Who Was Esther's Husband and King?
Who Was Esther's Husband and King?
Part II of The Chronology of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, and Daniel
The Book of Esther opens with one of the longest sentences in the Bible:
Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus (this was the Ahasuerus who reigned over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, from India to Ethiopia), 2 in those days when King Ahasuerus sat on the throne of his kingdom, which was in Shushan the citadel, 3 that in the third year of his reign he made a feast for all his officials and servants—the powers of Persia and Media, the nobles, and the princes of the provinces being before him— 4 when he showed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the splendor of his excellent majesty for many days, one hundred and eighty days in all.
Who was Esther’s King, Ahasuerus? Scholars have been debating this question for centuries, leading to the following list of candidates:
Astyages (575-540 B.C.)
Cyrus (539-530 B.C.)
Cambyses (530-522 B.C.)
Darius Hystaspes (522-486 B.C.)
Xerxes (486-464 B.C.)
Artaxerxes Longimanus (464-423 B.C.)
The dates in the list above are from the conventional chronology based on Ptolemy’s Canon. However, Gerard Gertoux has published several groundbreaking papers over the past decade demonstrating from multiple sources of contemporary evidence that Xerxes had a 10-year co-regency with his father Darius.
As discussed in a previous post, An Excursus on Exceptions in King Lists, the Babylonian chroniclers wanted to include the full reigns of both Darius and Xerxes in the Royal Canon. To allow this, they deleted the ten-year co-reign of Darius B with Artaxerxes I. Thus Artaxerxes died in 423 BC as the conventional chronology states, but both he and his father Xerxes came to the throne ten years earlier than Ptolemy’s Canon places them. As we will see, the ten-year co-regency between Darius and Xerxes makes everything in the biblical accounts fit nicely.
Eliminating the Impossible Candidates
Esther 1 states Ahasuerus ruled the territory from India to Ethiopia. While Cyrus the Great did conquer parts of Western India, his son Cambyses was the first Persian Emperor to conquer Egypt and Cush (modern Sudan). This eliminates the candidates Astyages and Cyrus.
The Book of Esther places Haman’s plot in the 12th year of the king. Cambyses only reigned for eight years, thus we can also eliminate him from the candidate list.
127 Provinces of the Persian Empire
Scripture states that Ahasuerus ruled over 127 provinces (Esther 1:1). It was not until 513 BC that Darius the Great invaded Scythia. His campaign took him up the West coast of the Black Sea (modern Bulgaria, Moldova, and Ukraine) and then eastward along the northern coast to the Volga River in modern Russia. This conquest was the apex of the Persian Empire’s territorial size. Therefore the earliest that Esther 1 could be referring to was the year 513 BC, which was the 9th year of Darius the Great.
Seventeen years later, in 490 BC, the Persian Army was defeated by the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon, which caused them to retreat, and led to the loss of Macedonia. From this, we can determine the latest possible date for the events of the first chapter of Esther was 490 BC.
Therefore we can also eliminate Artaxerxes I, who did not come to the throne until after the Greeks had defeated the Persian Empire and taken back the provinces of Eastern Europe. This leaves only Darius I and Xerxes I as possible candidates for Esther’s husband.
The Darius Problem
In the conventional chronology, Darius I was the only Persian Emperor who reigned between 513 and 490 BC. The problem is that scripture says that the great feast was held in his third year (Esther 1:3). Darius did not conquer Scythia until his ninth year.
Gertoux’s co-regency between Darius and Xerxes solves this problem for us. Xerxes was raised by his father to the throne as co-regent with him in 496 BC. If we allow that Xerxes was the person the Bible calls Ahasuerus, then his third year was 493 BC, which falls inside the time when the Persian Empire had 127 provinces.
However, this also means that the defeat at Marathon occurred between the third year when he divorced Vashti and his marriage to Esther in his seventh year (Esther 2:16). This places his marriage to Esther in the year 489 BC, suggesting the bridal contest was begun the year after the Persian Army returned from the failed war against the Greeks.
Gertoux further identified the plot against Ahasuerus foiled by Mordecai as the Babylonian rebellion against Xerxes in the year 485 BC. Haman’s plot occurred in the following year, the twelfth year of Ahasuerus (Esther 3:7). Counting 12 years from 496 BC, when Xerxes was made co-regent, comes to 484 BC.
Confirmation: Finding Mordecai in the Persian Records
Gertoux also found records of Mordecai in the Persian tablets.
Did Mordecai, who was appointed as prime minister, and Esther, who became Xerxes’ wife and was appointed as Queen, leave traces in Neo-Babylonian documents? The name Mordecai (Mar-duk-ka) is rare; it is sometimes found during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus (Dougherty: 1923, 22, 46), unlike the name Marduk which was widely used. Among the cuneiform sources dating to the period of the NeoBabylonian empire, of which 16,000 have been published, there are only two individuals bearing the name Marduka: an entrepreneur (Jursa: 2007, 84) who did business under Nabonidus until the year 5 of Cyrus (534 BCE), and an administrative superintendent (Hallock: 1969, 102, 138, 165, 178, 233, 248, 286, 340, 353, 441, 489, 511, 725) who worked under Darius I from his years 17 to 32, exactly at the same period (505-490) as when Mordecai worked (Cameron: 1948, 83).
After showing more evidence of Marduka’s (Mordecai) career under Darius I from the tablets, Gertoux concludes:
These documents show that Marduka began his career around 505 BCE as an administrative superintendent of the palaces of Darius and then held a position at the court until at least 490 BCE, since he collaborated with Uštanu (522-491?) an imperial governor of the satrapy of Babylon and Beyond the River. This high official had the same name as the Mordecai of the Bible, in the same period (505-490), in the same place (Susa) and had the same career.
Conclusion
Gertoux’s evidence conclusively demonstrates that Esther’s Ahasuerus was Xerxes I of Persia, but that his reign began in 496 BC and ended with his murder in 475 BC. He married Esther in 489 BC, and Haman’s plot occurred in 484 BC, a year or two after the death of Darius. In future posts on this topic, we will look at how Gertoux’s co-regency hypothesis also furnishes a neat solution to the 70-week prophecy from Daniel chapter 9.
I highly recommend Gertoux’s book, Summit Meeting between Queen Esther and General Themistocles, which goes into much greater detail.
You can buy a hard copy at Amazon at this link:
Or you can download a PDF of the book for free at Gertoux’s Academia profile page here:
