Esther: When God Seems Absent
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Introduction to the book of Esther
Introduction to the book of Esther
The Book of Esther is one of the more exciting and curious books in the Bible. The story is set over 100 years after the Babylonian exile of the Israelites from their land and while some Jews did return to Jerusalem, remember Ezra and Nehemiah, many did not. It most likely takes place about 500 years before Jesus’ birth. The author of the book is unknown.
The Israelites are in exile in Susa, capital of the Persian empire.
The author is unknown.
Takes place approximately 500 years before Jesus is born.
It contains all your classic storybook ingredients: a bold, beautiful heroine, shifting love interests, a life or death threat to the good guys, a villain you absolutely love to hate, and of course a happy ending. There are suspense and dramatic irony and reversals of fortune and poetic justice. The story seems to have it all, That is, except for God. Or God’s name at least. The most curious thing about the book of Esther is that God is never mentioned. Not even once!
The Book of Esther is about a Jewish community living in Susa, the capital city of the ancient Persian Empire. The main characters in the story are two Jews, Mordecai and then his niece Esther– and then there's the King of Persia, who is something of a pushover in the story– Early on we read of his wife Vashti also. Then there's the Persian official Haman, the cunning villain.
Mordecai- A prominent Jewish patriarch
Esther- Mordecai’s neice, who becomes Queen
Ahasuerus- The pushover King of Persia
Vashti- The first Queen
Haman- The villian who plots against the Jews
Esther is a curious book in the Bible mainly because of the fact that God is never directly mentioned, not once. That might strike you as kind of odd, I mean the Bible is supposed to be about God, right? But this is a brilliant technique by the author, who is anonymous remember, it presents a challenge for us to look for God's activity, and there are signs of it everywhere. The story is full of very odd coincidences and ironic reversals and it all forces you to see God's purpose at work, but it’s all behind the scenes. Under the surface, working seemingly through the actions of almost everyone in the book.
The story has a very interesting characteristic, its written as what is called a “Chiasm”
A “chiasm” is a literary technique in a piece of literature (narrative or poetry) is designed with a symmetrical pattern that highlights certain themes and points of detail as being really significant.— Dictionary.com
This means that we will be able to connect portions of the story to one another in a very symmetrical way. When one thing happens in the beginning— there is a corresponding event near the end of the story. Keep this in mind as we walk through the highlights here— it really is quite interesting— and a great way that we can view this book as we study it together!
Let's just dive into the story.
Chapter 1: The kings banquets, and a queen’s refusal...
The Book opens with the King of Persia throwing an elaborate banquet Feast that lasts a total of 187 days, and it's all for the grandiose purpose of displaying his greatness. Then on the last day of the banquet Feast, he demands that his wife, Queen Vashti, appear at the party to show off her beauty. She refuses and so in a drunken rage the king removes Vashti as Queen, and then makes the silly decree that all Persian men should now be the masters of their own homes.
Chapter 2: A beauty pageant to select the new queen...
Then he holds a beauty pageant because he wants to find a new Queen. This is playing out like a really bad soap opera. It's right here that we're introduced to Esther and Mordecai. She chooses to hide her Jewish identity and enters the beauty pageant and wins! The king is so obsessed with Esther that he elevates her to become the new Queen of Persia.
After this and even more coincidental, is the fact that Mordecai just happens to overhear two Royal guards plotting to murder the king, and so he informs Esther, who in turn informs the king and Mordecai gets credit for saving the king's life. It's not mentioned anywhere, but this all seems providentially ordered. God is nowhere mentioned. What is it that God might be up to through all this?
Chapter 3: The hatred of Haman...
Next we are introduced to a man named Haman, who's not actually a Persian he's called an Agagite, a descendant of the original Canaanite peoples– remember 4 Samuel chapter 15.
The King elevates him into the highest position in the kingdom and he demands that everybody kneel before him and well when Mordecai sees him, he refuses to kneel. This of course fills Haman with rage and when he finds out that Mordecai is Jewish, Haman successfully persuades the king to enact this crazy law that will kill all of the Jewish people.
Now to decide the date of the Jews annihilation Haman rolls dice. A die is called Pur, in Hebrew. Remember that, because it will come into play later. The date is established to be 11 months later on the 13th of Addar– on this date, all the Jews will die.
Haman and the King then have a drinking banquet to celebrate their very horrible decision.
Chapter 4: “For such a time as this...”
Then the focus now turns to Mordecai and Esther, who are the only hope for the Jewish people, and they make a plan that Esther going to reveal her Jewish identity to the king and ask him to reverse the decree. Approaching the king without a royal request is, according to Persian law, worthy of death. So in a key statement, Mordecai says he's confident that even if Esther remains silent that deliverance for the Jews will arrive from another place and then Mordecai wonders aloud that he says “who knows, maybe you've become Queen for this very moment”.
Esther responds with bravery, and her purpose is to go to the king with her amazing words: “if I perish, I perish”
Chapter 5: Queen Esther’s noble strategy...
Next we watch the ironic reversal of all of Haman's evil plans. Esther invites the king and Haman to the first banquet, and she says that she wants to make a special request to both of them, at an exclusive banquet the following day. So Haman leaves the banquet and he sees Mordecai in the street. He is filled with anger and he orders that a tall pole be built so that Mordecai can be impaled upon it.
When it seems like things can't get any worse for the Jews, and for Mordecai.
