[1] The author of the book is unknown and modern scholars have established that the final stage of the Hebrew text would have been formed by the second century BCE.

[3] This chapter records the royal banquets of the Persian king Ahasuerus until the deposal of queen Vashti.

[27] This section narrows the focus to the subsequent shorter but equally pretentious 7-day banquets, given separately by the king (for males) and the queen (for females) for the citizens of the Persian capital Susa.

[4] On the seventh day of the banquet, the king sent for Queen Vashti to appear before him "to show off her beauty", but she refused to come.

[4] It has been noted that "It is an irony, that the king who reigns over a vast empire cannot resolve his domestic problem about his own wife without the help of the sharpest minds of Persia.