Commentaria in Esther
Chapter the Fifth. Synopsis of the chapter
Esther uncalled goes in to Ahasuerus, exposing herself to peril of life, but kindly received by him she invites him with Aman once and again to a banquet: meanwhile Aman prepares a cross for Mardochai (more truly for himself).
1. Now on the third day Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king’s house, over against the king’s hall: now he sat upon his throne in the hall of the palace, over against the door of the house. 2. And when he saw Esther the queen standing, she pleased his eyes, and he held out toward her the golden sceptre, which he held in his hand. And she approaching kissed the top of his sceptre. 3. And the king said to her: What wilt thou, Esther the queen? what is thy request? if thou shouldst even ask half of the kingdom, it shall be given thee. 4. But she answered: If it please the king, I beseech thee to come to me this day, and Aman with thee, to the banquet which I have prepared. 5. And the king immediately said: Call Aman quickly, that he may obey Esther’s will. So the king and Aman came to the banquet which the queen had prepared for them. 6. And the king said to her, after he had drunk wine abundantly: What dost thou desire should be given thee? and what askest thou? although thou shouldst ask the half of my kingdom, thou shalt have it. 7. And Esther answered: My petition and request is this: 8. If I have found favour in the king’s sight, and if it please the king to give me what I ask, and to fulfil my petition, let the king and Aman come to the banquet which I have prepared for them, and tomorrow I will open my mind to the king. 9. So Aman went out that day well pleased and merry. And when he saw Mardochai sitting before the doors of the palace, and that he had not only not risen up to him, but had not so much as moved from the place where he sat, he was exceedingly angry; 10. but dissembling his anger, and returning into his house, he called together to him his friends, and Zares his wife. 11. And he declared to them the greatness of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and with how great glory the king had advanced him above all his princes and servants. 12. And after this he said: Queen Esther also hath invited no other to the banquet with the king, but me; with whom also I am to dine tomorrow with the king. 13. And whereas I have all these things, I think I have nothing, so long as I see Mardochai the Jew sitting before the king’s doors. 14. And Zares his wife, and the rest of his friends, answered him: Order a high beam to be prepared, fifty cubits in height, and tell the king in the morning to hang Mardochai upon it, and so thou shalt go in merrily with the king to the banquet. The counsel pleased him, and he commanded a high cross to be prepared.
1. And stood in the inner court of the king’s house, over against the king’s hall.—The hall (basilica) here is the royal court; that is, the innermost chamber of the king, surrounded by precious hangings, where was the golden throne on which the king sat, shining with gold and gems, holding a golden sceptre in his hand; for basilica in Greek is the house of the king; basileus is king. The same is also called “the hall of the palace”; so from Dio, Philostratus, Apuleius and Aeschylus, Serarius. For in it the princes and palatines stood around the king. Esther, therefore, did not enter this innermost chamber of the king, but the inner court near it, so that she could be seen through the door by the king sitting in the innermost chamber. For the king sat “over against the door of the house.”
2. And when he saw Esther the queen standing, she pleased his eyes.—Here must be supplied and put first, from chapter xv, verse 9, that the king at first sight looked with furious and flashing eyes and terrified Esther, because she had come to him uncalled; and that Esther, struck down, fell once and again into a swoon, and presently the king ran up, and, holding out the sceptre to her, soothed her and restored her to himself; of which more in chapter xv.
And he held out toward her the golden sceptre,—namely the golden sceptre which he carried in his hand, signifying by this stretching out his clemency and good will toward her, that she might safely approach him uncalled, contrary to the law.
Allegorically the golden rod is the Blessed Virgin, through whom God, offended by the whole human race, was reconciled to it, of whom Balaam prophesied, Numbers chapter xxiv, near the end, saying: “A star (the Blessed Virgin, who is the true Esther, etc.) shall rise out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall spring up from Israel, and shall strike the chiefs of Moab, and shall waste all the children of Seth.” “This is,” says Blessed Peter Damian, sermon On the Assumption, “that rod by which the assaults of adverse demons are beaten back, the rod of Aaron through which wonders are wrought. But the staff is the Cross, by which not only was he beaten, but slain, that insatiable murderer, who feeds and is nourished on the deaths of men. In the Virgin the rod, and in the staff the cross, are contained the hope and consolation of the wretched, as the sublime Prophet declares with clear voice: Thy rod, he says, and thy staff, they have comforted me.”
