Esther 9:5-11 – “A Spine”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁵and the Jews struck in all of ones being hostile to them from a blow of a sword and killing and destruction and they did in ones hating them according to their desire. ⁶And in Shushan the citadel, the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men, ⁷and Parshandatha and Dalphon and Aspatha ⁸and Paratha and Adalya and Aridatha ⁹and Pamashta and Arisai and Aridai and Vaizatha, ¹⁰the ten of the sons of Haman the son of Hamedatha, the enemy of the Jews, they killed and in the spoil they did not send out their hand. ¹¹In the day the this came the number of the ones being killed in Shushan the citadel to the face of the king.

As I’ve noted before, this passage is highly offensive to the ears of us living in the 21^st. century. “How unchristian!,” we cry. I addressed this very matter back under 8:10-14. There I said, and I’ll repeat it here: “I believe such objections arise from what is a sadly immature, unstudied understanding of faith.” In a day of far greater spiritual men, Joseph Exell wrote (ca. 1880):

“Justice ought to be tempered by mercy. But there may be a danger of degenerating into what we may call sentimentalism. We seem to see the working of this feeling in the present day. We would not deal harshly, but we must deal justly, with the criminal classes. We must have respect to the welfare of society as a great whole. In reading some of the Old Testament accounts of slaughters and battles, we must not follow our own modern feelings; and we must make all due and proper allowance for the difference of times and of dispensations. After all proper allowances have been made, there will still be about those accounts that which is to us inexplicable on modern and even New Testament principles. Here are great slaughters that may well appear to us very strange. However, the narrative does not warrant the assumption that there was anything vindictive on the part of Esther or Mordecai. The Jews slew in self-defence. They killed only the men; they did not kill for personal enrichment, for on the spoil laid they not their hand. Let us seek to gather instruction from the whole narrative.”

That of course is our intent, “to gather instruction from the whole narrative.” What we should learn from Esther, Mordecai, and the Jews is that there are in fact evil people in this world and that they must be dealt with in accordance with their evil. Especially when in positions of leadership, one of our important functions must be to deal with evil, to deal decisively with those who threaten the peace and prosperity of everyone else. That is not “unchristian.” Is not Romans 13 in the New Testament? “The authorities that exist have been established by God…For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong..For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Paul told Timothy to teach the people to pray “for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives…This is good, and pleases God our Savior…” (I Tim. 2:2,3).

Jesus Himself said in Luke 16:8, “…the people of this world are often wiser in dealing with their own kind than are the children of the light.” Modern, immature, childish people who call themselves Christians may want to fantasize about “the inherent goodness of man.” They may want to think it is “Christian” not to deal decisively with those who threaten everyone else, but what that will be is not admirable but rather a complete dereliction of their duty. Justice demands that good people be protected and bad people punished. That was true in the Old Testament and it is still true in the New.

What do we see in this passage? How does the Bible itself describe Haman’s people? They are described in vv.1 and 5 as, “the enemies of the Jews…those who hated them.” In v.2, they are described as “those determined to destroy them.” In v.10, Haman is again called “the enemy of the Jews,” and in v.16, they are again called “their enemies.” The word “enemy” means someone who is actually hostile toward you. The word “hate” means exactly that, and again note these people were “determined to destroy” the Jewish people. Realize here, we are not talking about nice people who should be dealt with kindly. Even Xerxes himself, had he been a good king, would not and should not have tolerated such animosity in his kingdom. These Jewish people were his subjects. They have done absolutely nothing to deserve such hatred. He should have been the first to protect them. Unfortunately, he was too indolent and self-absorbed to do his duty, but fortunately the Lord had brought Mordecai and Esther to the zenith of the Persian government and they, at least, did their job. They protected the innocent and set in motion the punishment of the wicked.

