Esther 6:1 On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles… There may have been three or four reasons for this restlessness. 1. The care of his kingdom. 2. The revolving of ambitious schemes. 3. His raging passions. His passions often showed themselves in a ridiculous way. When he came back from his Grecian expedition he was so mad at the river Hellespont for breaking up his bridge of boats, that he ordered his servants to whip that river with three hundred lashes. 4. A troubled conscience. There is nothing like an aroused conscience to keep a man awake when he wants to sleep. There was a ruler who one morning was found with his sword cutting a nest of swallows to pieces. Somebody came up and said, "Why do you cut that nest of swallows to pieces?" "Why," he replied, "those swallows keep saying that I murdered my father." The fact was, that the man had committed the crime, and his conscience, by Divine ventriloquism, was speaking out of that birds' nest. No, Ahasuerus could not sleep. The more he tried to sleep, the wider he got awake. All around about his pillow the past came. There, in the darkness, stood Vashti, wan and wasted in banishment. There stood the princes whom he had despoiled by his evil example. There were the representatives of the homes he had blasted by his infamous demand that the brightest be sent to his palace; broken-hearted parents crying, "Give me back my child, thou vulturous soul!" The outrages of the past flitting along the wall', swinging from the tassels, crouching in the corner, groaning under the pillow, setting their heels on his consuming brain, and crying, "Get up! This is the verge of hell! No sleep! No sleep!" (T. De Witt Talmage.) Parallel Verses KJV: On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king. |
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