Esther 1:5

5. When these days were expired That is, at the end of the one hundred and eighty days.

Unto all the people that were present in Shushan Literally, as the margin, all that were found at Shushan. Probably not all the princes of the empire were to be found at the palace at the same time, but such of them as were found there at the time indicated were honoured with this magnificent banquet. But this feast was not for the princes only, but for all the people, irrespective of rank, for the writer is careful to say that it was made both unto great and small. Some have supposed two banquets, one lasting one hundred and eighty, and the other seven days, the former for the princes and nobles, the latter for the inhabitants of Shushan. But this supposition is unnecessary. No doubt the one hundred and eighty days, as remarked above, were enlivened by many a feast, at which only nobles and princes were present; but this grand feast, which lasted seven days, was an occasion of general revelry, in which princes and people alike participated.

The court of the garden of the king’s palace Oriental palaces had a park or garden connected with them, adorned with trees and fountains. The court of such garden was either the great hall that opened immediately upon it or the garden itself. Loftus identifies this court with the great colonnade, of which we have given a cut on page 436. He remarks: “It stands on an elevation in the centre of the mound, the remainder of which we may well imagine to have been occupied, after the Persian fashion, with a garden and fountains. Thus the colonnade would represent the ‘court of the garden of the king’s palace,’ with its ‘pillars of marble.’ I am even inclined to believe that the expression ‘Shushan the palace,’ applies especially to this portion of the existing ruins in contradistinction to the citadel and the city of Shushan.” But according to Fergusson, “the feast took place, not in the interior of any hall, but out of doors, in tents erected in one of the courts of the palace, such as we may easily fancy existed in front of either the eastern or western porches of the great central building.” Comp. note on Esther 5:1.