Commentaria in Esther
Chapter the Fourteenth. Synopsis of the chapter
The prayer and lamentation of Esther, which is to be subjoined to the prayer of Mardochai after chapter iv, as it is subjoined in the Roman Greek.
1. Esther also the queen fled to the Lord, being seized with the fear of death which was at hand. 2. And when she had laid away her royal apparel, she put on garments suitable for weeping and mourning: and instead of divers perfumes, she covered her head with ashes and dung, and she humbled her body with fasting: and all the places in which she was before accustomed to rejoice, she filled with the tearing of her hair. 3. And she prayed to the Lord the God of Israel, saying: O my Lord, who alone art our king, help me, a desolate woman, and who have no other helper but thee. 4. My danger is in my hands. 5. (Deut. iv, 39.) I have heard of my father that thou, O Lord, didst take Israel from among all nations, and our fathers from all their predecessors, to possess an everlasting inheritance, and thou hast done to them as thou hast spoken. 6. We have sinned in thy sight, and therefore thou hast delivered us into the hands of our enemies: 7. for we have worshipped their gods. Thou art just, O Lord, 8. and now they are not content to oppress us with most hard bondage, but they ascribe the strength of their hands to the power of their idols, 9. to change thy promises, and to destroy thy inheritance, and to shut the mouths of them that praise thee, and to extinguish the glory of thy temple and altar, 10. that they may open the mouths of the Gentiles, and praise the strength of idols, and magnify for ever a carnal king. 11. Give not up, O Lord, thy sceptre to them that are not, lest they laugh at our ruin: but turn their counsel upon themselves, and destroy him that hath begun to rage against us. 12. Remember, O Lord, and shew thyself to us in the time of our tribulation, and give me boldness, O Lord, king of gods, and of all power; 13. give me a well ordered speech in my mouth in the presence of the lion, and turn his heart to the hatred of our enemy, that both he himself may perish, and the rest that consent to him. 14. But deliver us by thy hand, and help me, who have no other help but thee, O Lord, who hast the knowledge of all things, 15. and knowest that I hate the glory of the wicked, and detest the bed of the uncircumcised, and of every stranger. 16. Thou knowest my necessity, that I abominate the sign of my pride and glory, which is upon my head in the days of my public appearance, and detest it as a menstruous rag, and wear it not in the days of my silence; 17. and that I have not eaten at Aman’s table, nor hath the king’s feast pleased me, and I have not drunk the wine of the drink offerings: 18. and that thy handmaid hath never rejoiced, since I was brought hither until this day, but in thee, O Lord God of Abraham. 19. O God, who art mighty above all, hear the voice of them that have no other hope, and deliver us from the hand of the wicked, and deliver me from my fear.
1. Seized with the fear.—The Septuagint, in the agony of an uncertain lot, such as the agony and prayer of Christ was.
2. She humbled her body with fasting.—The word “fasting” is not in the Greek, but is understood: for the Hebrews call humiliation of the body fasting; for nothing so depresses the flesh as fasting: hence the Hebrews call the fast proclaimed by Esther on the 13th of Adar taanith Esther, that is, humiliation, that is, the fast of Esther. Wisely St. Ambrose, Epistle 88: “Esther,” he says, “bent a proud king by her fasts;” on which I said more at the end of chapter iv.
With the tearing of her hair.—The ancients were wont in great calamity and lamentation to clap their hands, beat their breast, tear their cheeks, rend their hair from vehemence of grief, to move all to compassion and lamentation, as Esdras relates of himself, book I, chapter ix, and Josephus of Alexandra the daughter of Hyrcanus and mother-in-law of Herod, and Salome the sister of Herod, book XV, and book XVI.
3. Help me, a desolate woman:—both because in the court of a Gentile king I am the only Jewess; and because I am destitute of every human help, as follows; and because I desire the converse and consolation of no man, but of God alone. Josippon says Esther prayed thus: I dwell here alone, I am alone in the king’s house without father and without mother. Like a poor orphan girl who begs from door to door, so I beg thy mercies from window to window, that is, going through each of the windows from one to another, that I may look toward heaven, and thence expect from God help in so great an affliction; for this reason the Jews, when praying, were wont to go up to upper rooms and look through the windows toward heaven, as Judith did, chapter viii, verse 5; Daniel, chapter vi, verse 10; nay Christ for this reason ascended mountains, and there “passed the whole night in the prayer of God,” Luke vi, 12.
4. My danger (Josippon: my soul) is in my hands,—that is, is most present and extreme; for what is carried in the hands can easily be poured out, or snatched and taken away by a thief or enemy. So David, fleeing Saul and enemies seeking to kill him, says, Psalm cxviii, 109: “My soul is continually in my hands,” that is, my life is in the utmost peril, so that I seem to carry it in my hand and offer it to anyone who wishes to take it away.
7. For we have worshipped their gods,—not I, but our ancestors in Jerusalem under Manasses and other idolatrous kings. So Josippon Gorionides.
8. They ascribe the strength of their hands to the power of idols,—that is, as Josippon renders: Behold they themselves (Aman and his followers) do not say that thou (O Lord) hast delivered us into their hands, but ascribe it to their idols (to Mithra, that is, the sun).
