Esther 4:11

11. The inner court The court that faced the principal audience hall the throne chamber where alone it would be practicable for Esther to see the king on such a business. See on Esther 5:1.

There is one law of his to put him to death Literally, one is his law to put to death; that is, the king’s law or custom is one and unchangeable to put such intruders to death. This law receives confirmation from Herodotus, 3:84, 118.

Hold out the golden sceptre “In all the numerous representations of Persian kings at Persepolis, there is not one in which the monarch does not hold a long, tapering staff in his right hand.” Rawlinson. This was one of the emblems of royalty which he seems ever to have had about his person.

But I have not been called… these thirty days This was Esther’s greatest difficulty. At other times, when her intercourse with the king was frequent, she might have ventured, with little or no fear, unbidden into his presence. But not having been invited to go in to the king for a month, she had reason to fear that he did not wish to see her, and it would be specially perilous to approach him publicly in the great throne chamber.

We have here a glimpse of female life in the harem of a Persian king. Days and months might elapse, and a wife not see her lord. How could it well be otherwise, where wives and concubines were numbered by hundreds? Herodotus says (iii, 79) that the Persian wives visited their husbands by turns, but this rule was probably not regularly followed.