From Chapter 4 through the end of the book, we see a strong ezer woman taking on a villain and dealing politically in ways unprecedented for women in that culture. In the process, the harem queen became a powerful woman. In the short book of Esther you can read the risky actions Esther took to persuade the king to issue a decree giving Jews the right to defend themselves. Her people were in peril, and their problem became her problem because she was in the best position to do something about it.Įven though she trained to be a submissive harem girl, Esther, the ezer woman, found inner strength to take a stand for the sake of others. She came to understand that her high position was not just a privilege to be enjoyed, but a high responsibility to be used to save others. Or she could take her life in her hands and do what she could to save her people. She could continue to conceal her Jewishness and spend the rest of her days as first lady of Xerxes' harem. This frightened harem-girl-become-queen could not imagine that she could do anything about the decree, but she finally agreed to go to the king, asserting to Mordecai, "If I perish, I perish" (Esther 4:16). Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” (Esther 4:13-14) For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. When Esther heard about the decree, she sent word to Mordecai, who responded, " Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. Due to the intractability of the Law of the Medes and Persians, once Xerxes signed that edict (not knowing that his queen was one of the hated Jews), nothing could overturn it. Meanwhile Haman succeeded in convincing Xerxes that every Jew in the Persian Empire should be killed. The one fact about her that remained hidden was that she was a Jew. At the end, Esther finished first in the pageant and was crowned queen of the realm. But who would succeed her? A beauty contest was held to locate the most beautiful virgins in all 127 provinces of Persia, and Mordecai's niece, Esther, was among those brought to the palace to undergo the year-long beauty treatment required before presentation to the king. Such impertinence must be punished, and Vashti was deposed as queen. Meanwhile the king had another problem: his queen, Vashti, had refused his request to display her beauty before a raucous, drunken crowd of men feasting with the king. Anxious to get rid of this unruly Jew, he concocted plan to rid the kingdom of all Hebrews. Mordecai's business location was just outside the palace gates, and whenever Haman entered the palace, he had to pass a man who refused to bow to him. He hated the Jews and especially a particular Jew named Mordecai. The king's right-hand man was Haman, a man more evil even than the king. The biblical book of Esther opens with Jews in the seventy-year exile under the rule of a capricious and despotic Persian king known to historians as Xerxes. The conquest of Judah by the Babylonians was soon followed by conquest of Babylon by the Medes and Persians. Yet a desperate situation forced her to into the spotlight, where she realized she had more power than she thought, indeed the power to change the political climate for all the Jews in Persia. Learning From the Psalms How to Pray Through Your WorkĮsther was a woman who thought she had no influence over her husband or over matters of importance.Beyond Rank and Power: What Philemon Tells Us About Leadership.Evangelism - Sharing the Gospel at Work.
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