Day 17 – Monday -- The Book of Esther

Day 17 – Monday

The Book of Esther

This book of the Bible is read by the Jewish community during the Feast of Purim. It is a story of survival. It takes place in Persia. The hero is Esther.

The cast of characters:
• King Xerxes (some versions use another form of the name: Ahasueras)
• Queen Vashi
• Esther (a Jew)
• Mordacai (a Jew and Esther’s cousin)
• Haman – close official of the King

The plot: Queen Vashi disobeys the King and is disposed of. The King holds a beauty contest and Esther wins, becoming Queen Esther. Haman hates all the Jews and plans to have them all killed. Mordacai finds out about the plan and asks Esther to intervene. Esther tells the King of Haman’s plan and asks for his intervention. The King has Haman hanged from a tower that Haman had built to have Mordacai hung from. The King declares the Jews are to be respected. With their new found freedom the Jews begin to defend themselves by force. They first kill 500 people, including the ten sons of Haman. Then they broaden their defense and kill 75,000 people. Mordacai establishes the two-day annual Feast of Purim (which happens around March 1) to celebrate the survival of their race.

The Jewish people have had a unique experience in history. They sensed that they had a sacred purpose as a people. The claim to have been given a sacred spiritual and ethical vision for living, summed up in the Ten Commandments. Yet, they have been persecuted and harassed more than any other people. They survived Haman; and they survived Hitler. They also survived the Church, whose teaching of contempt for the Jews grew out of a misreading of the Christian Scriptures and the sinfulness of the human heart. The Jews were excluded from society. They were expelled from nation after nation. They were herded into ghettos. They were lied about, slandered, beaten, tortured, and massacred. They were made to wander the earth. And yet, they still exist as a people.

The State of Israel is a political entity created by the result of World War II. It gives the Jewish people a homeland. Unfortunately, the powers that be after WWII were not careful and set up an impossible geo-political situation for Israel and the Palestinians. We should not equate today’s Israel with the Israel of Biblical times. The Jewish community of faith exists within Israel and in many other parts of the world. It seems to me that the fact of the continuing existence of the Jews as a scattered community of faith bears witness to their unique and sacred mission to the world. The Church needs to continue to repent of its anti-Semitic attitudes and actions, while not confusing the State of Israel with the community of faith.

The famous verse from this book is when Mordacai says to Esther: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (4.14, KJV)

Have you ever the feeling that God put you at a certain place at a certain time so that you could do something important?

A peculiar thing about the Book of Esther is that God is never mentioned. In one sense God is absent. But in another sense, God’s presence pervades the book in a hidden way. God works behind the scenes. As James Russel Lowell put it:

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,—
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.


God was indeed standing in the shadows throughout the Book of Esther. Not on center stage, but there nonetheless.

Finish this: As I look back on my life, I can now see that God was with me when…