Post by MIRIAM JACOB on Mar 2, 2012 11:42:55 GMT -5
Published in 1875.
DISCLAIMER:
This book is in the public domain. It is for fair use only, exclusively for educational research. It is solely for personal, non-commercial use. No copyright infringement is intended. It is an invaluable source of information, inestimable and indispensable as a rich and varied gateway to the past, representing a priceless wealth of history, culture and knowledge.
CONTENTS:
1. HOW THE JEWS CAME TO BABYLON, ... ... ... 7
2. THE GREAT BANQUET, ... ... ... 22
3. THE TERRIBLE EDICT, ... ... 42
4. HAMAN’S PUNISHMENT, ... ... ... ... 59
5. THE ADVANCEMENT OF MORDECAI, ... ... ... 76
6. MORDECAI REMEMBERS HIS DREAM, ... ... ... 91
CHAPTER I.
HOW THE JEWS CAME TO BABYLON.
Before reading the story of Queen Esther’s life in the palace of Ahasuerus, it will be well to go back some years from that time, to the days when the Jewish people were carried captive into Babylon, which was the beginning of her family, and many another family of the Israelites, making their home in the strange land.
There had been all the horrors of war and of famine for God’s chosen people: and then at last the gates of Jerusalem were reluctantly thrown open to the army which besieged the city; the last king of the royal house of David was led away as a prisoner; the palace of Solomon, which he had built as a temple for the A1mighty, with its roofs of gold and of cedar, was levelled with the earth; and many of the priests were either put to death or dragged captive to Babylon.
Instead of their own beautiful Jerusalem standing gloriously upon its mountain height above the cool and shady valleys beneath, the Jewish prisoners were now forced to dwell in the great, level city built upon opposite sides of the river Euphrates, with its enormous palace, which alone covered the space of eight miles, its straight canals bordered by rows of willows, its well - cultivated gardens,—all so different from their sunny land, where olives and vines grew luxuriously, even untended by the hand of man. Strange people, strange customs, were all around the captives, and, as the words of the psalm tell us, “By the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept, when they remembered thee, 0 Zion.” The Jews, however, seem to have been allowed to dwell together, and were not sold as slaves; true, they had to obey if their rulers summoned them to their grand banquets, that they might sing some of the sweet, mournful songs of their own land.
Daniel was one among other noble youths who were taken to Babylon and trained in the customs of the Assyrian court, and he rose rapidly in the favour of several kings who succeeded one another. Then came the time when, from a later monarch, the order went out forbidding prayer to be made for thirty days; and Daniel, choosing to obey God rather than man, was cast, as a punishment, into the lions’ den. But a miraculous power from heaven sealed the mouths of the fierce beasts, so that they did not harm him; and thus his life was spared, and he rose again in honour and distinction. He had a great power of understanding the meaning of unusual dreams, which were sent by God in warning, and twice he was successful in interpreting visions to King Nebuchadnezzar.
Afterwards, at Belshazzar’s feast, he explained the meaning of the handwriting on the wall as a sign that his kingdom should fall into the hands of the Medes and Persians. Of course there was great dismay and excitement in the royal palace at this interpretation of the strange writing; and that night the prophecy was proved true, for the vast troops of the Medes entered the great city before any alarm could be given, and thus conquered it. There had been no time for resistance. So Babylon fell as Isaiah had written: “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the ornament, the pride of the Chaldees, shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, overthrown by God.”
Many travellers have described the vast mounds of earth and fragments of walls which were left in after-times to show the place where the mighty city once stood; and this destruction was God’s punishment for the invasion of Judea, and the plunder of his temple at Jerusalem. The time came when for seventy years the Jews had been in the land of strangers, those seventy years which Jeremiah had foretold the captivity should last.
