VASHTI

(Vashʹti) [beautiful (woman)].

The queen of Ahasuerus (Xerxes I) the king of Persia. In the third year of his reign, Ahasuerus called in all the nobles, princes and servants from the jurisdictional districts. At the end of the conference he held a seven-day banquet. Similarly, Vashti held a banquet for the women at the royal house. On the seventh day Ahasuerus ordered his court officials to bring in Vashti in royal headdress, that all might see her loveliness. (It seems that the queen would ordinarily eat meals at the king’s table, but history does not give proof of this as being the case at great banquets. Besides, Vashti, at the time, was holding a banquet with the women.) For some unstated reason, Vashti persistently refused. Ahasuerus turned to his wise men who knew the law, and was advised by Memucan, a prince, that it was not the king alone that Vashti had wronged but also all the princes and people in the jurisdictional districts. For, said he, when the princesses should hear what the queen had done (which news would quickly be spread in the castle), they would follow Vashti’s action as a precedent for contemptuous action on their own part. (Esther 1:1-22) Vashti was deposed and, about four years later, Esther the Jewess was selected to become the wife of Ahasuerus and to take the royal office of Vashti. (Esther 2:1-17) The explanation for the long lapse of time between Vashti’s dismissal and Esther’s replacement of her is thought to have been that Ahasuerus was occupied in preparation for and execution of his unsuccessful invasion of Greece, which took place in the spring of 480 B.C.E.