Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: We’ll See Who’s Boss | Part 3: Selfish Aims | Part 4: The King Gets What He Wants  

After Esther becomes queen, about four years pass before we meet the antagonist of the story, the wicked court official Haman. He is an Agagite (Es 3.1), which may mean that he’s a descendant of Agag the Amalekite, whom King Saul had refused to kill when the Lord told him to (1Sam 15.8, 32-33). Israel and Amalek had a long history of enmity, going back a thousand years from Esther’s time; Balaam’s blessing of Israel included the promise that Israel’s king “would be higher than Agag” (Nu 24.7). It would certainly make sense that Haman would have a deep-seated hatred for the Jews, if this is what “Agagite” means. But that is by no means certain. 

At any rate, Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman (Es 3.2). 

That’s interesting, because the question of bowing to earthly rulers isn’t clearly answered in Scripture. On the one hand, the Law forbade bowing to false gods or idols (Ex 20.5; 23.24; Le 26.1; De 5.9), and we have the example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refusing to bow to the image of the king (Da 3.12). But God’s people frequently bowed to human rulers, and even to Gentiles. When Abraham was purchasing a burial place for Sarah, he bowed to the Hittites from whom he was purchasing it (Ge 23.7). A woman from Tekoah bowed to King David (2S 14.4), as did a messenger when David was waiting news from the battlefield (2S 18.28). David’s wife Bathsheba bowed to him as well (1K 1.16). 

So exactly why Mordecai refused to bow to Haman is not clear. Maybe it was a religious thing; maybe he just didn’t like the guy. But this single tiny incident sets in motion the motivation for Haman to isolate and execute the Jews—a motivation that will drive the rest of the story. 

Haman is furious (Es 3.5). Modern readers will realize that this kind of response likely indicates weakness and insecurity rather than actual power; a confident leader doesn’t worry about such minor slights, because he has more important things to give his attention to. Haman’s weakness is further demonstrated by his response—we’ll kill Mordecai, and we’ll kill his entire people as well (Es 3.6). Of course, if he carries out his desire, God’s promise to Abraham—of a people, and of a Seed (Ge 15.4-5)—will go unkept. 

On April 7, 474 BC, Haman’s staff casts the lot to determine the day on which the Jews will be exterminated (Es 3.7). The Persians often cast lots, as far as a year in advance, to determine auspicious days to do this or that. The day that comes up this time is March 7, 473 BC—11 months away. The lag time gives the Jews warning and time to prepare. Speaking of “auspicious.” 

Haman figures that if he kills the Jews, he can plunder their stuff. So he bribes Xerxes to grant his horrific request (Es 3.9). He’ll pay the 10,000 talents from the plunder. 

Now, 10,000 talents is a pile of money. Xerxes’ predecessor, Darius I, received about 15,000 talents in revenue for a whole year. This tells us that Haman saw the Jews as a wealthy target; they had apparently done very well in Babylon. 

Xerxes acquiesces to Haman’s absurd request (Es 3.11). And so the decree goes out across the entire empire, in all the requisite languages. The announcement day is the 13^th day of the first month (Es 3.12)—the day before Passover (Le 23.5). Happy holidays. 

The despot takes the whole thing lightly. He signs the decree and then calls for a drink with Haman (Es 3.15). Good ol’ boys having a good time. 

“But the city Shushan was perplexed” (Es 3.15). The king’s own people are bewildered by what he has done. The crowds in the city mill about in the streets, shaking their heads, asking one another what this can possibly mean. “What on earth is he thinking?!” 

But he’s the sovereign. He can do what he wants. 

There’s nobody bigger. Right?

Part 6: The Tease | Part 7: Any Old Tablet | Part 8: Mental Explosion | Part 9: What Goes Around | Part 10: The Missing Piece

Photo credit: Xerxes tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam (4615488322) – Tomb of Xerxes I – Wikipedia

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: We’ll See Who’s Boss | Part 3: Selfish Aims

The beautiful girl Esther is now effectively a member of Xerxes’ harem, but a lot has to happen before he even meets her. The court official responsible for the harem—or at least for the “contest” to determine who replaces Vashti, the banished queen—who is named Hegai, oversees a preparation process for the women that takes a full year (Es 2.12). We’re told that it involves fragrances, but undoubtedly many other things were included; it was likely a “finishing school” to refine the women’s skills in beautification, in court decorum and culture, in sexuality, and in whatever else would please the king.