Cyrus the Persian was then ruler over the kingdom, and Daniel was one of his most powerful counsellors. But the love of the Jewish youth for his own land had grown into the deep, faithful remembrance of a man; all the honours which had been thrust upon him had never made Daniel forget his nation, and thus his influence was used — under God’s overruling providence — to induce Cyrus to issue an edict which restored the people of Israel to their country once more.
A joyful company set forth, bearing with them those remaining sacred vessels of the temple which Cyrus had given back. Their first care was to restore the worship of God, to set up again the altar, re-establish the proper feasts, and lay the foundations of the new temple amid the rejoicings of the people. But the building did not greatly advance during the reign of Cyrus and several later kings, until the time of Darius; and then, after searching into the records for the edict issued by Cyrus, which had commanded that the Jews should be free to return to their land, and help should be given to rebuild their temple, he reissued the decree, and the second temple was at last completed, and a grand feast of dedication held.
But there were some of the people of Israel who had lingered on in the country where their fathers had been prisoners; for they were loath to leave their dwellings and possessions, and they had made a home among strangers. Any other people would perhaps have become separated from each other, and have adopted the habits of those among whom they dwelt; but the Jews have in all times and in all nations clung together by the ties of their law and their religion; and thus, during the Babylonish captivity, and in the later days of their willing residence in the midst of the Persians, they remained a separate people, strongly attached to each other and to the old familiar customs of their own land.
Thus we find companies of Jews dwelling in the cities of the great empire during the reign of Ahasuerus — those gorgeous Eastern cities of olden time when they were in the full glory of their magnificence and power. Such was Persepolis, about thirty-five miles north-east of Shiraz, of which travellers give such glowing descriptions when they tell of it in ruins: the terraced walls, and massive pillars, and sumptuous halls, which can now only be imagined by the remaining fragments of sculptured stone and brick.
There, too, was Shushan, or Susa, the city which is the scene of all we know of Esther’s history, where the Persian kings took up their residence in winter, and in which their royal treasures were preserved. Its walls and temples, are supposed, from the ruins, to have resembled those of the mighty Babylon. Here is the tomb of Daniel, where the remains of the prophet are believed to rest; and here are many of those curious monuments of the East, with their inscriptions cut in the stone. The vast halls in which King Ahasuerus assembled his guests to view the splendour of his riches are now but masses of ruins; and fragments of coloured tiles and bits of brick are all that remain of what was once beautiful and glorious.
It may help us to enter into all the difficulties and dangers of Queen Esther’s life in the royal house, and to understand fully her fidelity to her own people, when she braved the anger of Ahasuerus to intercede for them, if we think first of the position of an Eastern monarch in those far-off days.
Here, in our own land, there are ceremonies and courtesies to be gone through in approaching royalty, but fear and danger, if a king or queen were displeased, are not so much as known. But then the Persian rulers were accustomed to receive the reverence that belongs only to God: their anger was the sentence of death to the offending person, their favour was the means of advancement, and was the result of caprice instead of merit. Therefore to be high in estimation with Ahasuerus upon one day was no safeguard for the next; and as Vashti lost her crown through the passion of a moment, Esther knew that she too might, for the smallest reason, be disgraced, or even destroyed, if such were the will of the king. Old engravings give us some idea of the formality used in approaching the monarch. In them we find the royal person elevated upon his chair of state, the attendant with his fan behind him, as well as other officers. Over the king’s head there is a canopy, and in his hand a sceptre (such as Ahasuerus extended as a sign of favour when Queen Esther ventured unbidden into his presence); and beneath him several ranges of attendants, the nearest being of course those highest in power.
Seven counsellors were constantly in the royal presence, and these are named as those “who see the king’s face.” These men were a sort of priesthood, or magi, who were regarded by the people with awe because of their great knowledge; and their learning and authority in all matters relating to art and science, and the laws of the country, gave them even the power of being a slight check on the king himself. These were the counsellors whose advice was sought by Ahasuerus when he was enraged with Vashti for refusing to appear at his command.
