Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
5A man a Jew was in Shushan the citadel and his name Mordecai the son of Jair the son of Shimei the son of Kish a man of Benjamin 6who was deported from Jerusalem with the deportation which was deported with Jeconiah the king of Judah which Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babel deported. 7He was one nourishing Hadassah (she Esther) the daughter of his uncle because not to her father and mother and the young woman [was] beautiful of form and beautiful of appearance and in the death of her father and her mother Mordecai took her to him to daughter.
Finally, we get to meet our hero and heroine, two people of faith we can admire and learn from, as they live their lives in this world where God doesn’t exist, as they live seeing the unseen God through the eyes of their faith.
And where do we find them?
This definitely requires some pondering. At first glance, these three verses might seem simply incidental to our story, however, I believe they are packed with priceless truths we each need to embrace. I hardly know where to begin and may have trouble deciding where to end. I’ll see if I can record what I think I’m seeing.
First, we meet Mordecai. Mordecai is a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin. There is a lot of discussion about his ancestors listed here. Some would equate Kish with Saul’s father, then hold that Shimei must be the Benjamite who cursed David as he fled from Absalom. The immediate problem with this would be that we are somewhere around the year 478 BC, while Saul’s father Kish would have lived around 1100 BC, some 600 years before. That is still possible as we know the Jewish people didn’t mind skipping generations when they listed someone’s genealogy. However, the passage says Kish was the ancestor who was deported to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. Some people maintain the passage is saying Mordecai was the one carried to Babylon, however, that was in about 598 BC, or 115 years before our story. Even if Mordecai was 15 at that time, he would now be 130 years old. Instead, if Kish was really his great grandfather and Mordecai is now the fourth generation and even just a middle-aged man, the timing is much more agreeable. I would like to suggest, the reason for the familiar names is because they’re all Benjamites.
So how did Mordecai get here? He is a fourth generation exile. He is essentially a prisoner, the son of prisoners. Some people criticize him and his family because, back in 539 BC, Cyrus had decreed that all Jews who wanted to could return to Israel, and yet, obviously his family had stayed in Persia. I personally think that is a very unfair criticism. Read the book of Nehemiah. He’s still in Persia too and he has to ask permission to go to Israel, and then the first thing the king wants to know is, “When will you be back?” My point is that there are a lot of other issues that would come to play for a family (especially after being in exile for 70 years) to pick up and move back. Just as in Nehemiah’s case, your boss simply may not let you go. It is very unfair and unloving to criticize Mordecai or his family when we know absolutely nothing of their circumstances.
The plain simple fact is that he lives in Persia as a member of an oppressed people. And please note, he was born that way. Mordecai had no say in where or when he was born. He lives where he lives. Like is usually true for you and me, Mordecai had to simply “bloom where he was planted.” If he was to be a godly man, it would have to be here.
Then, jumping ahead a little to verse 19, we should note that Mordecai is found “sitting in the king’s gate.” In modern English that may sound like he’s some kind of freeloader just sitting around killing time, but rather it means he had some kind of position where the king might call on him at any time and so he was there ready. Also, the “gate” of any City was where the important leaders met to conduct official business, so, once again, it suggests some kind of respected position. My point would be that Mordecai has apparently worked hard and distinguished himself at his work, so that he has risen to a position of honor. As it says in Prov. 22:29, “Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings; they will not serve before officials of low rank.” That should often be the case for us believers. Even in our own godless Persia, we should be people who work hard and, if the Lord allows, rise to positions of honor. Joseph did. So did Daniel and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So did Nehemiah and Ezra. The NT calls it “adorning the doctrine of God our Savior in all things” (Titus 2:10).
Then we meet Esther. Her Hebrew name is Hadassah, which meant “Myrtle.” Myrtle bushes grow across the Middle East and are a fragrant evergreen. “Esther” means a “star” and is apparently her Persian name which could have been assigned to her by Hegai or even Xerxes himself when he introduced her as Queen. It’s also possible that, when Persian speaking people heard her name pronounced “Hadassah” in Hebrew, maybe to them it sounded like their word for “star” in Persian and so even the neighbor children growing up called her “Esther.” We do that with foreign names we have trouble pronouncing. “Ling Su” becomes “Suzie.” However Hadassah became Esther, we don’t know, but certainly we get to watch the fragrant Myrtle become a shining Star!
But where do we find our beloved Esther? Sadly, we meet her as an orphan girl whose father and mother are both dead. We have no indication how old she was when they passed but the fact is they did. And Esther lives in a time when she couldn’t even ask to see pictures of them. They were simply gone. We should all pause and remind ourselves how painful that would be. Esther isn’t made of cardboard. She’s a real girl living in a real world without the warm security of growing up in her own father and mother’s arms. Yet, like Mordecai, this is the world she lives in. If she is to be a woman of faith, it will have to happen in godless Persia, living with the loss of both her parents.
Thankfully for our Esther, she had a cousin who stepped in. Esther’s father (whom we know from 2:15 was named Abihail) was Mordecai’s uncle, so Esther would have been his first cousin. In modern America where we have small families, we think of cousins as always being somewhat close to the same age. However, in cultures with large families, it is often the case that the oldest daughters start having babies while their mother is still having her last, with the result that there could be all kinds of age spreads between aunts, uncles, and cousins. Obviously, from our account here, Mordecai is significantly older than Esther.
We’ve already seen above that somehow Mordecai has distinguished himself in his work. Here in verse 7 we see another indication of his character. In NIV, it says he had “brought up” Esther. The word in Hebrew can mean “nourish,” and we should note we don’t see Modecai begrudgingly “putting up with” his orphaned cousin. At the end of the verse it says in Hebrew literally, “he took her to him to daughter.” We have before us a man who didn’t just provide room and board for his orphaned cousin. He actually “took her to him to daughter.” He embraced little Esther and brought her up as if she really were his own daughter. We will continue throughout the book to see his endless care and concern for Esther, but we should all pause and acknowledge this indication of Mordecai’s very real faith. God is love and His children, being themselves dearly loved children, can’t help but live a life of love.
Thankfully for our Esther, though her own parents have died, she has an older cousin with enough godly love in his heart to draw her into his world of faith. In addition to this kindness, the Lord allowed this poor orphan girl to be born exceptionally beautiful. In one sense we can say, unfortunately, her beauty gets her pulled into the king’s harem prison-house, but, on the other hand, because the Lord is in control, even that becomes His way of raising her to a position of high honor and opportunity to do good.
We should point out that, in this world, a girl’s exceptional beauty usually becomes a snare to her soul. Few girls can be truly beautiful and still grow up humble and pure. As with any other form of wealth, such things go to our heads, lift us up in pride, and usually become our ruin. As we read our story, it will be to both Mordecai and Esther’s credit that this beautiful girl managed to rise above all of that and turn out to be a humble, loving, self-sacrificing person. It was no doubt in part due to Mordecai’s careful “nurturing,” but we also have to commend Esther because, like all of us, she herself had to choose to be a woman of character. A parent’s good upbringing can only ever be a springboard to their child’s life decisions. Like Isaac, every generation has to re-dig the wells of their father’s faith. Obviously, as we will see, that is exactly what Esther did.
What I think we should see from these verses is that all of us are born into this world where and when the Lord allows. Like Esther’s beauty, we are simply given talents and features. None of this is necessarily of our choosing at all. but it is precisely the world in which we will or will not live out faith. Godless Persia is a place of monstrous cruelties, yet even there we can find two people of faith who show us what it means to live a life of love.
Like them, we all will simply have to “bloom where we’re planted.”
No comments:
Post a Comment