Esther 10

Mordecai’s legacy

Mordecai in the history books

1 King Xerxes ordered all the provinces to pay their taxes. He included regions on the mainland and communities on scattered islands and territories across the sea. [1]

2Writers preserved the stories about Mordecai and his achievements. They’re recorded in the History of Kings of Medes and Persians. [2] Mordecai’s honors are all there. 3Mordecai was a Jewish man who rose to power, becoming the top official under King Xerxes. People respected Mordecai as a popular leader who looked out for his people and spoke up for them.

Footnotes

Intro Notes to Esther

110:1

Xerxes the Great reigned from 486 BC until his top bodyguard assassinated him in 465 BC. He’s the king perhaps best known for defeating King Leonidas of Sparta at the Battle of Thermopylae and then destroying Athens and taking control of mainland Greece. Xerxes later left and took his army home. But many scholars say this Xerxes is fictional—a weak-minded caricature of the powerful ruler.

210:2

Also known as the “Annals of the Kings of Media and Persia.” This is possibly the same records the sleepless king read in Esther 6:1, when he learned that Mordecai may have saved him from an assassination. It was only a reprieve. His top bodyguard assassinated him later, in 465 BC.