Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/868

king of Persia, gave, in the third year of his reign, a banquet to the grandees of his kingdom then assembled in Susa, for the purpose of showing them the greatness and glory of his kingdom; while the queen at the same time made a feast for the women in the royal palace (Est 1:1-9). On the seventh day of the feast, the king, “when his heart was merry with wine,” sent a message by his chief courtiers to the queen, commanding her to appear before him, to show the people and the princes her beauty, and on her refusal to come, was greatly incensed against her (Est 1:10-12). Upon inquiring of his astrologers and princes what ought in justice to be done to the queen on account of this disobedience, they advised him to divorce Vashti by an irrevocable decree, and to give her dignity to another and better; also to publish this decree throughout the whole kingdom (Est 1:13-20). This advice pleasing the king, it was acted upon accordingly (Est 1:21 and Est 1:22).
The banquet. Est 1:1-3 mark a period. משׁתּה עשׂה, which belongs to ויהי, does not follow till Est 1:3, and even then the statement concerning the feast is again interrupted by a long parenthesis, and not taken up again and completed till Est 1:5. On the use of ויהי in historical narratives at the beginning of relations having, as in the present instance and Rth 1:1, no reference to a preceding narrative,