Beauty Contest

[Esther 2:7] And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter: for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful; whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter.
That the king might enjoy virging, and choose one of them, the most agreeable to him, and put her in the room of Vashti, a beauty contest of young virgins.
The marriages of princes are commonly made by policy and interest, for the enlarging of their dominions and the strengthening of their alliances. But this must be made partly by the agreeableness of the person to the king’s fancy, whether she was rich or poor, noble or ignoble. What pains were taken to humor the king! As if his power and wealth were given him for no other end than that he might have all the delights of the sense wound up to the height of pleasurableness, and elegantly refined, though at the best they are but dross and remains in comparison with divine and spiritual pleasures.
Which, according to some, is to be connected, not with Mordecai, but with Kish, his great-grandfather; and indeed otherwise Mordecai must be now a very old man, and Esther his first cousin. They being brothers' children, must be at an age, one would think, not to be reckoned among young virgins, and not be so friendly as she is represented; and indeed, according to the former Targum, she was seventy five years of age, which is not credible; and yet this, and more she must be, to be equal to Mordecai.
Her Hebrew name was Hadassah, which signifies a myrtle, to which the Israelites, and good men among them, are sometimes compared, (Zech. 1:8).
Her Persian name was Esther, which some derive from "satar, to hide, because hidden in the house of Mordecai, so the former Targum, and by his advice concealed her kindred. Or rather she was so called by Ahasuerus, when married to him, this word signifying in the Persian language a "star" and so the latter Targum says she was called by the name of the star of Venus, which in Greek is (aster). Though it is said, that the myrtle, which is called "Hadassah" in Hebrew, is in the Syriac language "esta"; so "asa" in the Talmud signifies a myrtle; "Esther" signifies the black myrtle, which is reckoned the most excellent, and so "amestris", signifies the sole myrtle, the incomparable one.
The Rabbis teach that Hadassah’s mother died soon after her birth, and her father, soon after her conception. Her complexion was sallow, a light green, like a myrtle leaf, but she was endowed with a touch of grace – the literal translation being that “a thread of grace was drawn about her.”
His own daughter for he loved her, and brought her up as if she had been his daughter, and called her so, as the Targum. The Rabbins say, he took her in order to make her his wife; and so the Septuagint renders it.
She was brought in by force to the custody of Hegai – Josephus says, there were gathered to the number of four hundred.
She was not to mention that she was a Jew, and took a Persian name. Hadassah was her given name; she was called Esther because she concealed the truth about herself and her origins. Not being asked, she was under no obligation to declare it; and being born in Shushan, as very probable, she was taken to be a Persian.
Lest the knowledge hereof should either make her contemptible, or bring some inconvenience to the whole nation; but there was also a hand of G-d in causing this to be concealed, for the better accomplishment of that which He designed, though Mordecai was ignorant of it.
Mordecai had charged her lest she should be despised and ill treated on that account; fearing, if the king knew it, he would not marry her, and that she might keep the Law of G-d privately, to observe the Sabbath.
A beauty contest but if you did not win the contest- you became a concubine. And remained shut up in the house, and might not lie with, nor be married to, another man. Such harm’s way they were put into.
The divorce of Vashti being in the third year of his reign, it was four years before Esther was taken by him. Xerxes, it may be accounted for by his preparation for, and engagement in, a war with Greece, which took him up all this time; and from whence he returned in the seventh year of his reign, at the beginning of it, and married Esther at the close of it