After the year of preparation, each of the women would spend a night with the king. This was clearly a sexual tryout, as well as an opportunity for Xerxes to engage the woman in conversation that would tell him something about her personal qualifications to serve in the official role of queen, which pertained only to the one woman so chosen from the harem. After that night, the woman would be a concubine (Es 2.14), available for the king’s pleasure at any time.

This was the way kings operated in the ancient Near East. They had exclusive rights to any woman they desired—and the glory of their kingdom was demonstrated, among other ways, by the size of the harem. It’s likely that a significant number of concubines never returned to the king’s presence after the initial sexual tryout; as we noted in the previous post, this meant “perpetual widowhood.” But they were fed, clothed, and sheltered, and their material circumstances were doubtless better than those of the common people, given that, theoretically at least, the king could request the presence of any of them at any time.

He’s the king. He gets what he wants.

When Esther’s time came, she delighted the king (Es 2.16-17). We’re not told what it was about her that took her to the top of the list, though the text does say that she “obtained favor in the sight of all them that looked upon her” (Es 2.15)—so physical attractiveness was certainly a significant factor. Given that Xerxes had observed his father’s rule as a younger man, and that he had been king for several years, he certainly knew what other qualifications were necessary in a titular queen and evaluated Esther for those as well. She likely would communicate with poise, confidence, and authority in court, as well as making a personal connection with the king. She was no jewel in a pig’s snout (Pr 11.22). She must have been quite a woman to evidence all that in a single evening.

The king is so delighted with what he has found that he proclaims an empire-wide celebration for the accession of the new queen. There’s a party in Susa, of course, but there’s also “a release to the provinces” (Es 2.18), which may have consisted of “either a remission of taxes [as reflected in the ESV and CSB] or a remission of labor (a holiday) [as reflected in the NASB, NIV, and NET].” Or perhaps a release from military duty. But all across the empire, people are celebrating.

The chapter closes with what sounds like an off-handed bit of court trivia. Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, is seated at the gate of the court (Es 2.21). As we’ve already noted, government officials often sat there, in order to be available for any command or need of the king. Maybe he’s the same “Marduka” named in a Persian text; maybe not. But from his strategic post he learns something: two high-ranking court officials are angry with the king and are planning to attack him physically. Whether Mordecai heard them talking—which is unlikely, if he’s a court official himself—or simply heard it through the grapevine, he reports it to his cousin, who is now the queen. She tells the king, and the conspirators are summarily neutralized (Es 2.23). And somewhere, deep inside the cogs of the bureaucracy, a scribal functionary presses a stylus into a clay tablet to record the event.

It will become apparent later that Xerxes doesn’t even remember this threat to his life. Apparently this sort of thing happened a lot. But somewhere, in a Persian warehouse archive, a nondescript clay tablet is filed on a shelf.

And the king, the supreme, the sovereign, lives on.

Part 5: A Roll of the Dice | Part 6: The Tease | Part 7: Any Old Tablet | Part 8: Mental Explosion | Part 9: What Goes Around | Part 10: The Missing Piece

Photo credit: Xerxes tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam (4615488322) – Tomb of Xerxes I – Wikipedia

Part 1: Introduction | Part 2: We’ll See Who’s Boss

As we noted last time, the feast at which Queen Vashti refused to appear may have been Xerxes’ effort to get the backing of his nobles for his planned invasion of Greece; the timing works out nicely.

We know how the Persian invasion of Greece went. First there was a problem crossing the Hellespont; a storm destroyed the Persian bridge, and Xerxes had the water scourged just to teach it a lesson. Then a confederation of Greeks bottled the Persian army up at the pass at Thermopylae—though only temporarily. After Xerxes conquered Athens, however, the Greeks decisively defeated the Persian fleet at Salamis, leading Xerxes to head for home. The campaign had taken 3 years.

Back in Susa, Xerxes sought comfort in his harem. It would make sense for the elevation of Esther to take place at this time.

Xerxes cannot restore Vashti (Es 2.1), because the law is irreversible. But his advisers want Xerxes happy, so they devise a plan certain to be appealing to a lecher. He would select a queen not from his existing harem, or even from the families of the council of 7, as tradition dictated, but from all the virgins in the empire (Es 2.2-4). Josephus (Antiquities 11.6.2), whose historical reliability is … uneven, reports that about 400 young women were collected. One commentator notes, “Though this sounds like a beauty contest, it was not a very happy assignment for most of the women. They were uprooted from their communities, which implied confinement to the king’s harem, and moved to what would actually be perpetual widowhood.”

