Esther 2:16

16. The tenth month… Tebeth Corresponding nearly with our January.

The seventh year of his reign Vashti was divorced in the third year of his reign, so that four years or more elapsed before another queen was crowned in her stead. Xerxes’ preparations for his Grecian war, and his absence from his capital during that campaign, well accounts for this long interval. Herodotus says (vii, 20) that he was four full years preparing for his Grecian war, but this may easily be a mistake, for the Greek historian’s figures are not always to be depended upon. It may have been a year or more after Vashti’s divorce before the king’s love for her returned, and then the order was given for collecting the fair young virgins at Shushan, but before it could be executed Xerxes was off for Greece. Meanwhile the order for assembling the virgins was carried out by the eunuchs, so that when the king returned again to Shushan he found his harem supplied with many virgins and soon after chose Esther as his queen.