Esther 1:3

3. The third year of his reign This coincides with the time just after his reduction of Egypt, when, according to Herodotus, (vii, 7, 8,) Xerxes convoked a great assembly of the principal Persians, the chiefs of the empire, to deliberate on his expedition against Greece. This coincidence is no light argument for identifying Ahasuerus with Xerxes.

Made a feast Among the Persians and other oriental nations it was a custom for kings and generals to give a grand banquet after a victory, or upon a great state occasion. So in the Book of Judith, (i, 16,) Nebuchadnezzar returns from a great victory and feasts his army one hundred and twenty days. So Cyrus feasted the Persians when he wished to unite them in revolt from the power of Media. ( Herod., 1:126.) Belshazzar feasted a thousand nobles, (Daniel 5:1,) and, according to Quintus Curtius, ten thousand men were present at one of Alexander’s festivals.

All his princes and his servants That is, all the rulers of the one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, and other officers, civil and military, who held positions of honour and power under the king. These are further defined as the power of Persia and Media, the elite of the empire, as represented in the nobles and princes of the provinces. The nobles were of a rank superior to the princes, or rulers of provinces. They were, next to the king, the great magnates of the empire, the first men of the nation. The word rendered nobles, ( פרתמים ,) is of Persian origin, and signifies first. No ordinary occasion was this great banquet of Ahasuerus, when before him were assembled these representatives of his power. The repeated mention in this chapter (comp. Esther 1:14; Esther 1:18-19) of Persia and Media, always naming Persia first, shows that at the time of this feast Persia had supremacy over the Medes. Compare the opposite usage in Daniel 5:28; Daniel 6:8; Daniel 12:13; Daniel 8:20; when the Median power was yet in the ascendency.