Bible Commentaries

Verses 1-3

Esther 10:1 . Laid a tribute upon the land. This was to prepare for his great expedition, as some suppose, against Europe. But the heathen historians, so materially contradicting one another, we cannot know whether Ahasuérus was the Xerxes who made the tremendous but shameful descent on Greece. The isles of the sea. The isles of Chittim, now called the Greek Islands, of which Crete and Cyprus were the chief. See the remains of this history in the Apocryphal books.