Commentaria in Esther
9. Vasthi the queen also made a feast for the women.—Hence the Hebrew Vasthi is appropriately the same as drinking, or warp; for threads and warp are the works of women. For Vasthi the Greek is Asti; Josephus has Vasti, and from this are compounded the Persian names Astaspes and Hystaspes. Hence some with Serarius suspect that this Vasthi was the daughter of Hystaspes and the sister of Darius her husband. Ctesias favours this, asserting that the brother of Ahasuerus was Oudiaspes, a name that alludes to Vasthi, as if this Oudiaspis were her sister. For the Persians took their sisters as wives, as Herodotus teaches in Cambyses, Curtius, book VIII, Pliny, book XXXVI, chapter vii. Others think that Vasthi was the daughter of Cyrus; for Justin, book I, and Herodotus, book III, teach that Darius married her to confirm for himself the kingdom of the Persians; Herodotus calls her Artystone, a name which alludes to Vasthi.
10. When the king was merry, and after very much drinking was well warmed with wine.—The laws of the Persians permitted the king of the Persians once a year, namely at the feast of the Sun, whom the Persians worshipped as a god, to drink to excess; but what the law had permitted once, the king could usurp oftener by his own authority.
Mauman.—In Greek it is Aman, although the Hebrews think that Aman was Mamuchan, of whom verse 14.
11. To bring in queen Vasthi, etc.
To show her beauty to all the people and the princes.—Ahasuerus commanded this partly from drunkenness, partly from lust; wherefore this command of his was rash, imprudent, proud, dishonourable and shameless, and Vasthi was therefore not bound to obey it, for the sake of modesty and chastity, lest by her beauty she should entice the eyes and minds of princes, already heated with wine, to desire her, as Candaules king of the Sardians enticed his friend Gyges to love of his wife by showing her to him naked: whereupon Gyges, making himself invisible by a magic ring, killed Candaules and took his wife for himself, as Herodotus tells, book I. The Rabbis fable that Vasthi was in like manner commanded by Ahasuerus to come forth naked to the banquet. They add, from Balthasar of whom Daniel chapter v, that she, born of him, by most outrageous tyranny forced Hebrew maidservants to work on the Sabbath day and to walk about naked, this is the reason why she was cast out naked, and why she perished miserably on the Sabbath day, which is also called the seventh. But away with these obscenities of obscene Rabbis.
For she was exceedingly beautiful.—Persian women surpassed the rest in beauty. Hence Alexander the Great would not see the wife and daughters of Darius, already ceded to him, saying “that Persian women were pains of the eyes,” says Plutarch and Curtius: “In Persia the beauty of women excels,” says Ammianus, book XXIII.
But she refused, and slighted the king’s commandment, etc.—She seems therefore to have sinned by pride, disobedience and contempt of her husband; yet if you take that away, she honestly and chastely declined the dishonourable and shameless exhibition of herself before the princes by her drunken husband; especially because, as Josephus says, book XI, chapter vi, “she wished to keep the laws of the Persians, which forbade wives to be seen by strangers.” Wherefore Macrobius, book VII, chapter i, says that among the Parthians not wives but only concubines were wont to be brought into banquets. St. Ambrose relates the same, book On Elias, chapter xv. And the Persians “forbid women not only banquets but also the sight of men.” Hence Severus Sulpicius of Vasthi: “Wiser than the foolish king, she refused, being bidden to present the spectacle of her body to the eyes of men, for modesty’s sake;” the more praiseworthy the more constant she was in persevering in the observance of the laws and of modesty; for, as St. Jerome prudently warns, epistle to Furia: “Not the fires of Etna, not the Vulcanian land, not Vesuvius and Olympus burn with such heats as the youthful marrow, full of wine and feasts…” Tertullian, against the Psychics, chapter 1: “Lust without gluttony would be held a monster; since these two are so united and joined that, if they could be wholly parted, the private parts themselves would not first cling to the belly.” Finally Plutarch in Artaxerxes asserts that among the Persians it was a capital crime to approach the litter of the queen or of any royal concubine, or to see her. Rightly therefore, by the law of nature as well as by the positive law of the Persians, Vasthi refused to display her beauty to drunken guests.
Would that Christian women imitated Vasthi, who openly display their beauty, nay, paint it, to entice young men to love them! They thus pander their own bodies and souls, to the eternal ruin both of themselves and of those men: “For the eyes are guides in love.” And nothing is more alluring than a beautiful and enticing woman.
Whereupon the king, being angry, and inflamed with exceeding fury,—pronounced against Vasthi the angry and unjust sentence of repudiation which follows. For “every drunken man is inferior to anger and empty of mind,” says Sophocles in Stobaeus, sermon 48.
14. Seven princes of the Persians and Medes, who saw the face of the king,—that is, were his innermost counsellors and most familiar with the king. For, as Justin says, book I, at the end: “Among the Persians the person of the king is hidden under the show of majesty;” hence chapter vii, verse 8, they covered the face of Aman, who had fallen into the king’s indignation, as if unworthy to see the king whom he had so offended. Some kings assumed a like pride, and today the kings of China assume it. The Persians received this from the Medes as they did the kingdom. For of Deioces, king of the Medes, Herodotus says, book I, page 24: “He took care that it should not be lawful for the king to be seen by anyone.” For as Valerius Maximus says, book II, chapter vii: “Whatever is placed on a lofty pinnacle ought to be kept clear of humble and common intercourse, that it may be the more venerable.”
19. That Vasthi come in no more, etc., and another, who is better than she, take her kingdom (the title, dignity and magnificence of queen).—Plutarch in Artaxerxes, speaking of the Persians: “They are barbarians,” he says, “exceedingly jealous and fierce toward their wives.” Commenting on this place, Luther threw off all the laws and limits of modesty, teaching that if a wife be rather unwilling for the conjugal act, she should be called a maidservant, and the husband should say to her: “If you will not, another will; if the wife will not, let the maid come.” A fit cover for such a dish; a fit oracle of Priapus for such a prophet.
Wisely St. Jerome, epistle to Rusticus: “The philosophers of this world,” he says, “are wont to drive out an old love by a new love, as a nail by a nail. This the seven princes of the Persians also did for king Ahasuerus, that they might allay the longing for queen Vasthi by the love of other maidens. They contrive vice by vice, sin by sin; let us overcome vices by the love of virtues. Decline, he says, from evil, and do good. Seek after peace and pursue it. Unless we hate evil, we cannot love good.”
Tropologically. See here how the banquet of Ahasuerus ends in sorrow, and grief seizes the ends of joy, and the king dismisses and repudiates Vasthi his most beautiful queen and wife. “So rivers,” she says, “are sweet in their bed; but when they run down to the sea they become bitter.” See Chrysostom, homily 6 on the epistle to the Hebrews, in the Moral part. So the day after the first banquets and delights is one of sorrow and penance.
22. That the husbands should be the rulers—as if to say: that men, or husbands, ought to be rulers in their houses, and be masters of their wives, sons and servants.