Esther 2:1-4 “Monstrous Cruelty”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹After the events of these, the anger of the king Xerxes abated. He remembered Vashti and what she did and what was decreed upon her. ²And the servants of the king, ones ministering to him, said, “Let them seek to the king young women virgins beautiful of appearance. ³Let the king entrust overseers in the all of the provinces of his kingdom and let them gather every young woman virgin beautiful of appearance to Shushan the citadel to the house of the women to the hand of Hegai, the eunuch of the king, one keeping the women to give their beauty treatments. ⁴and the young woman which is good in the eyes of the king, let her be queen instead of Vashti, and the word was good in the eyes of the king and he did thus.

Here we are again, in this godless world, reading about what godless people do and how they live their godless lives. Isn’t it interesting to note that God is love – and what would you expect to find then in a godless world, in a world where no one acknowledges Him or even pauses to consider what He might desire for them?  Would you expect to find love? No. And what do we find? Monstrous cruelty. If people don’t want to live in God’s kingdom, there is only one other alternative. They think they’re living in “their” kingdom, but, by pushing God away, they make themselves the unknowing slaves of Satan, who is a murderer and a liar and a thief. Because of grace, the Lord may still send His sun to shine on the evil as well as the good – He may allow people to enjoy some glimpses of love and relationships – but on the whole, you cannot live a life of love without embracing the God of love. Without the God of love humans quickly devolve into lives of monstrous cruelty.

That is precisely what we see recorded. Monstrous cruelty. Here we have an oriental king who probably already has 300 wives and 700 concubines (like wicked Solomon), if not more. Because he is wicked and can’t commit his love to any single woman, now it turns out he needs more. How many more does he need? They are all agreed he only needs one queen. But how many girls must be brought into his harem, from which he can pick this one queen? “Let the king entrust overseers in the all of the provinces of his kingdom and let them gather every young woman virgin beautiful of appearance to Shushan the citadel.” What do you think? 100? 200?

The cruelty is almost unbearable to even consider. Here are all these beautiful young girls. Probably most have young men with their eye on them. No doubt their parents love them. Now, all of a sudden, because the leader of their nation is a wicked, selfish, perverted jerk, these girls are ripped away from their families, from the quiet happy life they had envisioned, and drug away to live in the king’s prison, his toy box full of beautiful girls. They’ll never come home again. They’ll never get to marry their sweetheart. They very likely will never spend 10 minutes with this king, much less have any chance of actually getting to bear children. Once they get drug away, essentially, their life is over. They will spend the rest of their lives locked up in the “house of the women,” nothing but toys in a toy box, waiting until this evil man wants to play with them. No real husband. No home to decorate. No children. No grandchildren.

And who is in charge of them? Hegai, the eunuch of the king. The eunuch. Of course we all know what a eunuch is. He is a castrated man. The word translated “eunuch” could at times simply refer to a man who served the king, however, and especially in this case, there is no doubt that Hegai is exactly that – a castrated man. And why? Well, for obvious reasons. What would anyone expect to get if they put a young man in charge of an entire castle full of beautiful girls? Since a wicked, selfish king like Xerxes wants to have a entire harem of beautiful girls, he instantly needs to worry about any man who would have any possible contact with them. And so what should he do? Draft some young men and have them castrated. Then he doesn’t have to worry about any unwanted babies. Isn’t that convenient for him?

But what about Hegai? Did he have a sweetheart? Did he want to marry? Did he want to be a husband and a father? Surely he did. But where is he today? Just another prisoner with nothing to do but, like all the poor girls, just live out his life and die.

All these young men. All these young women. So many dreams. But all shattered on the rocks of this one wicked, selfish man’s lusts.

Monstrous cruelty.

But, back to our story, this is the world Mordecai and Esther live in. They will, in fact, both get trapped in this very world of monstrous cruelty. If that were the end of the matter for them both, you’d think they might just as well commit suicide. Why even go on living? The answer of course is all wrapped in the name Jesus. Even in the cruelest of worlds, the Lord is still working out for us His promises of faith, hope, and love, and, as we live in this bubble of hope, He is using us to call others out of that darkness.

