5. A certain Jew. Abruptly, the scene changes from the court of Persia to a humble Jewish home somewhere in the capital. So far as is known no Jews were ever taken captive to Shushan, and the Jews who lived there probably did so by choice. According to Jewish tradition, Mordecai was engaged in some commercial enterprise before destiny linked him with the Persian court.
Mordecai. On the possible identification of Mordecai as the Marduka of a cuneiform tablet, see Introduction, 458.
Mordecai was a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin destined to occupy a place of honor in the annals of his people. It is not certain whether the ancestor of Mordecai “carried away from Jerusalem [to Babylon] with the captivity” ( 6) was Kish or Jair; Hebrew syntax would permit either. If it be Kish, then Kish was Mordecai’s grandfather. Three or four generations would appropriately span the 118 years that intervened. If, on the other hand, it be Jair, then Shimei and Kish were pre-captivity ancestors of Mordecai, whose precise relationship is not known. In the latter case the genealogy here given would not represent Mordecai’s immediate ancestors but others further removed from him, given to identify his family descent. This practice accords with Hebrew custom (see on Matt. 1:8, 17). In the Bible the terms “father” and “son” do not always indicate immediate relationship, but often simply ancestry and descent (see I, 181, and on Gen. 37:35). It is possible that Kish was a distant ancestor of Mordecai.
Nearly 60 years prior to the events narrated in the book of Esther, Cyrus decreed that all Jews desirous of doing so might return to Palestine, but Mordecai’s parents had chosen to remain in the land of their captivity. This seems to have been the case with the vast majority of the Jewish people (see PK 598). When Mordecai’s cousin, Hadassah (Esther; see Introduction, 457), was left an orphan he adopted her and reared her as if she were his own child.
Some have identified Mordecai with Matacas (or Natacas), whom the Greek historian Ctesias speaks of as an influential minister of Xerxes. While working on certain cuneiform tablets in the Berlin Museum, Prof. A. Ungnad found a text that mentions a certain man named Marduka (the Babylonian transliteration for Mordecai) as one of the high state officials in Shushan during the reign of Xerxes. His title, sipîr, indicates high rank and influence (see Introduction, 458). The presence of a man of influence bearing the same name, living in the same city at the same time, is significant.