ives none upon the Canticles, or upon Esther,
and seems thereby to give up this book, as well as he gives up the
Canticles, as indefensible; I shall venture to say, that almost all
the objections against this Book of Esther are gone at once, if, as we
certainly ought to do, and as Dean Prideaux has justly done, we place
this history under Artsxerxes Longimanus, as do both the Septuagint
interpretation and Josephus. The learned Dr. Lee, in his posthumous
Dissertation on the Second Book of Esdras, p. 25, also says, that "the
truth of this history is demonstrated by the feast of Purlin, kept
up from that time to this very day. And this surprising providential
revolution in favor of a captive people, thereby constantly
commemorated, standeth even upon a firmer basis than that there ever was
such a man as king Alexander [the Great] in the world, of whose reign
there is no such abiding monument at this day to be found any where. Nor
will they, I dare say, who quarrel at this or any other of the sacred
histories, find it a very easy matter to reconcile the different
accounts which were given by historians of the affairs of this king, or
to confirm any one fact of his whatever with the same evidence which is
here given for the principal fact in this sacred book, or even so much
as to prove the existence of such a person, of whom so great things are
related, but upon granting this Book of Esther, or sixth of Esdras, [as
it is placed in some of the most ancient copies of the Vulgate,] to be a
most true and certain history," etc.

[16] If the Chaldee paraphrast be in the right, that Artaxerxes intended
to show Vashti to his guests naked, it is no wonder at all that she
would not submit to such an indignity; but still if it were not so gross
as that, yet it might, in the king's cups, be done in a way so indecent,
as the Persian laws would not then bear, no more than the common laws
of modesty. And that the king had some such design seems not improbable,
for otherwise the principal of these royal guests could be no strangers
to the queen, nor unapprized of her beauty, so far as decency admitted.
However, since Providence was now paving the way for the introduction of
a Jewess into the king's affections, in order to bring about one of the
most wonderful deliverances which the Jewish or any other nation ever
had, we need not be further solicitous about the motives by which the
king was induced to divorce Vashti, and marry Esther.

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