Esther 1:3 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Esther 1:3
In the third year of his reign, he made a feast unto all his princes and his servants; the power of Persia and Media, the nobles and princes of the provinces, being before him:
three · cardinal number, both genders singular absolute
year
בִּשְׁנַ֤תbish.Nat
H8141
a year (as a revolution of time) · preposition + noun, common feminine singular construct
reign
לְמָלְכ֔וֹle.ma.le.Kho
H4427
to reign · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
made
עָשָׂ֣ה'a.Sah
H6213
to do or make · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
feast
מִשְׁתֶּ֔הmish.Teh
H4960
drink · noun, common masculine singular absolute
princes
שָׂרָ֖יוsa.Rav
H8269
a head person (of any rank or class) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
servants
וַעֲבָדָ֑יוva.'a.va.Dav
H5650
a servant · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
power
חֵ֣ילcheil
H2428
probably a force · noun, common masculine singular construct
Persia
פָּרַ֣סpa.Ras
H6539
Paras (i.e. Persia) · proper noun, a place name
Media
וּמָדַ֗יu.ma.Dai
H4074
Madai · conjunction + proper noun, a place name
nobles
הַֽפַּרְתְּמִ֛יםha.par.te.Mim
H6579
a grandee · definite article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
princes
וְשָׂרֵ֥יve.sa.Rei
H8269
a head person (of any rank or class) · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural construct
provinces
הַמְּדִינ֖וֹתha.me.di.Not
H4082
properly · definite article + noun, common feminine plural absolute
before
לְפָנָֽיוle.fa.Nav
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · preposition + noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Mark 6:21 And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee;
Esther 2:18 Then the king made a great feast unto all his princes and his servants, even Esther’s feast; and he made a release to the provinces, and gav…
Daniel 5:1 Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
1 Kings 3:15 And Solomon awoke; and, behold, it was a dream. And he came to Jerusalem, and stood before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, and offered…
Genesis 40:20 And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast unto all his servants: and he lifted up the head of th…
Isaiah 21:2 A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Med…
Jeremiah 51:11 Make bright the arrows; gather the shields: the LORD hath raised up the spirit of the kings of the Medes: for his device is against Babylon,…
Esther 1:14 And the next unto him was Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, which sa…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Esther 1:1-9
Which of the kings of Persia this Ahasuerus was the learned are not agreed. Mordecai is said to have been one of those that were carried captive from Jerusalem (Est 2:5, Est 2:6), whence it should seem that this Ahasuerus was one of the first kings of that empire. Dr. Lightfoot thinks that he was that Artaxerxes who hindered the building of the temple, who is called also Ahasuerus (Ezr 4:6, Ezr 4:7), after his great-grandfather of the Medes, Dan 9:1. We have here an account,
I. Of the vast extent of his dominion. In the time of Darius and Cyrus there were but 120 princes (Dan 6:1); now there were 127, from India to Ethiopia, Est 1:1. It had become an over-grown kingdom, which in time would s…
made a feast unto all his princes and his servants--Banquets on so grand a scale, and extending over so great a period, have been frequently provided by the luxurious monarchs of Eastern countries, both in ancient and modern times. The early portion of this festive season, however, seems to have been dedicated to amusement, particularly an exhibition of the magnificence and treasures of the court, and it was closed by a special feast of seven days' continuance, given within the gardens of the royal palace. The ancient palace of Susa has been recently disinterred from an incumbent mass of earth and ruins; and in that palace, which is, beyond all doubt, the actual edifice referred to in this p…
Sat on the throne of his kingdom - Having subdued all his enemies, and brought universal peace to his empire. See the commencement of the introduction.
Shushan the palace - The ancient city of Susa, now called Shuster by the Persians. This, with Ecbatana and Babylon, was a residence of the Persian kings. The word הבירה habbirah, which we render the palace, should be rendered the city, εν Σουσοις τῃ πολει, as in the Septuagint.
John Gill on Esther 1:3
The Church Fathers
Even though from the historical point of view it simply appears to show the abundance of riches and the luxury of delights of a powerful king, … according to the holier mystery of our most powerful king, namely, Our Lord Christ, this preparation of a most magnificent banquet signifies the greatness of the spiritual riches and the excellence of the living treasures that he distributes according to the measure of his dispensation to each of his faithful.