If I may inject a little of Jewish tradition here, I’d like to, primarily because it actually makes sense. The old rabbis claimed that Haman’s sons had actually publicly vowed to avenge their father’s death. They and others like them had so fanned the flames of anti-semitism that, even in spite of the fact that Esther was queen, that Mordecai was the prime minister, that all the governors were supporting the Jews, still these men were resolved to carry out Haman’s decree on the 13^th of Adar. I would suggest that their publicly avowed hatred was so widely known that the Jews knew, going into the appointed day, exactly who these men were. That is also why Esther requested a second day to kill them – because, given only one day, the Jews were only able to kill 500 of these men in Shushan. Unfortunately, there were still 300 more just like them. The Jews knew exactly who they were, and had they not dealt with them, the same malignant hatred would have festered and eventually erupted again.

The ten sons of Haman were not just nice guys who sadly got associated with their father’s misfortunes. No. They bore in their hearts the same malignant evil. As long as they lived, the Jewish people were in danger. I want to assert here and say it very clearly, the “Christian” duty of anyone in leadership here is, in fact, to see these men executed. That is justice. In any land, the righteous should not have to live in fear of the unrighteous. Rather, the unrighteous should live in dread of what the righteous will do to them if they’re ever caught! In the workplace, evil people should be fired. In schools, they should be expelled. The people who only want to live in peace and quiet, the people who are more than happy to just live their lives and leave everyone else alone, should be free to do so. And it is the responsibility of good government, good leadership to make sure that happens. Esther and Mordecai knew it. We should too.

It's interesting that even in our age of weak-willed, sentimental (as Exell called it) permissiveness, we’ve had to coin the term “tough love.” Why? Because somehow or another we can’t escape the realization that invariably there are times when our childish, twisted view of mercy just doesn’t work. Sometimes you just have to “get tough.” Is that “unchristian?” I think not. Real leaders are people with spines, people who will use their authority to promote the peace and prosperity of those who are ready to “get along” and respect everyone else they live and work with.

Esther and Mordecai would teach us that real faith gives leaders a spine!

Esther 9:3-4 – “Greatness”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

 ³And the all of the princes of the provinces and the satraps and the governors and the ones doing the royal business which [was] to the king [were] ones lifting up the Jews because the fear of Mordecai had fallen upon them, ⁴because great [was] Mordecai in the house of the king and his name one going [out] in the all of the provinces because the man Mordecai [was] one going and great,…

Once again, I want to pause here and consider the man Mordecai. We find him here having become what the world (and the Biblical text itself) calls a “great” man. He has risen to the position of prime minister of perhaps the wealthiest nation in history. The position itself no doubt brought him enormous wealth, but it also gave him great power. He is a great man.

What I want to observe is what made him “great.” There was a day when a much younger Mordecai stood at a funeral and said, “I’ll take care of her,” and he became the adoptive father of his little cousin Hadassah, whom the Persians came to call Esther. We don’t know what his financial resources were at that time, but, regardless, he was taking on the expenses of feeding and clothing and doctoring this little girl who wasn’t actually his daughter. Not only was he willing to give up a portion of his finances, it also cost him his time. As we read earlier, he didn’t just give her a bed to sleep in, the text says literally he “took her to daughter.” He was a man who, having adopted her, gave her all the fatherly love and attention he’d have given a girl who really was his daughter. We saw him in 2:11 pacing back and forth outside Esther’s door worrying over “her peace.”

Then we saw him faithfully tending to his job “sitting at the king’s gate.” We don’t know what his responsibilities were, but when he overheard Bigthan and Teresh plotting against the king, he risked his own life to expose the plot and protect his sovereign’s life. Then we saw him go on faithfully doing his job even though he received no reward or even recognition for the great service he had done for his boss, the king.

What is my point? My point is to note that Mordecai’s “greatness” wasn’t first of all a position he had attained. He became the prime minister because he was great. He was a great man in the quiet of his own home where a little orphaned girl lacked for nothing. He was a great man at his job, where others could count on him to do “the right thing” even at great risk to himself. Let us stop and ask, “How would you describe a man whom you personally knew to be a very dedicated father at home and a man you can count on at his job?” I think we would all agree that, regardless of whatever position he had attained in this world, he would be a great man. Even if he was poor as a pauper, we would observe him with a very deep respect.

