Day 266 (Esther 1-5) - Year 8

Tara-Leigh Cobble (0:01)

Hey, Bible readers, I'm Tara-Leigh Cobble, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap.

I want to give you a heads up that today's podcast might not be the best for younger ears. I'm going to talk openly about what's happening in the text here. This story has an important theme and a beautiful ending, but there are some horrific stops along the way, so use your own discretion.

Esther is generally regarded as historical narrative, but one other thing to note is that it's the only book in the Bible that doesn't mention God's name. Maybe you didn't even notice that in our reading today because we see him in the shadows of every scene working things out in keeping with his plan and his promises. We open in the capital of Persia, the empire that toppled Babylon while the Jewish exiles were living there. Ahasuerus is king. We first met him in Ezra 4 just a few days ago. He was one of the kings who got a letter from the angry locals during their letter writing campaign to stop the rebuilding of the temple. He's not a follower of Yahweh. He's just a regular pagan king in a pagan empire. In history, he's typically referred to as Xerxes I.

At this point, he's three years into his reign, which makes it approximately 483 BC. He throws a massive six-month party, presumably for himself, and invites everyone to see how rich and awesome he is. If you don't like it when people celebrate their birth week or birth month, you probably wouldn't like King Ahasuerus. His wife, Queen Vashti, was a real looker, and as the grand finale for his self-serving soiree, he wants her to come out and take a lap in her crown, and possibly nothing else. If ancient Jewish commentaries are correct, it seems King Ahasuerus wants to parade his naked wife in front of all the men at his banquet.

Even if these weren't the specifics of his request, Vashti refuses to come, which is an affront to his ego and his throne. He calls a staff meeting to find out what kind of punishment he's allowed to hand out to her. And his advisors say that they are personally offended by her response, because now their wives will feel like they can do whatever they want to. If these Persian men can't earn the respect of their wives by treating them well, they'll legislate it. They brainstorm and decide to write a law banishing and replacing Vashti. In order to find Vashti's replacement, the king's advisors decide to throw a mandatory beauty pageant. They gather all the young beautiful virgins from the 127 provinces in King A's territory, essentially kidnapping them and forcing them to come to Susa to be in the king's harem. To be fair, some commentators suggest this could be voluntary, but given how King A and his advisors seem to view females, it's doubtful. What happened here is probably more along the lines of human trafficking of girls in the age range of 12 to 14

By the way, the king would have been roughly 40 years old at this time. The king's staff spends about a year preparing each girl, then they dress them up and make them look nice so he can decide which one he wants that night. For King A, choosing a new queen is an audition process where each girl spends the night with him and is sent away in the morning. Essentially, what's happening is the king is systematically deflowering all the girls he's kidnapped over a period of years to decide which one he likes best. After their night with the king, they're added to his growing list of concubines while King A moves on to the next, devastating an entire generation of females in Persia. Among those is a girl named Esther. She's basically been raised by her cousin Mordecai because her family were exiles back in the day and she's been orphaned at some point. Fortunately, cousin Mordecai is really protective of her and he has a good position despite being a Jew in Persia.

He tells Esther to keep her nationality a secret because it will not go over well. Meanwhile, in the king's harem, four years after Queen Vashti is dismissed, the king finally chooses Esther for the night. That's almost 1500 days and possibly 1500 girls later.

Esther exercises wisdom and humility and God grants her favor with the people she encounters, including the king, who makes her his new queen. Not long after that, Mordecai overhears a plot to attack King A. He passes the word to Esther, who tells her new husband the bad news. The conspirators get hanged and normally Mordecai would be honored, but instead, he's forgotten. This divine oversight sets the table for what's next. In chapter 3, the king establishes a new second-in-command, Haman the Agagite, a descendant of the Amalekites, one of Israel's oldest enemies. But Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman. Some commentators say this could be Mordecai's effort to honor God's commandments by not worshiping anyone but Yahweh, but probably not. Most think this is actually a bit of pushback from Mordecai because of the racial tension that exists between the Jews and the Amalekites. It kind of backfires though because now Haman not only wants to kill Mordecai specifically, but all the Jews. Racism isn't just wicked and arrogant, it's irrational. Haman decides to take action. He throws some dice to help choose the date when he should have all the Jews slaughtered. Then he gives a keynote presentation to King A in hopes of making his case. He says these outsiders are disobeying the law and have to be stopped. In order to make sure he gets a yes, he offers to pay for the execution himself to the tune of 750,000 pounds of silver. In today's prices, this doesn't even seem possible. It's nearly $150 billion. That's more money than Jeff Bezos has. That's how much Haman values his ego, and that's how much he hates the Jews. The number may seem fake at first glance, but some commentators believe the text hints that he plans to steal the money from the Jews after he murders them. It's not entirely clear, but it seems like King A agrees to pay for it instead. They draft letters and send them to all the provinces on the day before Passover. Remember Passover, the day the Jews celebrate God's deliverance from their Egyptian slavery? And here, on the day before that celebration is set to begin, word goes out that the Jews in Persia will be slaughtered in just 11 months. It probably takes about 3 to 4 months for the letters to reach all the provinces, but the people in Susa know right away because they're local, and the whole town is thrown into a panic. Meanwhile, King A and Haman kick back with some cocktails in the castle like they hadn't just ordered a genocide.