Though these preparations for so rich a feast seem intended to portray in concrete terms the parade of wealth and the abundance of delights possessed by a powerful king, it is actually a very sanctified allegory which symbolizes the magnitude of spiritual riches, and the excellence of the necessities of life, provided by the most powerful of kings, namely the Lord Christ, which he—in accord with his method of dispensation—has generously distributed to each of his faithful ones. For this king of great wealth, who was convinced by the entreaties of his faithful wife to do away with the imminent destruction of the Jews which wicked men were plotting, prefigures no one more than our Redeemer who is accosted every day by the prayers of the Church who is his dearest wife, and frees his chosen ones from the hands of their enemies, and subjects their adversaries to the punishment they deserve. And that Esther prefigures the Church, no one can doubt; nor may she be described as the bride of anyone but Christ. That is why no one should reject this interpretation merely because this actual king was faithless, as though this would mean he could never be a figure of the just king; for we do not say that anyone's treacheries or transgressions are the sum of his behavior, whether he is trustworthy or even faithless: "He did not sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth" (1 Peter 2). "For how can light associate with darkness; or what can Christ have in common with Belial (2 Corinthians 6)?" Rather, the good actions and just judgments of any individual should be associated with no less an authority than the one from whom comes every good, about whom it is written: "He will judge the world in fairness, and the peoples in his truth" (Psalm 9). For the transgressions and sins of the faithful do not provide the most accurate representation of their character, as do the errors and wicked actions of the gentiles; and the reason we are saying this is because certain of our teachers have used David's behavior toward Uriah and his wife as a prefiguration of Christ and the Church. Why would anyone want to suggest that Moses' doubts at the "waters of dissension," Aaron's deception about manufacturing the calf, Solomon's lust, Ezekiel's arrogance, Peter's denial, and Saul's blasphemy are fitting prefigurations of our Redeemer? And yet no one can properly deny that the good actions and…
Dictionary and topics
Ahasuerus — There are three kings designated by this name in Scripture. (1.) The father of Darius the Mede, mentioned in Dan. 9:1. This was probably the Cyaxares I. known by this name in profane history, the…
Meals — Are at the present day “eaten from a round table little higher than a stool, guests sitting cross-legged on mats or small carpets in a circle, and dipping their fingers into one large dish heaped…
Media — Heb. Madai, which is rendered in the Authorized Version (1) “Madai,” Gen. 10:2; (2) “Medes,” 2 Kings 17:6; 18:11; (3) “Media,” Esther 1:3; 10:2; Isa. 21:2; Dan. 8:20; (4) “Mede,” only in Dan. 11:1.…
Shushan — A lily, the Susa of Greek and Roman writers, once the capital of Elam. It lay in the uplands of Susiana, on the east of the Tigris, about 150 miles to the north of the head of the Persian Gulf. It is…
Diet Of The Jews, The · Men and women did not partake of together — Men and women did not partake of together
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
In the third year of his reign he made a feast unto all his princes, and his servants,.... The nobles and officers in his court; on what account this was cannot be said with certainty, whether the first day of it was his birthday, or the day of his coming to the throne, on which day Xerxes used to make a feast annually, as Herodotus relates (f):
the power of Persia and Media; the mighty men therein, the potentates thereof; or the "army", the principal officers of it:
the nobles and princes of the provinces being with him. The first word Aben Ezra declares his ignorance of, whether it is Hebrew or Persian; Jarchi interprets it governors; and the persons intended by both seem to be the deput…
The banquet. Est 1:1-3 mark a period. משׁתּה עשׂה, which belongs to ויהי, does not follow till Est 1:3, and even then the statement concerning the feast is again interrupted by a long parenthesis, and not taken up again and completed till Est 1:5. On the use of ויהי in historical narratives at the beginning of relations having, as in the present instance and Rut 1:1, no reference to a preceding narrative, see the remark on Jos 1:1. Even when no express reference to any preceding occurrence takes place, the historian still puts what he has to relate in connection with other historical occurrences by an "and it came to pass." Ahashverosh is, as has already been remarked on Ezra 4, Xerxes, the…
"So in the third year of his rule, King Ahasuerus held a grand feast for all his officials and young men, the famous heroes of Persia and Media, and the chiefs of the provinces in his presence, so that he could show off the wealth of the glory of his kingdom." For our Redeemer—whom Ahasuerus represented in both his title and his rank—is interpreted as "my entry" or "my court", because in the third era of that age the eternal ruler of man in the Father and the Holy Spirit opened wide to the human race the sacrament of his incarnation; and he has opened up for us the entryway to life and served to his faithful ones the most ample of spiritual banquets. The first era, then, was before the Law, the second was under the Law, and the third was under grace, namely when he fulfilled his preaching in the Gospels and prepared for all the nations an opulent meal of his body and blood. That is to say, the Lord himself was spiritually commending to us, in as a mystery, the excellence of this feast through the Gospel parable in which he described the king who threw a wedding for his son, and the great meal prepared by a man. "So the great king held a feast for seven days, in the entryway of the garden and the grove that the king had planted and cultivated by hand," because for the entire period of that life which transpires in multiples of the number seven, our Redeemer satisfies his chosen ones with the pasturage of the divine word and the feasts of the virtues, in the Church of this world where each of the faithful readies himself— with correct faith and good works—to enter Paradise and the celestial kingdom. Hence they will become accustomed in every respect to the delights and the pleasures of the heavenly kingdom where fruit-bearing trees are planted, that is, where holy men and those who are famous for their good deeds show—through the divine gift that has been lavished on them—the beauty of holy conduct and proper doctrine. Hanging there "from every spot are tents the color of the sky, and fine linen and blue," because it is there that the spiritual ornament of study, and the splendor of celestial wisdom, flash with the brilliance of the virtues whose proper purpose is to instruct us in those things. For that matter, the color of linen mimics (as some claim) the appearance of gold, and has deservedly been compared to the sheen of divine wisdom which excels above…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
