ESTHER ; Sept. a damsel of the tribe of Benjamin, born during the Exile, and whose family did not avail itself of the permission to return to Palestine, under the edict of Cyrus. Her parents being dead, Esther was brought up by her cousin Mordecai. The reigning king of Persia, Ahasuerus, having divorced his queen, Vashti, on account of the becoming spirit with which she refused to submit to the indignity which a compliance with his drunken commands involved, search was made throughout the empire for the most beautiful maiden to be her successor. Those whom the officers of the harem deemed the most beautiful were removed thither, the eventual choice among them remaining with the king himself. That choice fell on Esther, who found favour in the eyes of Ahasuerus, and was advanced to a sta tion enviable only by comparison with that of the less favoured inmates of the royal harem. Her Jewish origin was perhaps at the time unknown ; and hence, when she avowed it to the king, she seemed to be included in the doom of extirpation which a royal edict had pronounced against all the Jews in the empire. This circumstance enabled her to turn the royal indignation upon Haman, the chief minister of the king, whose resentment against Mordecai had led him to obtain from the king this monstrous edict. The laws of the empire would not allow the king to recall decree once uttered ; but the Jews were authorized to stand on their defence ; and this, with the known change in the intentions of the court, averted the worst conse quences of the decree. The Jews established a yearly feast in memory of this deliverance, which is observed among them to this day [PURIST].
Such is the substance of the history of Esther, as related in the book which bears her name. The details, as given in that book, afford a most curious picture of the usages of the ancient Persian court, the accuracy of which is vouched not only by the historical authority of the book itself, but by its agreement with the intimations afforded by the ancient writers, as well as by the fact that the same usages are in substance preserved in the Persian court at the present day.
It should be observed that Esther is the name which the damsel received upon her introduction into the royal harem, her Hebrew name having been , HADASSAH (Min, myrtle, Esth. ii. 7). Esther is most probably a Persian word. Gesenius cites from that diffuse Targum on this book which is known as the second Targum on Esther, the fol lowing words : She was called Esther from the name of the star Venus, which in Greek is Aster.' Gesenius then points to the Persian word Saldrah, star, as that of which Esther is the Syro-Arabian modification ; and brings it, as to signification, into connection with the planet Venus, as a star of good fortune, and with the name of the Syrian goddess AshtOreth, according to the etymology of the word, already referred to in that article.
The difficulties of the history of the book of Esther, especially as regards the identity of the king, have been examined under AHASUERUS, and are also noticed in the following article.—J. K.