For Such a Time as This (Part 1)

 

For Such a Time as This

(Part 1)

For Such a Time as This (Part 1) - Audio/Visual 

If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

The story of Esther takes place during the rule of Ahasuerus, which means “Mighty Man,” but you probably know him better as Xerxes. He succeeded to the throne through his father, Darius, and ruled the Persian Empire from 486 to 465 B.C. He governed 127 provinces, or Satripes, that stretched from India to Ethiopia, kind of like states within a union. His capital was the city of Sushan, or Susa, and as the story unfolds Xerxes has just returned, defeated, at the hands of the Greeks in the Battle of Thermopylae. Remember the movie, 300? It was the Hollywood blockbuster about Leonidas who, with 300 soldiers, fights to the last soldier against Xerxes’ million troops – just long enough for Sparta to respond and turn Xerxes away. Depressed from his embarrassing defeat, Xerxes came back to Susa and threw a drinking party that lasted for 6 months. Think of it as an 180-day open house with a hosted bar.

Of course, all good things must come to an end, even binges. So, to secure his position and continued respect of the aristocracy, Xerxes decides to throw a stag party (men-only) during the final seven days of his six-month bender, but this time for the Who’s Who of Susa. Not wanting to offend anyone, however, Xerxes said that drinking was optional, but word had it that if the king took a drink, everyone took a drink; and Xerxes liked to drink. In fact, by the end of this final week he’d had so much to drink that he came up with the brilliant idea of inviting his wife, the queen, to come to the party in her royal crown “in order to show her beauty to the people.” (Esther 1:11) Some have suggested that this invitation was intended for Vashti to come only in her crown.

Now it just so happened that the queen was throwing a party, or “feast,” of her own. Interestingly, the word “feast” (mišteh) occurs as many times in the book of Esther as it does in the entire Old Testament. Susa was, apparently, a regular party town. Unfortunately, Vashti wasn’t in the mood to party with a bunch of drunk guys, especially if the invitation was intended for her and her crown, only. So, like any upstanding, sober woman she said, “No.” Needless to say, Xerxes was not happy. Here’s the most powerful ruler of the known world and his own wife won’t even obey his command – and this in the presence of all of his Hoi Polloi guy friends. “No” apparently didn’t mean “no,” and what started out as a domestic dispute mushroomed into a full-blown political crisis. Huh. What’s a king to do? Well, you turn to your trusted, equally drunk advisors, one of whom was Memucan.

Memucan suggested that if the king did nothing about this crisis then all of the women in the kingdom would follow the queen’s example and revolt, which would leave all of the men without their partners, including certain matrimonial benefits. So, what’s a king to do? Well, you quickly pass emergency divorce legislation which is exactly what you’d expect from a bunch of drunk guys. The guts of the law? The queen was to never see the king again, and her crown was to be given to another. That way, the guys thought, the entire empire would know that a man was the king of his castle. This, of course, was political deflection at its best since the genesis of the legislation was due to the fact that the queen had demonstrated that the king was not the king of his own castle. But then again, facts have a way of becoming inconvenient if it doesn’t fit the narrative. Who’d have thought?

So, there was peace in the king’s household until the effects of the implementation of the emergency legislation left Xerxes a very lonely man. So, again, what’s a king to do? Have a beauty pageant, of course, where all of the contestants would be virgins and the king could have the pick of the litter, so to speak; kind of like The Bachelor. Well, you can imagine the publicity and excitement that the beauty contest generated, and it got the attention of Mordecai, son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish. (This will become important later, i.e., think king Saul, a descendant of the tribe of Benjamin whose father was Kish.) Now, Mordecai had an orphaned cousin whom he’d adopted as his own whose name was Hadassah, or Ishtar, aka: Esther. Like her name (the Hebrew, Hadassah, means “Myrtle,” and her Persian name, Ishtar, means “star”), Esther was lovely, beautiful and a rising star.

As “luck” would have it, Esther gets discovered in the beauty pageant and is taken to Susa for a year of beauty treatments including diet, exercise, pedicures, manicures, etc. Think of the Golden Door just north of here. The year-long spa treatment included 6 months of perfumes and preparations for her beautification, and another 6 months of oil of myrrh coupled with massages using perfumed oils. Hegai, one of the king’s eunuchs, took a liking to Esther and made sure that she got all of her beauty treatments, including an allowance, and threw in seven servants from the king’s palace just for good measure. He then moved her and the servants to the best place in the “house of women,” which is a polite way of saying “harem.” Tragically, the beautiful, young virgins who were there for the king’s pleasure, but eventually passed over, could never marry and, eventually, became widows since they were forbidden to ever marry as they were, or at least had once been a part of the king’s harem. So much for March’s “Women’s History Month.”