My point is to note that Mordecai’s greatness came not from the position he attained but rather from the man he was. He was “great” in the privacy of his own home and that was the source of his “greatness” in public. Whether or not he had ever become “great” publicly, he still would have been a great man.

Our world today would do well to note this lesson before us. All around us people attain to “greatness” while they themselves are nothing of the kind. Haman was an extreme example, but he was still an example. He was a bad man who manipulated his way into a position of greatness. In his case, he lost that position (and his life) specifically because of the poverty of his character. Whether he’d lost his position or not, the fact would have remained he was a bad man. As you and I would look around today, it is a rare thing to see a good person who’s attained to “greatness.” In government, in the business world, even in our own workplaces, it would seem the Haman's of this world are almost always the ones in charge.

That hasn’t always been the case. I believe men like George Washington and Samuel Adams (and many of the fathers of our nation) were truly good men. It is not at all surprising that what they forged was a great nation! I believe Abraham Lincoln was truly a good man who became great. More recently, Ronald Reagan was such a man. He won the hearts of the American people because they could see he really was a good man. He did a great job because he was a great man.

That is rarely true today. Unfortunately, you and I can’t change the world we live in. Regardless of what you or I do, this world will go on being run by corrupt, evil people (like Haman). What we can change is us. Like Mordecai, we can hear the Lord say, “My son, give Me your heart…” We can strive to be, in the privacy of our homes and in the quiet of our own lives, people of genuine character. That, of course, is integrity, to be who I am because I’m determined to be, to be who I am regardless of whether or not it ever gets me “greatness” in this world. Is that not exactly what believers should always be?

It’s not really surprising that the OT ends with the Lord saying that when He comes, He’ll “turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and children to their fathers.” What is He saying? He’s saying the result of His kind of working is to make people who are great at home.

May that be true of you and me, and may the Lord raise up among us more Mordecai’s, people who show the world what “greatness” is really all about!

Esther 9:1-2 – “Dawn”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹And in the twelfth month, it [being] the month of Adar, in the thirteenth day, in which arrived the word of the king and his law to be done; in the day which the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower in them, and it was overturned which the Jews, they overpowered in ones hating them, ²the Jews assembled in their cities in the all of the provinces of the king Xerxes to stretch out a hand in ones seeking their harm and a man did not stand to their faces because the fear of them fell upon the all of the people.

For me, these two verses only further highlight my observations from chapter 8. If I may run ahead, may I say, in a sense, this is the big takeaway of this book, and further, perhaps it could be said it is the big takeaway from the entire Bible itself: “It is often darkest just before dawn.” In so many ways, we all have our “month of Adar,” that “thirteenth day”—that ominous future we fear, that day when our “enemies” hope to “overpower” us. Sometimes it is hard to see any hope at all. Just like our Jewish friends here in the book of Esther, we all have to deal with what appears to be a very threatening world, I’m reminded of Winston Churchill’s words in the pits of World War II, “This is England’s darkest hour.”  

For myself and as I’ve lamented before, I have spent the better part of my life living in the present but fearing the future. These last few years I have been trying to change that perspective. I’ve learned from the Bible that I may actually get thrown into a fiery furnace, or I may find myself, like Ruth, standing by the Jordan River, a destitute, hopeless, foreign widow, or, as we learn from Esther, the government itself may have set a date to come and kill me and all my family—yet my God still reigns!

Yes, it may be “the darkest hour,” yet, because our God reigns, the dawn may be about to break! To belabor the point for just a little longer, just as we find here in the book of Esther, this world fearfully appears to be a world without God. It would seem in a hundred million ways this world is daily conspiring to kill me, to crush me, to steal whatever hopes I may have entertained. As I would look ahead (without God), it would seem there is little hope and rather almost certain despair.

