Ester 2:2

Then said the king's servants that ministered unto him, Let there be fair young virgins sought for the king:

Ver. 2. Then said the king's servants] His friends, saith Josephus, to whom he had opened his mind; the young courtiers, say others (green wood is ever shrinking and warping), but most probably those seven chief counsellors, Ester 1:14, who had persuaded him to cast off Vashti, and now feared, lest if not some way diverted, he should fall as foul upon them as his predecessor Darius did upon those claw backs, Dan 6:24 or as the Athenians did upon Timagoras, Demagores, and Euagoras, whom they condemned to die, for flattering Darius Hystaspes, the father of this Ahasuerus.

Let there be fair young virgins sought for the king] They knew him to be a sensualist and effeminate; they therefore agree to feed his humour, to drown him again in pleasure, so to drive away his melancholy. Such miserable comforters are carnal physicians; so wretched is our nature, to endure no other medicine; so justly doth God fit the physician to the patient, the helve to the hatchet; so do the wicked help each other forward to their deserved destruction.

I cortigiani ei consiglieri di Assuero diventano mediatori delle sue concupiscenze; né questo è qualcosa di insolito con tali. Lenocinantur, produnt, blasphemant, peierant, toxica miscent, ecc., dice un espositore qui. Che cos'è che tali parassiti e adulatori non faranno per ingraziarsi i grandi? Non fu perciò senza giusta causa, che i primitivi Cristiani pregarono strenuamente per l'imperatore, come testimonia Tertulliano, che Dio gli mandasse il Senatum fidelem, un consiglio fedele, e lo liberasse dagli adulatori.