He calls us to remember that “at one time, we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” (Titus 3:3). He tells us “Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may be blameless and harmless, children of God, without fault in a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine like lights in the world” (Phil. 3:13,14). Jesus came “to seek and to save that which was lost” and He’s still doing that today through the lives of Esther’s and Mordecai’s like you and me.

Right off the bat, can we openly admit that this world Esther lives in is one of monstrous cruelty? Can we all agree that we are not just being morose? We’re not exaggerating. We’re not just being negative. We are being realistic. This is the world we find Esther and Mordecai living in, and it is your world and mine as well. Ours may not seem this bad today (thankfully), but we’ll all need the faith of an Esther to go on living a life of hope and love as we, like her, face whatever this world dishes out for us today.

God help us. May He, through us, “spread everywhere the fragrance of Christ.”

 

Esther 1:13-22 “In His Presence”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹³And the king spoke to the wise men knowing the times because thus [was] the way of the king to face of all ones knowing law and judgment, ¹⁴and the ones approaching to him [were] Carshena, Shetar, Admata, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, Memucan, the seven princes of Persia and Media, ones seeing the face of the king, dwelling [in] the chief place of the kingdom. ¹⁵“In law, what to be done to Queen Vashti upon which not she has done the command of the king Xerxes in the hand of the eunuchs?” ¹⁶And Memucan said to the face of the king and the princes, “Not upon the king only Vashti the queen did wrong because upon the all of the princes and upon the all of the people which [are] in the all of the provinces of the king Xerxes, ¹⁷because the matter of the queen will go out upon the all of the women to despise their husbands, in their eyes in their saying, ‘The king Xerxes said to bring in Vashti the queen to his face and not she came,’  ¹⁸and the day of the this the princesses of Persia and Media who have heard the matter of the queen will say [the same thing] to the all of the princes of the king and [there shall be] thus much contempt and strife. ¹⁹If upon the king it is pleasing, let him send out a royal decree from before him and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Media and not let it be changed, that Vashti may not come to the face of the king Xerxes and her royal position the king should give to a (female) neighbor, one better from her. ²⁰And the decree of the king which he will make will be heard in the all of his kingdom because great [it] is and the all of the women will give honor to their husbands, to great and unto small,” ²¹and the word was good in the eyes of the king and the princes and the king did according to the word of Memucan, ²²and he sent documents to the all of the provinces of the king, to province and province, according to its writing, and to people and people, according to its language so that every man may be ruling in his house and speaking  according to the language of his people.

I have to say, after studying these verses and reading the comments of a great deal of authors, I find myself almost exasperated. Everyone of course finds much in this passage to comment on and question. “Was Vashti justified to disobey the king?” “Is the king right to divorce her over it?” “Are the princes really giving him wise counsel or just flattering him?” “Is there an element of truth in their advice, or are they just being cruel tyrants over the women of the kingdom?” “Is this response simply necessary in a real world where people really do follow bad examples?” And on and on.

After a while one finds himself saying, “Well, yes that is true, but…, and yes, that is true too, but…, and no, that is just plain wrong, and so is that, and…, but…”

What is going on? Why is it not clear exactly who is right or wrong or what is true and what is not? Frankly, I think the answer to that question is highly significant to our story. The reason why right and wrong in this story are so balled up is precisely because what we have is a bunch of completely godless people who care absolutely nothing for the true and living God, who are simply careening around through life doing whatever appeals to them and trying to get whatever it is they want. This is the same careless, godless world Jesus described as “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage…” In that kind of world, people do some things right but also a lot of things wrong. In that kind of world, sometimes it’s hard to decide who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

It’s basically just a big moral mess.

Kind of like our world.

Kind of like the world you and I face every day at work, in our extended families, in our communities, in the kids’ soccer league, and pretty much everywhere we go.

It is a world without God.

It is the world you and I live in and it is the world Esther and Mordecai live in. You and I can study the Bible and think about God’s truth and be very aware all through our day that God is very real, that He is present, that there is very clear right and wrong for us. That is, of course, precisely what we do and because we do have the moral compass of the Bible in our hearts, we can make good choices, we can be all too aware when we’ve made bad choices, and in general, we can enjoy the peace of living in what is a well-ordered world – the world of God’s kingdom. But as we’re living in that world in our own hearts, we physically live in this world. That’s all part of being “in this world, but not of it.”

