Chapter 2

After all this has blown over, the King remembers that a replacement is needed.  The "young men" suggest collecting beautiful young virgins to the kings harem, so that he can choose just one to replace Vashti.  The king thinks this a good idea.

So the gathering begins.  Esther, Mordecai's cousin, is one of the women taken to the harem.  Mordecai is a Benjamite, taken captive from Judah at the same time as Jeconiah.  Benjamite, where Gibeah is, where Saul was from.  Amazing that this place shows up time and again after being practically wiped out because of the evil done there in Judges.  Esther is an orphan, and Mordecai is raising her.  The eunuch in charge of the women brought in likes Esther, and promotes her to the top of the rankings.  Mordecai has told Esther, before she goes to the harem, that she should keep her lineage as a Jew a secret.  So it was not necessarily  her idea to suppress this information.  It was her cousin's idea, and she viewed him as a father.

So the procedure for the king to choose is a complex one.  First, a year of preparation with oil of myrrh and then spices and such.  I don't know if the women ate these or they were salves and lotions.  But they adhered to this for a full year, and surely their very skin took on a different texture and possibly they all even smelled the same.  Then, when their turn came, they went in to Ahasuerus, and they could take one thing with them.  Each woman would go in during the evening and return in the morning.  She would not go back to the place where the virgins were, but to the palace of the King's concubines.  There she would stay, presumably for the rest f her life, unless the king asked for her again by name.  So if you didn't want to languish in luxury forever, you needed to make an impression.  It also sounds like sex was involved.  They go at night, they return in the morning, and they are no longer in the virgin area, but the concubine area.  This would also mean that this king brought in the most beautiful women in his whole vast kingdom, and stopped them from having anyone's children but his.  What a waste.  MSB has no note about this.

When Esther's turn comes, she takes only what the head eunuch advises her - he has befriended her.  The King is taken with her, and makes her queen, gives a remission of some taxes, has a feast and so on.  So Esther is now Queen of Persia.

Mordecai learns of a plot against the king, tells Esther, and she passes it on to the King.  It turns out the plot was real, and the two conspirators are hanged.  The king knows this information came from Mordecai, per vs 22.