There is a natural rivalry between doctors and lawyers. As a doctor I love lawyer jokes. What does it mean when a lawyer is buried up to his neck? Not enough sand. What is the difference between a lawyer and a catfish? One is a bottom-feeding scum-sucker, and the other is a fish. Why do laboratories sometimes use lawyers as subjects? Because there are some things even rats won’t do. To be fair, I also like doctor jokes. “The doctor was right when he said he’d have me on my feet in a month. I had to sell my car to pay his bill!” I could go on, but I’ll spare you. The story of Esther is about a much more serious rivalry: between the Jews and their enemies. And it is no joking matter, either in the story or in relation to modern history, as we’ll see.
Esther is the second book in the Bible named for and starring a woman, and she is the namesake of my own mother (which alone makes it an important book!). Like the book of Ruth discussed previously, in this story neither God nor miracles play a significant role. Perhaps strong women don’t need the help of miracles or God to make things happen, but you can make your own interpretation of that. It is set in Persia; the Jews are in captivity there. In the Hebrew version God is never mentioned(!), but later Greek versions not only mention God frequently but also insert other Jewish concerns such as the marrying of foreigners and dietary regulations. Another example of how the Jews saw their Scriptures as flexible, not fixed, and allowed them to evolve, unlike modern fundamentalists. The king in the story is called Ahasuerus, and is often thought to represent Xerxes I. However, there is no record of the Persians ever having a Jewish queen or a Jewish prime minister and there is no confirmation of this story outside the Bible. Scholars consider it to be historical fiction, but even fiction can be used for teaching. It is at least in part an “etiology” story, that is, a story of origin, in this case the origin of the Jewish holiday Purim. It starts out like a comedy and ends up as drama, no, a tragedy.
The setting is Susa the capital of King Ahasuerus of the Persian-Median Empire. The king hosts a party that lasts 180 days (try to top that!), and then he gives a banquet for all the people of the city that lasts seven more days. Meanwhile Queen Vashti hosts her own party for the women of the palace. On the seventh day the king is “merry with wine” and summons Queen Vashti to appear “before the king with her royal crown in order to display her beauty to the people and the princes, for she was beautiful.” Some have suggested that the tipsy king is calling for his queen to appear before the men only in her crown. (Children in Sunday School probably don’t hear that detail.) Thus the queen refuses. The king asks his counselors what should be done in such an outrageous situation. They are concerned that when the people learn of this all the women in the kingdom will be encouraged to be disrespectful to their husbands. So they advise him to issue an edict that Vashti can no longer come into the presence of the king, but rather another who is more worthy will be given her royal position. “When the king’s edict which he will make is heard throughout all his kingdom, great as it is, then all women will give honor to their husbands, great and small.” The king’s counselors might know the law, but they don’t know women very well.
So the search for a new queen begins and they gather beautiful young virgins from all over the kingdom. There is a Jew in Susa named Mordecai who is a descendant of Kish of the tribe of Benjamin. In other words, King Saul’s family. Remember this. He is raising a cousin of his named Hadassah, that is, Esther in Persian. She is “beautiful of form and face.” She is recruited into the king’s harem (scandalous!), but Mordecai warns her not to tell her ethnic origin. He checks on her daily. Each woman is given a twelve-month beautification regimen. At the end of twelve months the woman goes in to the king for the night and then in the morning is sent to the second harem, of concubines. In other words, they go from the new car lot to the used car lot. The king is so pleased with Esther that he makes her his new queen. They celebrate with a banquet, and as far as we know Esther gets to keep her clothes on. Mordecai later learns of a plot to assassinate the king, and he tells Esther so she can tell the king. Upon investigation the plot is found out and the two conspirators are hanged. Score one for Esther in the king’s eyes.
The king appoints a man named Haman to be his prime minister. He is an Agagite, that is, someone descended from Agag. Remember that. Everyone would bow down and pay homage to Haman, except Mordecai. Mordecai explains to people that he refuses because he is a Jew. When Haman find out about this he plots to destroy not just Mordecai but all the Jews. Haman casts ”Pur,” the Persian word for “lots” to help decide what to do (like rolling dice). He tells the king that there are a people living in his land who have their own laws and who do not obey the king, so they should be destroyed. The king listens to him and issues a decree to have all the Jews destroyed on a certain day and to seize all their possessions as plunder. While this deadly decree is being propagated the king and Haman are enjoying a drink together.