9. To change thy promises (by which thou didst promise to our fathers Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, etc., that thou wouldst be our God and protector) and to destroy thy inheritance (that is, the people of Israel, who as thy peculiar possession acknowledge and worship thee alone as their God and Lord) and to extinguish the glory of thy temple and altar,—lately rebuilt in Jerusalem by this Ahasuerus, that is, Darius son of Hystaspes, I Esdras vi. For if Aman had persuaded Darius to destroy all the Jews in Persia, his hatred would not have stopped here, but he would have contrived that Jerusalem with its temple be overthrown too.
or Aman, who as king and tyrant rules over us, that they may “proclaim” him more powerful than us and our God, as having killed and exterminated us all.
11. Give not up thy sceptre to them that are not,—that is, to false gods and idols which are not gods, that thy divinity and omnipotence be ascribed to them, as if to say: Suffer not divine power to be attributed to demons as gods, as if through it Aman who worships them were to destroy us, and they to be worshipped as gods instead of thee.
13. Give me a well ordered speech in my mouth in the presence of the lion,—as if to say: So aptly compose and arrange my words in my mouth that I may soften the mind of Darius my husband, who is terrible as a lion, and bend him to mercy toward me and my Jews. Hence St. Augustine, book I On Christian Doctrine, chapter xv, teaches that a preacher ought to ask of God before preaching what Esther does here, namely that he so compose the words in his mouth as to penetrate, strike and pierce the minds of the hearers. Behold Esther, approaching Darius uncalled, trembles like a kid before a lion, as if to be devoured by him, and therefore, wholly afflicted and pierced, she implores and obtains most ardently the help of God alone. So St. Paul calls Nero a lion, saying: “I was delivered from the mouth of the lion,” II Timothy iv, 17. For as is said Proverbs xx, 2: “As the roaring of a lion, so also is the dread of a king.” This will be plain in Darius in the next chapter.
15. Thou knowest that I hate the glory of the wicked, and detest the bed of the uncircumcised,—as if to say: I, because I am faithful and a worshipper of God, detest the marriage and union with Darius an unbeliever and idolater; yet I admit and permit it, driven by necessity, that I may appease and reconcile him to me and my Jews.
16. Thou knowest my necessity,—by which I am compelled to adorn myself as queen royally in the Persian manner, that I may please the king my husband, which I should by no means wish; nor would I do it were not this necessity to force me. Hence St. Augustine, epistle 199 to Ecdicia, rebukes her because, wishing to please God alone, with indiscreet zeal she took the habit of a nun, and distributing her goods to the poor without her husband’s knowledge displeased him, and gave him occasion to commit adultery.
That I abominate the sign of my pride, which is upon my head in the days of my public appearance,—when, namely, I appear in public or before the king, and show myself as queen in royal dress and ornament. She calls the royal tiara or crown the sign of pride, which, lofty and set with gold and gems, she bore on her head like a tower, as even now some women so adorn and raise the head as to seem turreted or tower-bearing, of whom Juvenal, Satire x:
So many tiers, so many layers piles the lofty head with towers; Andromache from the front you will see; behind she is smaller, you would think another,
In Greek as a menstruous rag, that is, a rag stained with menstrual blood, which is most filthy, most foul, nay poisonous and altogether abominable, as Pliny shows by many instances, book VI, chapter xix. Hear St. Augustine, Epistle 199, already cited: “Esther, that queen fearing God, worshipping God, subject to God, though she served as subject to a king her husband, a foreigner, who did not worship with her the same God, when in extreme danger, not her own only but also of her nation, which was then the people of God, she prostrated herself to the Lord in prayer, said in her very prayer that the royal ornament was to her as a menstruous rag; and so praying she was at once heard by him who, the beholder of hearts, knew that she spoke the truth. And she certainly had a husband who was the husband of many women, and a worshipper of strange and false gods.”
And wear it not in the days of my silence,—in which, namely, at home in my chamber as a private person I rest and lie hid.
17. And I have not drunk the wine of the drink offerings,—namely that offered to idols and first tasted.
18. And thy handmaid hath never rejoiced, since I was brought hither (into the court and royal throne) Until this day, but in thee, O God of Abraham;—as if to say: As Abraham believed in one God, and hoped in him alone, and placed all his goods in him, that he might rejoice in none other than in God and of his God; so I too have never rejoiced in royal honour and adornment, nor in royal riches and delights, as being slight, perishable and vain, but in thee alone, O Lord God; for thou art to me all honour, all beauty, all pleasure, all wealth, all sweetness, every good; and that solid, stable, immense and everlasting. Great was the purity, sincerity, charity and holiness of Esther’s soul, as is clear from these words. Let us learn from her to rejoice in nothing of the world, but in God alone, as David exhorts, saying: “Rejoice in the Lord, and exult, ye just.” And: “Delight in the Lord, and he will give thee the requests of thy heart,” Psalm xxxvi, 4. And Paul: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.” Philippians iv, 4. See what is said there; for God alone is the true joy of the heart, nay the sea and ocean as of all goods, so of all joys. He alone fills with immense joys all the senses and recesses of our soul. Jesus is honey in the mouth, melody in the ear, a jubilee in the heart, says St. Bernard.