Esther 1:22

22. He sent letters Herodotus (viii, 98) thus describes the Persian system of letter carrying: “There is nothing mortal that proceeds faster than these messengers. They detail and arrange so many men and horses as there are days’ journeys, a horse and a man being appointed for each day’s journey, and neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor night prevents them from finishing their allotted race as soon as possible. The first racer delivers his message to the second, and the second to the third, and so on.”

Every province according to the writing thereof That is, according to its written alphabetical character in use in each province.

To every people after their language According to their vernacular dialect. The same alphabetical character might be used, as is still common, for several different languages. The bilingual and trilingual inscriptions of Persia and other oriental lands are standing evidences and illustrations of the ancient practice of writing public documents in various characters and languages.

That every man should bear rule in his own house No doubt the king’s letters contained much more than this, but we have here only the general purport of the royal decree. Rawlinson remarks that “the undue influence of women in domestic, and even in public, matters is a feature of the ancient Persian monarchy. Herodotus (vii, 8) tells us that Atossa completely ruled Darius. Xerxes himself was, in his later years, shamefully subject to Amestris. ( Ibid., 9:111.) The example of the court would naturally infect the people. The decree would, therefore, seem to have been not so much an idle and superfluous act as an ineffectual protest against a real and growing evil.” ( Com. in loco.) If the decree itself be considered unnecessary and absurd, let it be remembered that this was not the only absurd thing which Xerxes did.

And that it should be published Our version is here faulty. The latter part of the verse should be rendered, That every man rule in his own house, and speak according to the language of his own people. That is, not only should every man be lord in his family, but he should require his own native language to be used by his wife and children. Multitudes throughout the empire married foreign wives, and the use of different languages in the same household may have often led to other troubles besides those mentioned in Nehemiah 13:24. Foreign wives were therefore required to learn the language of their husbands, in order that the husband’s pre-eminence and authority in his own house might be the better maintained. Some critics have sought to emend the text, so as to make it read, speak all that suited him; but this reading is purely conjectural, sustained by no parallel, and yields but a trivial thought.