, Le Clerc, and Houbigant.
Est 6:8 Let the royal apparel be brought which the king [useth] to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head:
Ver. 8. Let the royal apparel be brought, &c. ] This was very glorious and gorgeous; as is to be seen in Xenophon, Plutarch, Lucian, Dion, Chrysostom, and other good authors. The Persian kings wore on their heads an upright tiara or turban very sumptuous; a diadem also made of white and purple colour. On their bodies a rich purple stole, or robe of state, reaching down to the heels; this Curtius calleth pallam Persicam, a Persian pall, beset with gold and precious stones great store, and the pictures of wild creatures and fowls of the air. Curtius, describing Xerxes’s royal apparel, saith that golden hawks, encountering one another with their beaks, adorned his robe made of cloth of gold. Besides, they wore a rich cassock (called candy) bound to them with a golden belt, breeches also of scarlet, reaching to their knees; called therefore by the Greeks P , as Jerome testifieth (Ep. ad Fabiol.).
And the horse that the king rideth upon
And the crown royal which is set upon his head and. Note the Figure of speech Polysyndeton (App-6) in verses: Est 6:8, Est 6:9, to emphasize the eagerness with which Haman enumerated the honours his heart desired.
Let the royal: etc. Heb. Let them bring the royal apparel, wherewith the king clotheth himself. 1Sa 18:4, Luk 15:22
the horse: Herodotus relates, that the kings of Persia had horses peculiar to themselves, which were brought from Armenia, and were remarkable for their beauty; and if the same law prevailed in Persia as in Judea, no man, under the penalty of death, might ride on the king’s horse, any more than sit on his throne, wear his crown, or hold his sceptre. 1Ki 1:33
Reciprocal: Gen 41:43 – and they 1Ki 22:10 – having put 2Ki 11:12 – put the crown Est 8:15 – royal apparel
6:8 Let the royal apparel be brought which the king [useth] to wear, and the {c} horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head:
(c) Meaning by this that the king should make him next to himself as Joseph was known to be next to Pharaoh in Gen 41:43.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes