7] Herodotus says that this law [against any one's coming uncalled to
the kings of Persia when they were sitting on their thrones] was first
enacted by Deioces [i.e. by him who first withdrew the Medes from the
dominion of the Assyrians, and himself first reigned over them]. Thus
also, lays Spanheim, stood guards, with their axes, about the throne
of Tenus, or Tenudus, that the offender might by them be punished
immediately.

[18] Whether this adoration required of Mordecai to Haman were by him
deemed too like the adoration due only to God, as Josephus seems here to
think, as well as the Septuagint interpreters also, by their translation
of Esther 13:12-14, or whether he thought he ought to pay no sort of
adoration to an Amalekite, which nation had been such great sinners as
to have been universally devoted to destruction by God himself, Exodus
17:14-16; 1 Samuel 15:18, or whether both causes concurred, cannot now,
I doubt, be certainly determined.

[19] The true reason why king Artaxerxes did not here properly revoke
his former barbarous decree for the universal slaughter of the Jews, but
only empowered and encouraged the Jews to fight for their lives, and to
kill their enemies, if they attempted their destruction, seems to have
been that old law of the Medes and Persians, not yet laid aside, that
whatever decree was signed both by the king and his lords could not
be changed, but remained unalterable, Daniel 6:7-9, 12, 15, 17; Esther
1:19; 8:8. And Haman having engrossed the royal favor might perhaps
have himself signed this decree for the Jews' slaughter instead of the
ancient lords, and so might have rendered it by their rules irrevocable.

[21] These words give an intimation as if Artaxerxes suspected a deeper
design in Haman than openly appeared, viz. that knowing the Jews would
be faithful to him, and that he could never transfer the crown to his
own family, who was an Agagite, Esther 3:1, 10, or of the posterity of
Agag, the old king of the Amalekites, 1 Samuel 15:8, 32, 33, while they
were alive, and spread over all his dominions, he therefore endeavored
to destroy them. Nor is it to me improbable that those seventy-five
thousand eight hundred of the Jews' enemies which were soon destroyed
by the Jews, on the permission of the king, which must be on some great
occasion, were Amalekites, their old and hereditary enemies, Exodus
17:14, 15; and that thereby was fulfilled Balaam's prophecy, "Amalek was
the first o