Such are the ways of ancient Near Eastern potentates.

And now (Es 2.5) we meet Mordecai. He’s a Jew, specifically a Benjamite, whose exiled great-grandfather was named Kish, likely for the father of the Benjamites’ favorite son, King Saul (1Ch 9.39). As I commented in the first post of this series, the name Mordecai appears to be derived from the name of the Babylonian god Marduk. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Mordecai’s parents had adopted pagan ways; it may simply have been a common name in that culture, or his parents may have known and admired another man with the name. We know that there was another man named Mordecai in the first return (Ezra 2.2; Ne 7.7)—and we suspect that those returnees were likely to be devout Jews. Another possibility is that Mordecai himself, like Daniel before him (Da 1.7), may have had a second, Babylonian name given to him by the king or someone else in the court. Interestingly, there is a record of a court official about this time named “Marduka,” who would have good reason to be in regular presence at the gate outside the court.

At any rate, Mordecai is raising his younger cousin, Esther, whose parents have died (Es 2.7). (Note that Esther has two names as well.) Esther, being in the top percentile for attractiveness, is swept up in the empire-wide collection for the king’s harem (Es 2.8).

Some have questioned whether Esther should have cooperated in such an arrangement. I’ll note, first, that she really didn’t have a choice. Second, polygamy was not viewed in that culture with the horror we see in it today; Esther, like everyone else who has ever lived, is a creature of her time. And third, the question is moot; the point of the story is not that everything Esther or Mordecai did was right and virtuous. I’ll get to the point eventually—see the title of the series—but I’ll just say for now that in terms of the story, it really doesn’t matter whether what she did was right or not.

And so Esther joins the harem of the most powerful man in the world. Unlike Daniel (Da 1.8), she apparently eats whatever food is set before her (Es 2.9)—with the result that her Jewish identity remains under wraps. And that will become a key part of the story.

As we shall see.

Part 4: The King Gets What He Wants | Part 5: A Roll of the Dice | Part 6: The Tease | Part 7: Any Old Tablet | Part 8: Mental Explosion | Part 9: What Goes Around | Part 10: The Missing Piece

Photo credit: Xerxes tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam (4615488322) – Tomb of Xerxes I – Wikipedia

Part 1: Introduction

The last episode in the Old Testament story takes place in Persia, in Susa, the winter capital and royal residence. (In the summer, Susa was unpleasantly hot and thus inappropriate for a capital.) The king is Ahasuerus—more popularly known by the Greek version of his name, Xerxes. The episode begins in the third year of his reign (Es 1.3), which was 483 BC. The Greek historian Herodotus records that after his conquest of Egypt, which would have ended about this time, Xerxes convened an assembly of his nobles and announced his desire to invade and conquer Greece (Histories 7.8). Whether this is the occasion for the party in Esther 1 is just conjecture, but the timing seems about right, and it would make sense for Xerxes to display his wealth if he wanted to convince his nobles to support an invasion of Greece.

In any case, it was some party. The palace and banquet hall at Susa have been excavated, and the roofed hall was about the size of a football field. The hundreds (thousands?) of guests could eat, and drink, as much as they wanted. For six months. This king’s resources—and therefore his powers—are endless.

Right?

In a climactic, boastful display of power and pride, Xerxes calls for his wife to parade in front of his guests.

And she refuses.

The text doesn’t tell us why. Perhaps she was expected to appear nude. Perhaps she was pregnant; if the biblical Vashti is the same as Amestris, she was the mother of Artaxerxes, who would have born along about this time. Or perhaps she just didn’t want to be paraded around in front of a pampered, privileged, drunken mob.

But refuse she does. And so “Xerxes’ action is a parody on Persian might, for the powerful king could not even command his own wife” (HCBC). Xerxes, determined to punish her, seeks counsel from his advisers. Their immediate reaction shows that they are as self-obsessed as Xerxes himself; if Vashti can refuse her husband’s command, then—horror of horrors!—our wives can too. So, they advise, pass a decree—which in Persia is unalterable—banishing Vashti. It’s a broken world if a decree issued in drunkenness binds the rulers’ hands forever.

And the decree goes out “into all the king’s provinces” (Es 1.22), translated into all the recipient languages with the efficiency of the United Nations or the BBC. We won’t have anyone, not even the queen, disregarding the power of the One Great King, Xerxes.