The kingdom of Persia was very large: all the vast tract of land bounded by the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Caspian Sea upon its different sides, was under the rule of the monarch, who could not overlook every part of it; therefore princes, or governors, were appointed to manage the affairs of each province, and couriers passed between them and the city of Shushan, who kept the king duly informed of all that went on in his dominions, and conveyed his orders and messages to them. These were the messengers, or “posts,” who travelled on horses and dromedaries and camels, for speed, with the letters written in the name of Ahasuerus by Mordecai, when the sentence against the Jews was reversed.
The number of servauts and officers connected with the court of the King was immense. It is said by some historians that fifteen thousand persons altogether were fed at the royal table! Every day a thousand animals, sheep, oxen, and asses, besides a number of fowls, were killed for the use of the palace; and a separate dish
was placed before each guest, and he was expected to take away what he did not eat. The banquets were frequent and very sumptuous, especially those given to celebrate birthdays and marriages. The approach to those Eastern palaces was through a large unpaved court, which led to a gateway decorated with coloured marbles; and those persons who were sufficiently high in rank passed through this to the great staircase of the second court, upon which a grand colonnade opened, protected from the sun by curtains suspended between marble columns, and here were placed divans for those who were in waiting.
The state apartments were much more magnificent than the others,—the pavement either mosaic or large slabs of coloured marble, and the divans covered with cushions of embroidered cloth and golden fringes hanging to the ground. The palace allotted to the women is smaller, but it has also its court and colonnade, its fountains and gardens, where the rose and jasmine grow so luxuriantly; its alcove, which, being raised above the pavement, and entirely open and sheltered from the sun, offers a pleasant retreat in the hot months of the year.
And so in this luxurious state, in the grand old city of Shushan, we must picture Ahasuerus in all his magnificence, before whom princes and servants bowed and trembled as before a god. Here, too, we can think of Mordecai the Jew, dwelling close by the outer gate that he might hear tidings of his niece, who had just left his care; and we can imagine we see the timid Esther venturing with beating heart and trembling steps into the royal presence to plead for her own beloved people of Israel.
DISCLAIMER:
This book is in the public domain. It is for fair use only, exclusively for educational research. It is solely for personal, non-commercial use. No copyright infringement is intended. It is an invaluable source of information, inestimable and indispensable as a rich and varied gateway to the past, representing a priceless wealth of history, culture and knowledge.
CONTENTS:
1. HOW THE JEWS CAME TO BABYLON, ... ... ... 7
2. THE GREAT BANQUET, ... ... ... 22
3. THE TERRIBLE EDICT, ... ... 42
4. HAMAN’S PUNISHMENT, ... ... ... ... 59
5. THE ADVANCEMENT OF MORDECAI, ... ... ... 76
6. MORDECAI REMEMBERS HIS DREAM, ... ... ... 91
CHAPTER I.
HOW THE JEWS CAME TO BABYLON.
Before reading the story of Queen Esther’s life in the palace of Ahasuerus, it will be well to go back some years from that time, to the days when the Jewish people were carried captive into Babylon, which was the beginning of her family, and many another family of the Israelites, making their home in the strange land.
There had been all the horrors of war and of famine for God’s chosen people: and then at last the gates of Jerusalem were reluctantly thrown open to the army which besieged the city; the last king of the royal house of David was led away as a prisoner; the palace of Solomon, which he had built as a temple for the A1mighty, with its roofs of gold and of cedar, was levelled with the earth; and many of the priests were either put to death or dragged captive to Babylon.
Instead of their own beautiful Jerusalem standing gloriously upon its mountain height above the cool and shady valleys beneath, the Jewish prisoners were now forced to dwell in the great, level city built upon opposite sides of the river Euphrates, with its enormous palace, which alone covered the space of eight miles, its straight canals bordered by rows of willows, its well - cultivated gardens,—all so different from their sunny land, where olives and vines grew luxuriously, even untended by the hand of man. Strange people, strange customs, were all around the captives, and, as the words of the psalm tell us, “By the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept, when they remembered thee, 0 Zion.” The Jews, however, seem to have been allowed to dwell together, and were not sold as slaves; true, they had to obey if their rulers summoned them to their grand banquets, that they might sing some of the sweet, mournful songs of their own land.