When Mordecai finds out about this he is mortified, as are all the Jews. They dress in sackcloth and ashes, a sign of great humility and repentance. Esther hears about this and communicates with Mordecai via a messenger. He urges Esther to go to the king and plead for her people. She points out that if she goes to the king uninvited and he does not hold out his golden scepter then she will be put to death. He responds,
“Do not imagine that you in the king’s palace can escape any more than all the Jews. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”
This is a wonderfully dramatic statement. Is there some divine plan in place? Although Mordecai does not invoke God’s name it sounds like he believes God will leave Esther’s family to their fate if she does not help and He will provide another means of deliverance. Esther tells Mordecai to have the Jews fast and pray for her for three days, then she will go to the king, “and if I perish, I perish.” Brave woman!
On the third day Esther prepares herself and goes to the king. He offers her his golden scepter and asks what he can do for her, “Even to half of the kingdom and it will be given to you.” Esther misses her chance to take half the kingdom, and instead simply asks to throw a banquet for the king and Haman. At the banquet the king makes the offer again, and again she only asks for the king and Haman to attend another banquet the next day. The suspense builds. Maybe Esther is trying to summon up the strength to make her appeal. Haman leaves the banquet happy, but sees Mordecai who refuses to bow before him and he is filled with anger. He goes home to his wife and friends and complains about how much this Jew Mordecai irks him. They suggest he build a gallows “fifty cubits high” (about 75 feet) for Mordecai and ask the king to hang him before the banquet tomorrow. The idea pleases Haman.
However, that night the king is restless and is reading through the court records and remembers the assassination plot and Mordecai’s help in foiling it. He inquires what was done to honor Mordecai and the response is “nothing.” So the next day the king asks Haman what should be done to honor a man whom the king desires to honor. Haman thinks the king is speaking about him. So he says they should put one of the king’s royal robes on him, put him on the king’s own horse, and parade him through the streets. So the king tells Haman to go and do so for Mordecai! Naturally Haman feels humiliated by this. This time his wife and friends warn him that he will fall at the hands of this Jew.
So the king and Haman attend Esther’s banquet, and she finally reveals her request, that he spare her people:
“…for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed and to be annihilated. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for the trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king.”
Note the touch of humility. The king demands to know who would do such a thing, apparently having already forgotten the decree he signed and promulgated. Esther answers, “A foe and an enemy, is this wicked Haman!” The king is angry and steps out into the garden to gather himself. Haman is terrified and tries to beg for his life from the queen, but he falls with her onto her couch. The king returns in time to witness this and thinks Haman is now trying to rape his queen even while he is in the palace. So the king has his men hang Haman on the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. Poetic justice indeed.
You recall that Mordecai was a relative of King Saul. Haman was a relative of Agag, the king of the Amalekites. In 1st Samuel 15 Saul was told to conquer and kill all of the Amalekites. But he spared King Agag, bringing a stinging rebuke from Samuel the judge. Now Mordecai, Saul’s relative, has finished Saul’s work by destroying Haman, Agag’s descendant. I wonder if this touch was added by the post-exile writers because the tribe of Benjamin was then said to be aligned with the tribe of Judah, and this story in a sense brings closure to the failure of Benjamin’s favorite son, Saul.
The king gives Esther the house of Haman and she puts Mordecai in charge of it. But there is still a problem, “for a decree which is written in the name of the king and sealed with the king’s signet ring may not be revoked.” Therefore the edict against the Jews still stands. So the king allows Esther and Haman to write a new decree giving
“…the Jews who were in each and every city the right to assemble and to defend their lives, to destroy, kill, and eliminate the entire army of any people or province which was going to attack them, including children and women, and to plunder their spoils…”
Esther 8:11
I am not sure how they determined who was going to attack them; this sounds like a license for mayhem. Even women and children! Critics of this story argue that it is hard to believe that the Persian king would give a subject people carte blanche to slaughter his own people, or that his nobles would have allowed him to do such a thing or retain his throne after such a travesty. But that’s how the story goes. And the story of brave Queen Esther has taken a darker turn. Like the story of Jericho (recall post 19), are the children in Sunday School taught about the slaughter of Persian children? The story doesn’t seem so benign when you think about that aspect.