It’s a big empire, stretching from India in the east to Ethiopia in the west (Es 1.1). But the Persians had ways of getting the message out efficiently. They had a sort of “Pony Express,” which Herodotus describes in something approaching wonder. Allegedly the riders could deliver a message from Susa to Sardis, in western Turkey, in 9 days or less. That’s 1200 miles.

Well. I guess we’ve solved that problem. Nobody’s bigger than Xerxes. Nobody tells him what to do. Not even his wife. Nosiree.

To be continued.

Part 3: Selfish Aims | Part 4: The King Gets What He Wants | Part 5: A Roll of the Dice | Part 6: The Tease | Part 7: Any Old Tablet | Part 8: Mental Explosion | Part 9: What Goes Around | Part 10: The Missing Piece

Photo credit: Xerxes tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam (4615488322) – Tomb of Xerxes I – Wikipedia

At its heart, the Bible is a story. In the Old Testament, the story, which runs from Genesis to Esther, is about the nation of Israel, with a couple of appendices; the poetry and the prophets both give us background information and enrich the story in many ways, especially as they elucidate the nation’s relationship with God. But the story itself begins with creation and ends with … well, I’m getting ahead of myself.

Most Christians are familiar with at least the broad arc of the story. God creates the world perfect, and soon man disobeys him, plunging himself and his environment into a life of death. God promises to restore life—and his first narrated move, perhaps surprisingly, is to bring more judgment in a global flood and then in scattering Noah’s descendants across the planet.

But with one of those descendants, Abram, God begins to make a special people, soon naming them “Israel.” He makes grand promises to them, but in the short term at least, he doesn’t appear to be keeping them. Israel spends 400 years outside their gifted homeland, much of that time in slavery.

Then God calls an Israelite, Moses, to lead his people out of Egypt and back to The Land. Under Joshua they conquer Canaan, but they seem unable to govern themselves. After a long cycle of failure, they receive from God a king, David, and a promise that his line will never end.

But it does end. Or at least it seems to. Just a generation later David’s kingdom is divided by civil war, and most of the land—and the people—give sovereignty to an upstart, non-Davidic king. For 200 years there are two nations instead of one. And both sink into idolatry.

Then more judgment. God sends the rebel kingdom into exile in Assyria and warns the remnant Davidic kingdom, Judah, to straighten up. They don’t. And 150 years later they too go into Mesopotamian exile, this time in Babylon.

What about the promises—to Abram? to David?

One of many things we learn from this story is the danger of making snap judgments about God. As Creator of time and Lord over it, he has no need or inclination to hurry, and like any good teacher, he gives his students time to discover things for themselves—even if they’re slow learners.

The exiled Israelites never return from Assyria. But 70 years after Judah’s initial deportation, their enemies the Babylonians are dethroned from their regional domination when Persia overruns the capital. The Persian conqueror, Cyrus, is relatively enlightened for his time; he figures that the best way to achieve peace in an empire of conquered and displaced people groups is just to let them all go home.

And so, two years after the exiled Jews change emperors, the new guy says they can return to their homeland. Many people are surprised that the vast majority of exiles don’t take up the offer, but they shouldn’t be. It’s been at least 50 years since any of these people have seen their homeland—which means, of course, that most of the exiles had been born in Babylon. In a real sense, Babylon is home to them; they don’t feel like exiles at all.

So most of them stay. A relative few, under the leadership of Zerubbabel, and later Ezra and Nehemiah, return and begin the arduous task of rebuilding everything from scratch. But most stay.

And 50 years later, long after Zerubbabel and Haggai and Zechariah have fulfilled their ministries in Jerusalem, there is in the Persian capital of Susa, more than 200 miles east of Babylon, a Jewish man, apparently a government functionary. He is named for the Babylonian god Marduk. And his story is the last episode in the biblical story of the nation of Israel, the spine of the Old Testament.

We’ll spend a few posts looking more closely at the story of Mordecai, his king, and his cousin.

See you next time.

Part 2: We’ll See Who’s Boss | Part 3: Selfish Aims | Part 4: The King Gets What He Wants | Part 5: A Roll of the Dice | Part 6: The Tease | Part 7: Any Old Tablet | Part 8: Mental Explosion | Part 9: What Goes Around | Part 10: The Missing Piece

Photo credit: Xerxes tomb at Naqsh-e Rostam (4615488322) – Tomb of Xerxes I – Wikipedia