Really, the world we live in is a world where God simply does not exist. (Of course He does, but I’m talking about how people think). At work, no one asks, “What does the Lord think?” No one says, “We should pray about this.” No one asks God’s blessing on our plans or thanks Him for what is accomplished. He doesn’t exist. We all just careen around doing whatever seems right in our own eyes and whatever we think will get us whatever it is we want. And that is precisely why it becomes such a confusing ball of who’s right and who’s wrong? And such a ball of “That’s a good thing…and that’s a bad thing.”

Think back through this entire first chapter. From the very beginning and every verse along the way, we can debate endlessly about whether this or that is right. Is it right or wrong for Xerxes to live in such luxury? Is it right or wrong to throw a 180-day party? Is he commendable because he said, “No one should be forced. Everyone should be allowed to drink as he wishes?” Is he wrong to ask Vashti to appear? Is she being virtuous or wrong to refuse him? As I asked above, are the guys really giving him good advice or just flattering him?

What a messed up world.

Sounds familiar.

The hope, however, for you and me, is that this story is going somewhere. God may not exist in the world of chapter one, but He is nevertheless quite real and quite present. The people in chapter one may utterly ignore Him but He is in fact carefully controlling even their wickedness. For all their twisted machinations, the Lord is setting it all up to bring our Esther to the throne. And that same God is quite real and quite present in our world too. The same God who is working all things together for my good in my home and in my personal life – that same God goes with me to work.

Although others may not see it, I can see His hand in all that I do. I can pray His blessing on my projects. I can thank Him when things succeed and pray for grace when they fail. I can ask His help when I face difficult assignments. I can do my work sincerely believing that what I’m doing is the good He wants done for the people I serve. My work is His kindness to my world. Because He is very real, I can work every second hoping that somehow He is using me to touch the lives of everyone I work with and interact with. I can do all of this, though, to everyone else, He simply does not exist!

I do want to insert here that I am very thankful I work for a very good company. It isn’t a “Christian” company or even trying to be, but there are a number of Christian people I work with, and there is a sense of morality in all we do. In my office, the men respect the women, everyone works hard and tries to be honest, and we sincerely try to do good for our clients. I have worked in places where you weren’t sure who was sleeping with who, where we were instructed to lie, and no one really cared what work we got done. So, I am very thankful for all that is right about where I work. However, all that said, it still is part of this world. Basically I think it is true that even “religious” people see their religion as something that happens on Sunday mornings and other than that, God really does not even exist.

But you and I, like Esther, must be different. We need to go out into our worlds to literally live in the presence of God whether others do or not. We can go in the peace of knowing He is present and very much in control and that all His promises are ours to have and to hold all day every day, in everything we face. Even at 2:00 on Tuesday afternoon, we can “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”

May the godless book of Esther today remind us and encourage us to live in His presence!

 

Esther 1:10-12 “A Different Kind of Kingdom”

  Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

¹⁰In the day of the seventh, because pleasing the heart of the king in wine, he said to Mehuman, Bizta, Harbona, Bigta, and Abagta, Zetar, and Karkas, the seven eunuchs serving the face of the king Xerxes, ¹¹to bring in Vashti, the queen, to the face of the king with a crown of royalty to exhibit to the people and the princes her beauty because beautiful [was] her appearance. ¹²And the queen Vashti refused to come in the word of the king which [was] in the hand of the eunuchs and the king was very angry and his anger burned in him.

This is a rather insightful passage into the workings of godless hearts. Xerxes has been throwing a party for six months, then follows it with one last week of festivities, all for the expressed purpose of showing the whole world how great he is. For the entire six months and a week, he has been surrounded by drooling sycophants, who each and every one played along with his extravagant ruse, drank his wine, ate his delicacies, and hoped, through it all, to gain some element of Xerxes’ wealth to fatten their own accounts. Like good little marionettes, they each have dutifully bowed at his feet, flattered him to his face, and assured him that, in fact, he is completely amazing.

Then, suddenly, something utterly unthinkable happens. Vashti says, “No.” He wants to use her for one more display of his greatness, so he sends his seven eunuchs to command her, but she won’t come. After six months and a week of fine food, wine, and flattery, suddenly the king runs into an insurmountable obstacle. He runs headlong into a wall which proves he’s not really so great, that he is only a man, that, in fact, he lives in a world over which he has no final control.