But the fact is there is a God and He is quite present and quite involved. “Be still and know that I am God,” He urges us. All things will work together for your good! This is faith itself—to see the God who is unseeable, to believe His promises, to believe His wisdom and power and His plans to “do me good and not to harm me, to give me a future and a hope!” Moses and the people of Israel were enslaved by the most powerful nation on earth, yet what does it say of Moses, “He persevered, because he saw Him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:26).

One of the things I realized was that what I was fearing really was “a world without God.” What I mean is that for me to “worry” was me imagining a future where somehow God wasn’t there. That of course is ludicrous. He is and always will be the same God who has been faithful to me all day every day of the life I’ve lived. He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” He is a “faithful Creator.” I know that in the past. I live it in the present. Yet, I was forgetting that was also my future. Daniel’s three friends taught me that I not only don’t have to fear the future, I can actually run into it, excited to see what the Lord has cooked up. He is my future.

The darkest day in all history is the day they laid Jesus’ dead body in a tomb and sealed the door shut. Yet what happened? Suddenly the tomb burst open, the veil of the Temple was rent from top to bottom, and our victorious Savior King Jesus was alive again! It really was darkest just before dawn. And, oh what a dawn! Death itself conquered and Heaven won!

I wonder if it isn’t part of God’s great fractal of our existence – this darkness before dawn? He set up the very world in which we exist so that every single night it gets very, very dark, and yet every morning there is a dawn. Were we supposed to “get the point?” I hope I do. I hope the book of Esther only further cements in my heart, “I’ve no cause for worry or for fear!” Mine never again needs to be a “world without God.” He was there on Esther’s “thirteenth day of Adar,” and He’ll be there for every one of mine. Even though “the enemies of the Jews had hoped to overpower them,” yet “the tables were turned and the Jews got the upper hand over those who hated them.”

No wonder Paul can write, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13).

Hope. What we all need. Even in our darkest hours, may we all learn to trust that the dawn is coming! Esther would be so happy to know that her story somehow encouraged you and me!

The following is a quote from Alexander Maclaren (ca. 1875). It’s so good, I’m attaching it in its entirety:

“Foresight and foreboding are two very different things. It is not that the one is the exaggeration of the other, but the one is opposed to the other. The more a man looks forward in the exercise of foresight, the less he does so in the exercise of foreboding; and the more he is tortured by anxious thoughts about a possible future, the less clear vision has he of a likely future, and the less power to influence it.

What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but it empties today of its strength; it does not make you escape the evil, it makes you unfit to cope with it when it comes; it does not bless tomorrow, and it robs today. For every day has its own burden. Sufficient for each day is the evil which properly belongs to it. Do not add tomorrow’s to today’s. Do not drag the future into the present. The present has enough to do with its own proper concerns. We have always strength to bear the evil when it comes. We have not strength to bear the foreboding of it. As thy day, thy strength shall be. In strict proportion to the existing exigencies will be the God-given power; but if you cram and condense today’s sorrows by experience, and tomorrow’s sorrows by anticipation, into the narrow round of the one four and twenty hours, there is no promise that as that day thy strength shall be.

God gives us power to bear all the sorrows of His making; but He does not give us power to bear the sorrows of our own making, which the anticipation of sorrow most assuredly is.

Our hope should make us buoyant, and should keep us firm. It is an anchor of the soul. All men live by hope, even when it is fixed upon the changing and uncertain things of this world. But the hopes of men, who have not their hearts fixed upon God, try to grapple themselves on the cloud-rack that rolls along the flanks of the mountains, and our hopes pierce within that veil and lay hold of the Rock of Ages that towers above the flying vapours. Let us then be strong, for our future is not a dim peradventure, or a vague dream, nor a fancy of our own, nor a wish turning itself into a vision; but it is made and certified by Him who is God of all past and of all the present. It is built upon His word, and the brightest hope of all its brightness is the enjoyment of more of His presence and the possession of more of His likeness. That hope is certain. Therefore let us live in it. ‘Reach forth unto the things that are before.’”