Daniel was one among other noble youths who were taken to Babylon and trained in the customs of the Assyrian court, and he rose rapidly in the favour of several kings who succeeded one another. Then came the time when, from a later monarch, the order went out forbidding prayer to be made for thirty days; and Daniel, choosing to obey God rather than man, was cast, as a punishment, into the lions’ den. But a miraculous power from heaven sealed the mouths of the fierce beasts, so that they did not harm him; and thus his life was spared, and he rose again in honour and distinction. He had a great power of understanding the meaning of unusual dreams, which were sent by God in warning, and twice he was successful in interpreting visions to King Nebuchadnezzar.
Afterwards, at Belshazzar’s feast, he explained the meaning of the handwriting on the wall as a sign that his kingdom should fall into the hands of the Medes and Persians. Of course there was great dismay and excitement in the royal palace at this interpretation of the strange writing; and that night the prophecy was proved true, for the vast troops of the Medes entered the great city before any alarm could be given, and thus conquered it. There had been no time for resistance. So Babylon fell as Isaiah had written: “And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the ornament, the pride of the Chaldees, shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, overthrown by God.”
Many travellers have described the vast mounds of earth and fragments of walls which were left in after-times to show the place where the mighty city once stood; and this destruction was God’s punishment for the invasion of Judea, and the plunder of his temple at Jerusalem. The time came when for seventy years the Jews had been in the land of strangers, those seventy years which Jeremiah had foretold the captivity should last.
Cyrus the Persian was then ruler over the kingdom, and Daniel was one of his most powerful counsellors. But the love of the Jewish youth for his own land had grown into the deep, faithful remembrance of a man; all the honours which had been thrust upon him had never made Daniel forget his nation, and thus his influence was used — under God’s overruling providence — to induce Cyrus to issue an edict which restored the people of Israel to their country once more.
A joyful company set forth, bearing with them those remaining sacred vessels of the temple which Cyrus had given back. Their first care was to restore the worship of God, to set up again the altar, re-establish the proper feasts, and lay the foundations of the new temple amid the rejoicings of the people. But the building did not greatly advance during the reign of Cyrus and several later kings, until the time of Darius; and then, after searching into the records for the edict issued by Cyrus, which had commanded that the Jews should be free to return to their land, and help should be given to rebuild their temple, he reissued the decree, and the second temple was at last completed, and a grand feast of dedication held.
But there were some of the people of Israel who had lingered on in the country where their fathers had been prisoners; for they were loath to leave their dwellings and possessions, and they had made a home among strangers. Any other people would perhaps have become separated from each other, and have adopted the habits of those among whom they dwelt; but the Jews have in all times and in all nations clung together by the ties of their law and their religion; and thus, during the Babylonish captivity, and in the later days of their willing residence in the midst of the Persians, they remained a separate people, strongly attached to each other and to the old familiar customs of their own land.
Thus we find companies of Jews dwelling in the cities of the great empire during the reign of Ahasuerus — those gorgeous Eastern cities of olden time when they were in the full glory of their magnificence and power. Such was Persepolis, about thirty-five miles north-east of Shiraz, of which travellers give such glowing descriptions when they tell of it in ruins: the terraced walls, and massive pillars, and sumptuous halls, which can now only be imagined by the remaining fragments of sculptured stone and brick.
There, too, was Shushan, or Susa, the city which is the scene of all we know of Esther’s history, where the Persian kings took up their residence in winter, and in which their royal treasures were preserved. Its walls and temples, are supposed, from the ruins, to have resembled those of the mighty Babylon. Here is the tomb of Daniel, where the remains of the prophet are believed to rest; and here are many of those curious monuments of the East, with their inscriptions cut in the stone. The vast halls in which King Ahasuerus assembled his guests to view the splendour of his riches are now but masses of ruins; and fragments of coloured tiles and bits of brick are all that remain of what was once beautiful and glorious.
