Ester 1:6-7 - When Will the Mourning Come?

[NOTE: Because of the many descriptive words in these verses that are difficult to translate, I have leaned heavily upon other translations for the English here. Although I could take a crack at it myself, I was unsure of a lot myself, and since for our purposes it won't make a tremendous difference, I relied on the standard translations.]

Ester 1:6: "There were hangings of white, fine cotton, and blue, bordered with cords of fine linen and purple, upon silver rods and pillars of marble; the couches were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of green, and white, and shell, and onyx marble."

[A beautiful description of the ornate surroundings of the party. The Targum here is even more descriptive, but to save time and effort we'll proceed directly to the next verse.]

1:7: "And they gave them drink in golden vessels--the vessels being diverse one from another--and royal wine in abundance, according to the bounty of the king. "

Targum: "[Achashverosh] commanded to give them to drink in the golden vessels of the Beth haMikdash that the wicked Nevuchadnetzar (Nebuchadnezzar) brought from Yerushalayim (Jerusalem)."

[These are the "golden vessels" of our verse.]

"The other vessels that King Achashverosh had there appeared like lead in comparison to the vessels of the Beth haMikdash."

[This last phrase, that the beauty of Achashverosh's own vessels paled in comparison to those of the Beth haMikdash, is the Targum's rendering of the phrase in our translation: "the vessels being diverse from one another," meaning that the two types of vessels present, those of the Beth haMikdash, and those of Achashverosh, were very different from each other. Those of the Beth haMikdash were extraordinarily brilliant, while those of Achashverosh appeared mundane in comparison.

This also brings us back to what we saw earlier in the Targum of v. 3 (see previous post). There the Targum told us that when the prominent Jews attending the first party (the 180-day party for the prominent men of the empire, as opposed to the 7-day local party for the people of Shushan), saw the vessels of the Beth haMikdash being used, they mourned and cried.]

"They drank young wine, fit for a king to drink, of abundant aroma and acute flavor, in no shortage, according to the bounty of the king."

[Interestingly, so far we have not seen that in this local party, also attended by the Jews of Shushan as we saw in the Targum of v. 5 (see previous post), that these Jews mourn over the use of the vessels of the Beth haMikdash as did those prominent Jews attending the 180-day party. We also saw in the Targum of v. 5 that the Jews were "found guilty" by Heaven for their participation in this 7-day party, perhaps deserving of death, but we did not find the same stated for the Jewish attendance at the previous party.

Why the difference? Could it somehow be related to the Jewish complacency over the destruction of the Beth haMikdash? What do you think?]