3. If thou shouldst even ask half of my kingdom, thou shalt have it.—God was more generous to the Blessed Virgin than Ahasuerus, who granted her the whole of his kingdom, that is, the empire of heaven. Hence the Angels sang to her as to their queen at Rome at the castle of St. Angelo: “Queen of heaven, rejoice, alleluia,” as I have told more fully elsewhere. For Christ cannot refuse anything to her as to his mother: wherefore the Blessed Virgin is the supreme benefit of God to men after the Incarnate Word; for he gave her to us that through her we might obtain all things from him, that she might open to us all the treasures of clemency, omnipotence and divinity, and bestow upon us all the graces stored in them, through her Son.
8. Let the king and Aman come to the banquet which I have prepared for them.
The Greek adds that Esther added the reason of the invitation, saying: “My day is distinguished today”; as if to say: Today is a feast for me, and therefore there is to be rejoicing and a banquet; I call the king, therefore, that he may honour it with his presence. Esther prudently invited the king a second time to a banquet, that in it she might set before him her petition for the salvation of the Jews. First, that she might gradually kindle the king more in love of her, so that he could refuse her nothing. For it was an arduous and most difficult thing to ask the king to revoke his edict on the slaughter of the Jews, already issued and promulgated, contrary to the custom of the kings of the Persians and Medes. Second, because she did not dare to ask it publicly in so great a crowd of nobles standing by, since they would say that a law passed by the custom of kings could not be revoked. In secret, therefore, at the banquet she asked and obtained it from the king; in secret making known that she was a Jewess, which would have been dangerous to do publicly before the princes. Third, she invited Aman alone with the king, to bring him into the envy and hatred of the rest of the Satraps, says Lyranus. Fourth, because she knew that at a banquet the king, cheered by freer drinking, would be more liberal in granting requests. So even now prudent men, when they ask something of a sterner man, ask and obtain it not in the morning, when the mind and countenance are more austere from fasting, but after dinner and a banquet, when wine has made him cheerful. Some add that it was the custom of the kings of the Persians to refuse nothing to anyone at a banquet. Certainly Herodotus writes, book nine, that among the Persians it was a sin for the king to deny anything at a banquet, which every year on the day on which the king was created he was wont to hold.
9. And when he saw Mardochai sitting before the doors of the palace.
And that he had not only not risen up to him, but had not so much as moved from the place where he sat, he was exceedingly angry.—Great was Mardochai’s constancy, that before Aman, a most wicked enemy, devising destruction for the whole nation of the Jews, he would not so much as rise, to show his trust in God, and by that very act to reproach Aman with his pride and cruelty.
13. And whereas I have all these things, I think I have nothing, so long as I see Mardochai,—Mardochai therefore torments thee more, O Aman, than thou tormentest him: thou hast nothing without Mardochai, because Mardochai has all, and thou therefore nothing. Rightly ambition is the cross of those who pursue it; how, torturing all, dost thou please all? Nothing torments more bitterly, nothing disturbs more, yet among wretched mortals nothing is more frequented than its business,” and sermon IV On the Ascension: “This is the mountain to which the Angel ascended and became a devil.” St. Anselm, book On Similitudes, chapter lxxvii, compares honour to a butterfly: “Those who seek the honours of this world,” he says, “act like boys who chase a butterfly. For butterflies, when they fly, never keep a straight path, but toss themselves hither and thither; when they seem to settle somewhere, they do not stay long there. And while boys pursue them, wishing to catch them, they hurry quickly after them, and because they look not to their feet but to the butterflies, they sometimes fall into a pit. Often when they approach cautiously and try to seize them, the butterflies fly away; when they have caught them, they rejoice over nothing, as if they had gained something great. Those who seek the honours of this world do likewise. For the honours of this world never hold a sure road, but by uncertain byways fly from one to another,
14. And he commanded a high cross to be prepared. “But the cross which thou hast prepared for Mardochai, O Aman, thou hast fixed for thyself. For on it thou shalt soon be hanged, according to Ecclesiasticus chapter xxvii, verse 29: “He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it, and he that setteth a stone for his neighbour shall stumble upon it; and he that layeth a snare for another shall perish in it.” See what is said there.
Furthermore he ordered a cross to be prepared rather than the sword or other torment, because the cross was in use among the Persians, and was most ignominious. The manuscript Chaldee gives another reason from the Rabbis; hear him: “She said (Zares his wife to her husband Aman): Thou canst not cast Mardochai into the fire, because Abraham his father was delivered from it. In the waters thou canst not drown him, because Moses and the children of Israel were delivered from them. Into the lions’ den thou canst not cast him, because Daniel the Prophet was delivered from it. But let them make a gibbet fifty cubits high, and in the morning tell the King that Mardochai be hanged upon it; for in this none of them was ever tried, to be delivered on a gibbet of wood.” But these are the usual inventions of the Rabbinic brain.