During her year-long preparation at the salon, Esther had never revealed her Jewish heritage to anyone since Mordecai, her adoptive cousin, had encouraged her to keep that part of her history a mystery, at least for now. But like any adoptive dad, Mordecai worried about Esther and every day he would pace up and down in front of the “women’s quarters,” ahem, harem, to keep an eye on her. After the 12 month beautification period had passed, each woman, at the king’s invitation, would be escorted into the palace and would take something special from the harem to the king. She would go to the palace in the evening and return in the morning to the king’s eunuch who kept the concubines, but this time in a second house. And unless the king asked for her again, she would there remain - forever.

When it came Esther’s turn, rather than selecting something special for the king herself, she asked Hegai for his opinion which endeared her to everyone with whom she came into contact. And, of course, who better than Hegai to ask since he had the king’s confidence and likely knew what was really on the king’s mind. Apparently, Esther brought the “right stuff” because she didn’t come back the next morning. Instead, she was named the new queen. In fact, the king was so happy that he proclaimed a holiday and put on a huge party for all of his guests. The king loved Esther, and this is just another Biblical story which elevates a person of obscurity to greatness. It’s the same theme that the Bible gives in numerous stories like Joseph, Ruth, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, just to name a few.

Esther, by this time, had been instrumental in getting her cousin, Mordecai, promoted, so he sat in front of the king’s gate where all the action took place and happened to overhear two (2) disgruntled ex-employees, the king’s former doorkeepers, plotting to kill king Xerxes. Some scholars believe that this plot originated due to the fact that Mordecai, a Jew, had been promoted to the king’s court which incensed the old-school Persian politicos. Regardless, it was another divine “coincidence.”

Mordecai tells Esther about the plot, and Esther tells the king. Understandably, the king orders the death of the two (2) traitors and this goes down in the history books in the presence of the king which becomes a very important part of the story later on. But then in walks in Haman the Agagite, the Darth Vadar in the story. Haman was a descendant of the Amalekites. And if you remember your history, the Amalekites were the descendants of Esau who was the archetype of a Jewish hater. Thus, if Mordecai was descended from Saul, and Haman from the Amalekites, then the drama that follows is merely the continuation of a long-standing hostility between their families. Briefly, Agag, a king of the Amalekites, was captured and his people were slaughtered. Eventually, Agag was executed by Samuel the prophet, not king Saul, since Saul wasn’t known to follow God’s instructions very well. (See, 1 Sam 15.) Actually, the hostilities went back to the days of Moses who had admonished Israel to “blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven: do not forget.” (Deut. 25:19) Needless to say, it was a centuries-old grudge whose succeeding generations had very long memories.

Back at Susa, everyone bowed down to Haman since he was the Prime Minister of Persia. Well, everyone except for Mordecai who was a professed Jew and whose heritage was no secret: he’d told Haman’s servants that he was Jewish. In a Persian empire, and in Haman’s eyes in particular, it was an act of civil disobedience that had to be punished. Haman hated to be disrespected at the city gate when everyone else would give obeisance to him except that Jew boy, Mordecai. The problem was that Haman was a student of history and knew that going toe-to-toe with Mordecai probably wouldn’t end well. Believing that past could be prologue, Haman had every reason to fear Mordecai but that didn’t sate the hate. So, after giving the matter some thought he came up with a solution to his problem. His solution? Kill all of the Jews. Hitler had nothing on Haman’s genocidal madness. But this was a pretty grave final solution, and Haman couldn’t do it without some help. So, he enlisted his sorcerers for their advice since there’s nothing like consulting the soothsayers when you’re considering the extermination of more than a million human beings on the basis of their race.

The sorcerers weren’t consulted so much in connection with Haman’s plan since he was the Prime Minister, after all. No, Haman just needed a little advice as to when the plan should go into effect. So, after rolling the dice, or casting the “pur” (Esther 3:7), the “experts” told Haman that the plan should begin in eleven (11) months which suited Haman just fine; there was a lot to do when it came to murdering millions of people, not the least of which was getting the king’s approval. So, Haman went to his boss and told the king, generically speaking of course, that there was a group of people who lived in Persia who were just, well, “different,” i.e., not like them, and making matters worse they weren’t obeying the king’s laws. “So, in my opinion, it’s not fitting that they remain and should be destroyed. In fact, I feel so strongly about this that I’ll donate $13 million to your treasury for the privilege of seeing this law go into effect. So, what do you say, king baby?” (Esther 3:9) Now, at the time, $13 million was about 2/3 of Persia’s gross national product. So, was Haman’s offer an offer that the king couldn’t refuse? Stay tuned.

Grace,

Randy