Verse 3
3. Ashpenaz Compare Genesis 10:3. This name as it stands is not Babylonian, but resembles Persian. It is found in several inscriptions of the Persian period. However, one recension and various early quotations, made probably from the original LXX., give a very different name here, Abiesdri, or Abriesdri, which Lenormant partially unites to the Hebrew, making the name Assa-ibn-zir, “the goddess has molded the germ.”
Master of his eunuchs That is, courtiers. This title even Hugo Winckler, as late as 1890, supposed to be a mere Hebrew fiction, being, as he thought, absolutely unknown at the Assyrian or Babylonian court; but Mr. Pinches, in 1889, found on a brick in the British Museum this very name as a title of one of the highest Babylonian officials, the Hebrew Rab-sarisim (or Sar-sarisim, Daniel 1:7; Daniel 1:10), corresponding almost exactly with the Babylonian Rabu-saresu, “chief of the chiefs.” Noldeke has also found this as an hereditary title on a recently discovered Phoenician inscription ( Revue des Etudes Juives, 1895, p. 119).
Of the king’s seed, and of the princes This may refer to the children of the Babylonian king and his nobles. The word for “princes” is generally regarded as Persian.
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