And what is that wall? What is that insurmountable obstacle? It is what has been called the unassailable citadel of the human heart – the one thing no king can command. As Xerxes shows, a king may rule over 127 provinces, enjoy seemingly unlimited wealth, be surrounded by bowing servants, and yet there is one thing utterly beyond the power of his throne – their hearts. It is true, given enough power, a king (or boss) can get almost anyone to say and do almost anything, but even after six months and a week of royal extravagance, there is still one thing he has not conquered: their hearts.

That fact is hidden behind all their public displays of flattery until one single person actually lets their heart show. Vashti says, “No.” At this point, I’d like to inject that Xerxes could have easily just had her executed and been done with her. But I hope anyone reading this can see that even if he did, it wouldn’t change her heart or the heart of one single person watching. It would only prove he has the power to take her life. But to take someone’s life is something infinitely easier than to gain their heart. Her refusal leaves Xerxes “burning with anger.” And why? Because the truth of his weakness has been exposed. He cannot command this woman’s heart.

Herein lies the unfathomable distance between the way of this world and the way of God’s grace. Jesus said, “The rulers of this world lord it over them and their great ones exercise authority upon them, but it shall not be so among you. Whoever would be great among you must be your servant…” (Mark 10:42,43). And grace says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness” (Jer. 31:3). The thing about the Lord is that He wants our hearts. It means nothing to Him to somehow exact obedience out of people when the truth is that their hearts are far from Him. Rather than bludgeoning us into some sort of compliance, He wants us to know Him, to love Him, to sincerely want to do right and love others, and He would accomplish that by drawing us with His grace.

All of us humans ought to take a cue from Him and realize that it is far better to win people with grace, than simply to overpower them into obeisance. Whether we’re kings or bosses or parents, we should strive to draw people like the Lord does. If you gain their heart, you have won their best. If we think we can simply command, just because we have the power to do it, sooner or later we’ll come face to face with the deep disappointment that all the outward compliance was nothing but a show. Xerxes had almost unlimited power, yet his day is ruined by one woman who says, “No.” He may have thought he had her under his thumb, but once again, he has to find out you cannot command a human heart. It can only be wooed.

But then what are we to make of Vashti’s refusal? First of all, let us be reminded we are dealing with godless people, so let’s not make saints out of either party. If you read a lot of the commentaries, there is almost endless chatter about the Persian culture and if Xerxes’ request in itself would have been completely inappropriate, and if somehow Vashti’s refusal was “right.” That may or may not be the case, but I can’t personally escape from the fact that he is the king. Basically, if you want to refuse him, you’d better realize there will be consequences. In this case especially, whatever may have been Vashti’s reluctance, she should have known that to refuse him in this very public situation almost drove him to have to respond harshly. In spite of everything I said above about wooing hearts, a king must maintain order in his kingdom. Especially when people spit in his face and challenge his authority, there will need to be some very serious repercussions if he is to maintain the respect and order of his kingdom.

Just to be fair to her, what very well could be the case is that she’s completely exasperated, that she’s sick of being this conceited monarch’s play toy, to the point where she simply doesn’t care any more. Maybe she’d rather be dead than go on with the life he makes her live? All that said, however, and whatever may have been Vashti’s reasons, yet her response reminds us that drawing a line in the sand with a very powerful king, we will lose.

As you and I go out to work in our godless world, we will find ourselves in a culture where the “rulers” will generally only care that you comply. They simply will not care how you feel or what concerns you may have. We may occasionally enjoy good bosses who really do make an effort to care, but we should go fully expecting that not to be the case. When and if we come to some place where (like Daniel and his friends) we have to stand our ground, we just need to realize we may pay dearly for it. Unlike Vashti who simply refused and put the king on the spot in front of all the people and his princes, you and I should be like Daniel and try to address issues quietly and behind the scenes, so we don’t make our bosses “look bad.” The same grace we extend to our subordinates, we should seek to extend even to our bosses, though our very necks (or jobs) may be on the line.

There may be a great deal more to ponder from this exchange between Xerxes and Vashti, but may we at least see in it all the very world we live in, and may we be reminded that our Lord runs a very different kind of kingdom!