And the letters were sent by post into all the
king's
provinces
Or by the runners F24; by which it seems as if these
letters were carried by running footmen, men swift of foot; or
rather they were running horses, on which men rode post with
letters, and which the Persians called Angari; a scheme invented
by Cyrus, for the quick dispatch of letters from place to place,
by fixing horses and men to ride them at a proper distance, to
receive letters one from another, and who rode night and day
F25, as our mail men do now; and
nothing could be swifter, or done with greater speed; neither
snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor night, could stop their course, we
are told F26: the purport of these letters was,
to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both
young and
old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the
thirteenth
day of the twelfth month, which is the month
Adar;
see ( Esther
3:7 ) . The orders were to destroy, by any means whatsoever,
all the Jews, of every age and sex, all in one day, in all the
provinces which are here named, that they might be cut off with
one blow: and to take the spoil of them for a prey; to be their
own booty; which was proposed to engage them in this barbarous
work, to encourage them in it to use the greater severity and
dispatch.