Chapter 6: When a king can’t sleep at night...
But all of a sudden the story pivots. It just so happens that night that the king can't sleep so he has the Royal Chronicles read to him for good bedtime reading. He just happens to hear about how Mordecai had saved the King's life, he had totally forgotten about that! In the morning Haman enters to request Mordecai's execution, instead the king in that moment orders Haman to honor Mordecai publicly for saving his life, so now he has to lead Mordecai around the city on a royal horse so everyone can praise him!
This place in the story is a key pivot for the whole book. It begins Hamans downfall and Mordecai's rise to power. Watch how this works. The next day is Esther's second banquet, so the king and Haman arrived and Esther informed the king that, first of all she's Jewish, and second that Haman has enacted a decree to murder her and then murder Mordecai, who saved his life, and murder all of the Jews.
Chapter 7: The man who came to dinner, but dies on a stake...
Now the king has had a lot to drink so when he hears this news he goes into yet one more drunken rage and he orders that Haman be impaled on the very stake he made for Mordecai. It's ironic, and a terrible way for him to go. However, this doesn't exactly solve the problem of the decree to kill all the Jews. The decree still stands, and as you may have heard it said– “according to the law of the Medes and Persians”-- which basically means it cannot be changed.
Chapter 8: A decree and a festival of hope for the Jews...
So the focus now turns to Esther and Mordecai as they make a plan to reverse the decree, they discover that the king can't revoke a decree that he's already made. So instead the king commissions Mordecai to issue a counter, to decree that on the appointed day, that day all of the Jews were supposed be killed (the 13th of Adar)– they now are ordered to defend themselves and to destroy any who plotted to kill them.
Mordecai, Esther and Jews everywhere host Banquets and feasts to celebrate this new decree and Mordecai is elevated to a seat second to the King. Eventually the decree day comes and the Jews triumph over their enemies. This results in joy and celebration as the Jews are rescued from death.
The story then tells about how Esther and Mordecai established by decree to have an annual two-day Feast called Purim– to commemorate their deliverance from destruction. The name of the feast comes from Haman's dice. The Pur.
Chapters 9-10: Mordecai is elevated to second in command...
The book concludes with a short epilogue as Mordecai is elevated to second-in-command in the kingdom and we are told of his Royal greatness and splendor. He basically has taken Haman’s position, and hopefully will assist in leading the people in a much better way!
Now step back notice how this whole story has been designed. Remember I mentioned that we have here what’s called a “Chiasm”. KAI. KAI-ASM. It’s simply named after the Greek letter “Chi”, which looks like our letter “X”. It sort of symbolizes this “reversal” and the pairing of something early in the story, with something at the end.
The story was full of moments of ironic reversal but we can now see the whole story is structured as ironic reversal, right down to the details:
To illustrate this- I’ve devised a little visual: (Ladders and poles)
A The splendor of the Persian king + Two banquets [1:1-8] Celebrates the power of the King
B Esther becomes Queen + Mordecai saves the king [1:9-2:20 + 2:21-23]
C Haman elevated to power [3:1-6]
D Haman’s decree to destroy the Jewish people [3:7-15]
E Esther and Mordecai’s plan to reverse the decree [4:1-17]
F Esther’s 1st banquet + Haman plans Mordecai’s execution [5:1-8 + 5:9-14]
X - PIVOT: Haman humiliated & Mordecai exalted [6:1-14]
F’ Esther’s 2nd banquet + Haman executed instead of Mordecai [7:1-10]
E’ Esther and Mordecai plan to reverse the decree [8:1-8]
D’ Mordecai’s counter-decree to save the Jewish people [8:9-14]
C’ Mordecai elevated to power [8:15-17]
B’ Queen Esther and Mordecai save the Jewish people [9:1-19]
A’ Two feasts + The splendor of Mordecai [9:20-32 + 10:1-3] Celebrates the power of God.
When we look at the pattern of the book we see that the events in A-F display a dark, ominous negative pattern moving progressively towards the demise of the Jewish people, including Esther and Mordecai. But, after the pivot in chapter 6, the events in F-A offer a positive counterpart for the previous events, correcting every crisis and deficiency leading to the exaltation of Mordecai and the Jewish people.
Another fascinating feature of this book is that Mordecai and Esther are put forward as models of trust and hope when things get really bad. They don’t always make the best moral decisions, because they are not portrayed as perfect! Neither are we, right?
So, for me-- the Book of Esther comes back to that question of why God is not mentioned?
The message of this book seems to be that when God seems absent, when his people are in Exile, when they're unfaithful to the Law, does this mean that God is just done with his people?
When people disobey, is God just “done” with them?
The Book of Esther states a resounding “no”. God never gives up on his people.
It invites us to see what God can, and does work in the real mess and moral ambiguity of human history.
He uses people to accomplish his purposes. The Book of Esther asks us to be willing to trust God's providence– even when we can't see it working.
It’s a technique meant to push us, the readers, to explore God’s providence even in the darkest moments of history. It invites you to see how God can and does work in the real mess of real life to accomplish his divine purposes.
No matter how bad things get, God is committed to redeeming his world and that's what the Book of Esther is all about.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
I want us to take a few moments— just to rest in this truth. We learned from Jonah’s story that God is always working behind the scenes with everyone we meet. This now becomes a great opportunity to consider our lives so far, and how God has been working even in US— Even when we didn’t know it.
Let’s pray.