EXPOSITION
CONCLUSION.—THE GREATNESS OF AHASUERUS, AND OF MORDECAI UNDER HIM (Esther 10:1-3.). The Book of Esther might have been expected to terminate with the institution of the Purim feast. All that has gone before is subordinate to this, and the reader would be satisfied, and require no more, if the book stopped at the end of Esther 9:1-32. But the writer, perhaps from personal attachment to Mordecai, perhaps from mere patriotic pride in him, cannot bring himself to lay down the pen until he has put on record the full greatness of his hero, and the strength and support that he was to the Jews of his day. He has already told us that "this man Mordecai waxed greater and greater" (Esther 9:4). He now expands this statement. The essence of Mordecai's greatness consisted in his being "next unto king Ahasuerus" (Esther 9:3), his chief minister and alter ego. Thus the greatness of Ahasuerus is involved in his. So the chapter commences with a few words of Ahasuerus' greatness. It has already been noticed more than once (Esther 1:1; Esther 8:9) that he "ruled from India to Ethiopia, over an hundred and twenty-seven provinces." It is now added that he "laid a tribute upon the land, and upon the isles of the sea" (ver 1). This mention of "laying a tribute' was the chief reason why in former days so many writers, including Hooker, identified the Ahasuerus of this book with Darius, the son of Hystaspes. But it is not necessary to suppose that the first laying of a tribute on the provinces of the Persian empire is here intended; and Xerxes, after the Grecian expedition, which seriously altered the bounds of his dominions, may well have made a new assessment, in which the islands of the AEgean, or some of them, and certain other maritime tracts, were included. For the rest of Ahasuerus' "power and his might," the writer is content to refer his readers to "the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia" (Esther 9:2), which contained also an account of "the greatness of Mordecai, whereto the king advanced him." This greatness forms the sole subject of the concluding verse, which declares Mordecai's position—