Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
1And it was in the days of Ahaseurus (he [was the] Ahaseurus reigning from India and upon Cush, seven and twenty and a hundred provinces).
And so I am embarking on a study of the book of Esther. This is an immediately pleasant undertaking for me since our Queen is the namesake for my youngest daughter, Esther. My daughter Esther (whom we affectionately called “Bess”) has always personified everything we see in Queen Esther. Bess was seemingly born with a regal deportment. I’ve always thought she belonged in a palace, dressed in the finest of clothing and adorned in jewels. She would herself have made any king a beautiful queen. But then, she shares with Esther not only her royal beauty but also her amazing resolve and courage. Time and again I’ve watched as our Bess saw what needed to be done and then pushed ahead, in spite of what to others might have seemed insurmountable obstacles. Like Queen Esther, I can almost hear her say, “…and if I die, I die.”
It certainly adds an enormous element of pleasure for me to study this book as it constantly reminds me of my beautiful daughter, of whom I am enormously proud.
I’m also looking forward to studying this book as it is the other “girl” book of the Bible, along with Ruth. I enjoyed a study of the book of Ruth several years ago, in part also because it constantly reminded me of my oldest daughter Ruthie! I have my two beautiful daughters and their names reflect the two “girl” books of the Bible. What intrigues me, comparing the two books, is that I believe they portray for us the two opposite sides of living in this world.
What do I mean? Ruth is a book set in Israel. They’re in “the right place.” The people acknowledge the Lord in practically every sentence they speak. The Lord and faith in Him are very important to them and the people around them. The book of Esther is set in Persia (modern Iran). It is seriously “the wrong place.” Our Lord and faith in Him mean absolutely nothing to the people among whom Esther lives. Interestingly, there is not one mention of God in the entire book. He is profoundly present in the book of Ruth and though He certainly works wondrously in the book of Esther, He isn’t even mentioned here.
Once again, I believe what the Lord is doing for you and me is very deliberately portraying for us what it’s like to live in this world. For people of faith, He is in fact very present and it is a glorious thing to be surrounded by other people who share that faith. Yet we live in a world where it is often true they care nothing about Him. They live their lives all day every day utterly ignoring Him. In fact, I would suggest that the world Esther lives in is precisely the world in which most of us have to work and live.
It is great if you and I get to work and live “in the right place” and be surrounded by other people of faith. However, that is rarely the case. Most of us have no choice but to work and live in what is in reality Esther’s Persia – singing in our hearts, “This world is not my home...,” and having to live our faith amongst people who couldn’t care less about the Lord or what is right and wrong. It would be easy in that world to forget God even exists or has anything to do with the trials and troubles we face every day.
Esther is a book to remind us that, even in that kind of world – a world where it would seem God doesn’t even exist – He is still quite present, quite active, and still lovingly attentive to those troubles we face.
I suppose I should mention that I am very aware of all the “scholarly” chitter-chatter about this book, but I’ll not pay it much mind. The Bible is not a book to be dissected on the table like some formaldehyde-soaked frog. It is fine to research the time and place and authorship of any book (I’m an engineer – I love to study!), but with the Bible, the goal is to know God, to read what is written as His Word. To go to the Bible for any other reason guarantees final failure. Peter mentions people who struggle with the many things “hard to be understood” and says they “wrestle to their own destruction, as they do with all the rest of the Scriptures.” I will study everything I can get my hands on, but when it’s all said and done, I want to know I’ve met God, that He has taught me some little bit more of how to see my life and this world through His eyes. His goal is to redeem me – to pick up the mess of who I am and to slowly, surely change me into the person He intends me to be.
With that all said, there is good evidence to understand that this Ahaseurus is the Xerxes who was the son of Darius and Atossa (the daughter of Cyrus the Great), and that his reign lasted from 486 to 465 BC. He is the Persian king who suffered monumental defeats at the hands of the Greeks, then returned to Persia to spend his time on building projects and such. Both the names “Ahaseurus” and “Xerxes” are feeble attempts to transliterate his Persian name which roughly ends up in English as “Khshayarsha.” Yeah, that’s bad, but hey, he’s from 2600 years ago and half way around the world. Even the transliterations are coming down to us through many different languages. If I had to transliterate the Hebrew even here in Esther, I’d spell it something like Akashverosh. Just for the ease of it, I’ll use his traditional English name of Ahaseurus.
Persia is the second world kingdom in Daniel’s prophecies from his chapters 2 and 7, the chest and arms of silver and the bear raised up on one side with three ribs in its mouth. Nebuchadnezzar and his Babylon was the head of gold. Nebuchadnezzar was an absolute monarch and had essentially conquered the civilized world. Now the Persian empire rules that world (the 127 provinces from India to Cush) but the king does have to, at times, submit to the “laws of the Medes and Persians.” He is not quite the absolute king that Nebuchadnezzar was. Nevertheless, history still remembers Ahaseurus as a cruel tyrant who (like most ancient kings) enjoyed the luxury flying into rages and killing anyone who displeased him.
So, right off the bat, this is Esther’s world. Neither she nor Mordecai get to decide whether they want to live their faith in this world. This is their world and if they want to live their faith, this is simply the world they’ll have to live it in. Sound familiar? It should. It’s the world you and me live in. Like the book of Daniel, the very setting of this book should provide you and me with oceans of practical wisdom how to pull off a life of faith in a world where God seemingly doesn’t even exist!
And so it begins…
No comments:
Post a Comment