What I Noticed Today (Esther 1-3)
There is a short introduction available for the book of Esther. You can read it here.
Note: Esther and Ruth are the only two books in the Bible named for women. Ruth was a Gentile who married a Jew and helped save the nation Israel. And Esther was a Jewess who married a Gentile and saved the nation from extermination.
Note: Esther is the only book of the Bible that never mentions God, yet it is clear that the hand of God is on the Jewish people throughout Esther’s story.
Note: The events of Esther take place in the time period between Ezra chapters 6-7.
Esther 1
In verse 1, the king of Persia, Xerxes, (most translations use ‘Ahasuerus’ which is the Hebrew equivalent of the Greek ‘Xerxes’), was in Suza, one of the three capitals of Persia.
Note: Xerxes, king of the Persian empire, ruled 21 years from 486-465 B.C.
In verses 3-4, in the third year of his reign (483 B.C.), Xerxes threw a party for the citizens of Suza that lasted 180 days.
In verses 5-12, at the end of this time, Xerxes held a week-long banquet.
- At the same time, Queen Vashti threw a party for the women.
- Xerxes commanded Vashti to come to him, but she refused.
In verses 10-22, Queen Vashti was deposed:
- After consulting experts in the law and justice, Xerxes decided to banish Vashti from the royal household and replace her with a new queen.
- Following the advice of Memucan, Xerxes sent letters to all the provinces stating that every man should be master of his own house.
Esther 2
In verses 1-4, searching for a new queen, Xerxes issued a command to bring beautiful young virgins into the capital and placed in his harem to undergo a year of beauty treatments.
Esther 1:5-7, is a flashback in the story to introduce Mordecai, a Benjaminite, who was Esther’s uncle. Esther’s parents had died. Mordecai adopted Esther and raised her as his own daughter.
In verses 8-14, along with other young women, Esther was brought to the king’s harem and placed under the care of Hegai (a eunuch who was in charge of the king’s harem).
- Hegai assigned seven servants to care for Esther and moved her to the best quarters in the harem.
- Esther hid her ethnic background while in the harem.
- Mordecai walked by the harem courtyard every day to learn how Esther was doing.
- After six-months of beauty treatments, a young woman would be brought to the king and the next day returned to a different harem. She would not see the king again unless he called for her by name.
In verses 15-20, Esther was called to be with Xerxes
- Esther was taken to Xerxes in the tenth month of the seventh year of his reign (4-years after the party when Vashti refused to come to Xerxes).
- Esther pleased Xerxes, so he made her queen in place of Vashti.
- Xerxes threw a banquet in her honor.
- Esther had still not revealed her ethnic background, just as Mordecai had instructed her.
In verses 21-23, one day when Mordecai was by the King’s gate, he overheard a plot by two of the king’s eunuchs to kill the king.
- He reported it to Queen Esther, and she told Xerxes.
- The men were investigated, the report verified, and they were hanged.
Note: The men were probably not hanged the way we think of hanging today. In the Persian empire, the usual form of “hanging” was to be impaled on a stake.
Esther 3
In verses 1-4, Xerxes promoted Haman to second in command to the king.
- The king had commanded that the people bow down to Haman to pay homage to his position, but day after day Mordecai refused to bow down.
- When questioned by the royal guards, Mordecai only told them that he was a Jew.
Note: We don’t know for sure why Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman since there was no Jewish law prohibiting him from doing so. One possibility is that Haman was an Amalekite. The Amalekites had been at war with the Jewish people since the Exodus. God had promised war with the Amalekites from generation to generation (Exodus 17:16).
In verses 5-6, when Haman learned about Mordecai’s refusal to bow down to him and that he was a Jew, he decided to kill not just Mordecai but to exterminate all Jews from Persian empire men, women, and children.
In verses 7-15, in the first month of the twelfth year of Xerxes (474 B.C.) Haman convinced Xerxes to allow him to exterminate all the Jews:
- Haman went to the king saying that the Jews followed their own laws, and did not obey the king’s laws.
- Therefore, he said, it was in the king’s best interest to kill them all.
- Haman even offered to pay 10,000 talents of silver (750,000 pounds) for the extermination of the Jews himself.
- The amount he offered was the equivalent of 2/3 of the entire kingdom’s annual income.
- The king agreed and issued the decree that all the Jews were to be killed on the thirteenth of Adar, 11 months later.
Note: The population of the ancient Persian empire was slightly over 49 million people, of which the Jews represented approximately 20%. So Haman planned to annihilate some 10 million men, women, and children.
Some thoughts for additional consideration:
- God’s hand is clearly at work in the lives of Mordecai and Esther. Out of all the women in the kingdom, Xerxes selected Esther to be the new queen. Mordecai is at the city gate at just the right time to foil an attempt to assassinate the king. Both events were part of God’s plan to save His people.
What did you notice in your study today? Feel free to visit the website and leave a question or a comment.
