Commentaria in Esther
Chapter the Eleventh. Synopsis of the chapter
Mardochai relates the dream itself, the signification of which he already related in chapter 10.
1. In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and of the Levitical race, and Ptolemy his son, brought this epistle of Phurim, which they said Lysimachus the son of Ptolemy had interpreted in Jerusalem.
This too was the beginning in the vulgate edition, which neither in the Hebrew nor with any interpreter is found.
2. In the second year of the reign of Artaxerxes the great, on the first day of the month Nisan, Mardochai the son of Jair, the son of Semei, the son of Cis, of the tribe of Benjamin, had a dream: 3. a Jew, who dwelt in the city of Susa, a great man, and among the first of the king’s court. 4. (4 Kings xxiv, 15. Above ii, 6.) Now he was of the number of the captives, whom Nabuchodonosor king of Babylon had carried away from Jerusalem with Jechonias king of Juda; 5. and this was his dream: Behold there were voices, and tumults, and thunders, and earthquakes, and a disturbance upon the earth; 6. and behold two great dragons, ready to fight one against another. 7. And at their cry all nations were stirred up to fight against the nation of the just. 8. And that was a day of darkness and danger, of tribulation and distress, and great fear upon the earth. 9. And the nation of the just was troubled fearing their own evils, and was prepared for death. 10. And they cried to God: and as they were crying, a little fountain grew into a very great river, and abounded into many waters. 11. The light and the sun rose up, and the humble were exalted, and they devoured the glorious. 12. Which when Mardochai had seen, and was risen out of his bed, he was thinking what God would do: and he kept it fixed in his mind, desiring to know what the dream might signify.
7. To fight against the nation of the just, namely
This chapter is to be placed at the beginning of the book in historical order, as the Roman Greek places it.
1. In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra—in Egypt. For in that age, from the first Ptolemy, son of Lagus, king of Egypt, all the rest were called Ptolemies; the queens Cleopatra. This Ptolemy was he who was surnamed Philometor, sixth from Alexander the Great, and he favoured the Jews exceedingly, nay committed to them the government of his whole kingdom, and set the Jews Onias and Dositheus as generals of his army, according to Josephus, book II Against Apion. It is uncertain whether this Dositheus is the same as Dositheus the priest, who brought to Jerusalem the epistle of “phurim,” that is, of lots, written in Hebrew by Mardochai and turned into Greek by Lysimachus, as is said here. Furthermore this verse is not Mardochai’s, nor added by the Septuagint; for they lived before Philometor under Ptolemy Philadelphus, but was inserted by some later scribe, a hagiographer, for the sake of the history.
2. In the second year.—Here begins the epistle of Mardochai, which was written in the second year of Artaxerxes, that is, of Darius son of Hystaspes ruling in Persia. For Artaxerxes was a common name of the kings of the Persians, as Ahasuerus of the Medes, as I said. For it was the same year in which Darius granted the Jews leave to resume the building of the temple which Cyrus had begun, but his son Cambyses had forbidden, as
5. And this was his dream: Behold there were voices, and tumults, and thunders, and earthquakes, and a disturbance upon the earth.—All this signified the tumults and disturbances which Aman raised against the Jews by an edict commanding all to be slain. For there were many hundred thousands of Jews who were all to be slain with wives, daughters and handmaids. Think what consternation, tumult and lamentation there was among them.
They came forth to fight, both, namely Mardochai against Aman.
against the Jews who were a people faithful, dedicated to the worship of God.
10. The little fountain grew into a very great river, etc. 11. The light and the sun rose up, and the humble (the Jews) were exalted, and devoured the glorious,—namely Aman with his followers, and the rest who were adverse to him.
The little fountain was Esther with her Jews, who, first mean and slight, grew into a river, nay was turned into light and sun, when, made queen, she lifted up Mardochai and the Jews, that they might triumph over Aman and their enemies by slaying them. It alludes to little fountains, which in deep places, as wells and caves, rise slightly, and therefore are obscure and dark: but, as by the influx of neighbouring waters they grow, they become limpid and bright, according to the line:
A spring there was, unmuddied, silvery with clear waves.
Nay they become gleaming like the sun, especially when struck by the sun’s rays in such a way that the sun expresses in them either a rainbow or itself, as happens in a parhelion, when the sun, shining through rarefied watery clouds, shows in them another sun as it were to be seen. For in like manner Esther, after obtaining the kingdom, shone with majesty and glory like the sun. See what is said in the preceding chapter, verse 7.
He was thinking what God would do, and kept it fixed in his mind (to investigate and search out the signification of the dream), desiring to know what the dream might signify.—Hence it is plain that Mardochai, when he first saw the dream, did not understand its signification, but gradually learned it from the event of things and by God’s instinct. Yet he felt in general that it was inspired in him by God, that something great was signified by it in favour of the Jews. Hence Josippus son of Gorion, book II: “When Aman,” he says to Mardochai, “was so hostile, he said to his Esther: The dream which I told thee in the days of thy youth is being fulfilled.” Mardochai reveals to Ahasuerus through Esther the conspiracy of the eunuchs against him, of which chapter ii, 21; therefore in historical order this chapter should be inserted in that place: for what is said briefly there is here related more fully.