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Est_2:1 After these things, when the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased, he remembered Vashti, and what she had done, and what was decreed against her.
Ver. 1. After these things] After the wine was out, the fuel of his anger spent, and the lust thereof satisfied.
When the wrath of king Ahasuerus was appeased] There is nothing that a man is more ready to keep than his wrath; therefore the Hebrews put servare for servare iram, to keep for to keep his anger, as Jer_3:5 Psa_103:9 Lev_19:18. Ahasuerus, by invading Greece, had so incensed them, that their wrath áåéìíçóôïò , unappeasable, for they thenceforth hated all barbarians for the Persians’ sake, and forbade them their sacrifices, as they used to do murderers. But Ahasuerus’s wrath against Vashti was after a time assuaged.
He remembered Vashti] Not without some remorse, but without all true repentance. He forsook not his rash anger as a sin, but regretted it for a time, and laid it asleep, to be raked up again upon as slight an occasion. In graceless persons vitia raduntur, non eradicantur; absconduntur saepius, non exscinduntur; vices may be barbed or benumbed, not mastered and mortified. A merchant may part with his goods, and yet not hate them. A man may part with his sins for self-respects, and yet retain his affection to them; as Phaltiel did to Michal, when he went weeping after her afar off. He may remember his Vashti, his bosom sins from which he seemeth divorced, and by such a sinful remembering of them, recommit them. See Eze_23:21 compared with Est_2:8.
And what was decreed against her] But whose fault was that? Wine and anger are the worst of all counsellors, say the ancients? and Ahasuerus found it so; as did also Alexander the Great, and many others, but all too late. Hence they came in afterwards with their Non putaram, Had I known; which Scipio said should never be heard out of a great man’s mouth (Plutarch). Augustus also was wont to say, that nothing doth so ill become a commander as hastiness and rashness (Sueton.). Cicero taxeth him for a fool, qui eundem laedit et laudat, who first wrongeth a man, and then commendeth him.