Mordecai then dresses up in royal finery, and “for the Jews there was light and gladness and joy and honor.” Yes, nothing makes one quite so happy as a chance to slaughter one’s enemies, but I suppose they saw this as deliverance from possible extinction. Now it was the Jews’ turn to take advantage of the king’s second edict:
Thus the Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying; and they did what they pleased to those who hated them.
Esther 9:5
So, it was wrong for the Persians to plan on killing the Jews, but it was right for the Jews to turn around and kill them? Sounds like the history of the Middle East in a nutshell. Kill first or be killed. I wonder how they knew all “those who hated them.” I suppose one could argue this was self-defense, but these people had not killed any Jews yet. Did they just assume that everyone they killed hated them? It is like they were executed for a thought crime. But we can take solace in knowing there is no actual evidence that such a slaughter took place. Still, the story likely expresses the attitudes of the story tellers: kill first before you get killed.
The king hears the reports of the killing, and asks Esther what else she would like. Well, you can’t get too much of a good thing, so the once-timid Esther now asks for the edict to be extended a day to allow for more killing. So the Jews in the provinces “kill seventy-five thousand of those who hated them” (Esther 9:16). Again, how do you identify those who hate you? I doubt they had swastikas painted on their houses. However, it is noted several times that the Jews did not take any plunder. This is in keeping with a “holy war” (if there really is such a thing), in which you kill for God and leave the plunder for Him. We know how God loves His plunder.
The Jews decide to remember this slaughter of their enemies with a holiday called Purim, after the Persian word “Pur,” because Haman cast “Pur” in plotting his scheme. It is strange enough to celebrate a holiday to commemorate the pre-emptive slaughter of one’s perceived enemies but even stranger to name a Jewish festival for a Persian process of divination.
As for King Ahsuerus and Mordecai,
…all the accomplishments of his authority and strength, and the full account of the greatness of Mordecai to which the king advanced him, are they not written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Media and Persia? For Mordecai the Jew was second only to King Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews and in favor with his many kinsmen, one who sought the good of his people and one who spoke for the welfare of his whole nation.
Esther 10:2, 3
Sadly we do not have such a book, only this book of Esther, and no other records of these events or people, either in Jewish or Persian annals or archaeology. That is another reason modern scholars see it as a piece of historical fiction.
There is yet one more tragedy associated with this story. In February 1994 during the holiday of Purim which overlapped with the Islamic month of Ramadan there were about 800 Palestinian Muslims gathered for prayer in the Mosque of Abraham at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in the West Bank of Israel. The cave was divided in two sections, one for Jewish worshippers and the other for Muslim worshippers. An expatriate American living in Israel entered the Muslim section wearing his army uniform and carrying his military rifle, positioned himself at the only exit behind the worshippers, and waited until the prayer toward Mecca began. He then opened fire, killing 29 people and wounding 125 others. Several years earlier he was quoted as saying, “There will be a day when one Jew will take revenge on the Arabs.” The survivors beat him to death. Do you think it was a coincidence that this took place on the holiday set aside to commemorate the preemptive killing of one’s perceived enemies? This is the ugly side to the story of beautiful Esther.
Thinking exercises:
1. All of the danger to the Jews in the story of Esther might have been avoided if Mordecai had simply been willing to bow to Haman. Esther was married to the king, yet Mordecai wouldn’t allow himself to bow to the king’s counselor? Was he right or wrong about this?
2. Assuming this story is historical fiction, what do you think was the intended point of the story? Kill before they can kill you? Is that compatible with the teachings of Jesus?
3. There is currently war in Gaza. Hamas conducted a terrorist attack which killed women and children. Israel’s effort to eradicate Hamas has also led to the deaths of women and children. Do you think stories like this one of Esther might condition people to think that such “collateral damage” is acceptable, maybe even desirable, in what might be considered by the participants a “righteous” conflict?
3. Is it OK to kill people as long as you leave the plunder for God? What does God do with the plunder?