It may help us to enter into all the difficulties and dangers of Queen Esther’s life in the royal house, and to understand fully her fidelity to her own people, when she braved the anger of Ahasuerus to intercede for them, if we think first of the position of an Eastern monarch in those far-off days.
Here, in our own land, there are ceremonies and courtesies to be gone through in approaching royalty, but fear and danger, if a king or queen were displeased, are not so much as known. But then the Persian rulers were accustomed to receive the reverence that belongs only to God: their anger was the sentence of death to the offending person, their favour was the means of advancement, and was the result of caprice instead of merit. Therefore to be high in estimation with Ahasuerus upon one day was no safeguard for the next; and as Vashti lost her crown through the passion of a moment, Esther knew that she too might, for the smallest reason, be disgraced, or even destroyed, if such were the will of the king. Old engravings give us some idea of the formality used in approaching the monarch. In them we find the royal person elevated upon his chair of state, the attendant with his fan behind him, as well as other officers. Over the king’s head there is a canopy, and in his hand a sceptre (such as Ahasuerus extended as a sign of favour when Queen Esther ventured unbidden into his presence); and beneath him several ranges of attendants, the nearest being of course those highest in power.
Seven counsellors were constantly in the royal presence, and these are named as those “who see the king’s face.” These men were a sort of priesthood, or magi, who were regarded by the people with awe because of their great knowledge; and their learning and authority in all matters relating to art and science, and the laws of the country, gave them even the power of being a slight check on the king himself. These were the counsellors whose advice was sought by Ahasuerus when he was enraged with Vashti for refusing to appear at his command.
The kingdom of Persia was very large: all the vast tract of land bounded by the Tigris, the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean, and the Caspian Sea upon its different sides, was under the rule of the monarch, who could not overlook every part of it; therefore princes, or governors, were appointed to manage the affairs of each province, and couriers passed between them and the city of Shushan, who kept the king duly informed of all that went on in his dominions, and conveyed his orders and messages to them. These were the messengers, or “posts,” who travelled on horses and dromedaries and camels, for speed, with the letters written in the name of Ahasuerus by Mordecai, when the sentence against the Jews was reversed.
The number of servauts and officers connected with the court of the King was immense. It is said by some historians that fifteen thousand persons altogether were fed at the royal table! Every day a thousand animals, sheep, oxen, and asses, besides a number of fowls, were killed for the use of the palace; and a separate dish
was placed before each guest, and he was expected to take away what he did not eat. The banquets were frequent and very sumptuous, especially those given to celebrate birthdays and marriages. The approach to those Eastern palaces was through a large unpaved court, which led to a gateway decorated with coloured marbles; and those persons who were sufficiently high in rank passed through this to the great staircase of the second court, upon which a grand colonnade opened, protected from the sun by curtains suspended between marble columns, and here were placed divans for those who were in waiting.
The state apartments were much more magnificent than the others,—the pavement either mosaic or large slabs of coloured marble, and the divans covered with cushions of embroidered cloth and golden fringes hanging to the ground. The palace allotted to the women is smaller, but it has also its court and colonnade, its fountains and gardens, where the rose and jasmine grow so luxuriantly; its alcove, which, being raised above the pavement, and entirely open and sheltered from the sun, offers a pleasant retreat in the hot months of the year.
And so in this luxurious state, in the grand old city of Shushan, we must picture Ahasuerus in all his magnificence, before whom princes and servants bowed and trembled as before a god. Here, too, we can think of Mordecai the Jew, dwelling close by the outer gate that he might hear tidings of his niece, who had just left his care; and we can imagine we see the timid Esther venturing with beating heart and trembling steps into the royal presence to plead for her own beloved people of Israel.