Esther - For such a time as this

A book by Aquila Press Published December 2018 Copyright © Peter Adam Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publishers.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc. Aquila Press PO Box A287 Sydney South NSW 1235 AUSTRALIA cepstore.com.au National Library of Australia ISBN 978-1-925725-96-4 eISBN 978-1-925725-97-1

In grateful memory of Harrie Scott Simmons and John Moroney, valiant and inspiring followers and ministers of Jesus Christ.

‘But glorious was it to see how the open region was filled with horses and chariots, with trumpeters and pipers, with singers and players on stringed instruments, to welcome the pilgrims as they went up, and followed one another in at the beautiful gate of the city.’

(The ending of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress)

Contents

Timeline vi Map—The Persian Empire Table—Major rulers of the Middle East

viii ix

Preface x 1.

Reading Esther today: Entering an alien world

1

2.

Reading the book as a whole

9

3.

A Godless world? (Esther 1:1–22)

18

4.

Meet Mordecai and Esther (Esther 2:1–23)

35

5.

An enemy of the people (Esther 3:1–15)

64

6.

For such a time as this (Esther 4:1–17)

90

7.

God at work (Esther 5:1—7:10)

108

8. The great overturning, the great reversal (Esther 8:1–17)

134

9. Sorrow turned to joy, mourning to celebration (Esther 9:1—10:3)

154

10. Reading the New Testament in the light of the book of Esther

185

Bibliography 207

v

vi

Jeremiah and Ezekiel prophesied in Jerusalem.

2 Chronicles 36 Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed, and the people were taken to exile in Babylon.

Babylonian Empire Nebuchadnezzar II

Evil-Merodach

Nergil-Sharezer

Nabonidus and his son Belshazzar

Persian Empire Cyrus, King of Persia, conquered Babylon, so also king of Babylon.

604–562

562–560

560–556

556–539

539–530

Ezra 1–4 Sometime after 539 BC the first group returned, led by Sheshbazzar/Zerubbabel, and Jeshua the priest, and the altar was rebuilt.

God’s people in Judah

Empires

Dates (BC)

Timeline

Daniel prophesied in Babylon.

Many still in exile throughout the Persian Empire.

The people in exile in Babylon.

Daniel prophesied in Babylon.

The people in exile in Babylon.

Daniel prophesied in Babylon.

The people in exile in Babylon.

Daniel prophesied in Babylon.

Jeremiah 52:31–34

The people were taken to exile in Babylon.

Daniel prophesied in Babylon.

God’s people in exile

For such a time as this

Cambyses conquered Egypt.

Darius I

Xerxes/Ahasuerus

Artaxerxes

530–522

522–485

485–465

465–424

Many still in exile throughout the Persian Empire.

Many still in exile throughout the Persian Empire.

Many still in exile throughout the Persian Empire.

Nehemiah 1–12 445 BC—the third group returned, led by Nehemiah. The walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt.

Malachi?

Nehemiah 13 432 BC—Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem after a short visit to Babylon.

Malachi?

Esther 1–10 Many still in exile throughout the Persian Empire. Esther and Mordecai in Susa in Persia.

Many still in exile throughout the Persian Empire.

Ezra 7–10 458 BC—the second group returned, led by Ezra.

Malachi?

Ezra 5–6 Haggai and Zechariah 515 BC—the temple was rebuilt.

Many still in exile throughout the Persian Empire.

Timeline

vii

viii

Mediterranean Sea

Jerusalem •

Red Sea

TransEuphrates

Euphrates River

Black Sea

Babylon •

Tigris River

• Susa

• Ecbatana

Caspian Sea

Arabian Sea

Limits of the Persian Empire

The Persian Empire

For such a time as this

Table

Major rulers of the Middle East (Most dates are only approximations)

Egyptian 1500 BC—1000 BC Assyrian 900 BC—616 BC Babylonian 616 BC—539 BC Persian 539 BC—331 BC Greek 331 BC—100 BC Roman 100 BC—400 AD

ix

Preface

I have spent much of the last seven years pondering, preparing, and preaching the book of Esther. Studying Bible books is always immensely enriching, and I have discovered deeper questions and insights each time I have returned to this book. I have greatly enjoyed reading many useful commentaries and other books. I do enjoy preaching lesser known parts of the Bible, because people are less likely to say, ‘We have heard all this before’. In fact, when I have preached the book of Esther, the most common response has been, ‘I have never heard this before!’ As always, I am grateful for the insights which come with other people’s questions and observations.

The book of Esther brings us many challenges. The book of Esther sits oddly in the Old Testament. It does not mention God, which is very odd! Not only is God not named, but we find God’s people left behind in exile, with no references to Jerusalem, or its temple, and no quotations from other books of the Old Testament. And it does seem odd to have an additional Old Testament feast added by such minor figures such as Esther and Mordecai, when all the others were instituted under Moses!

Esther and Mordecai are not mentioned in the New Testament, so there are no obvious New Testament indicators about how to read and use the book. Those who believe that all and every part of the Old Testament points to Christ seem reluctant to include the book of Esther. And those who fear moralising the Old Testament will not read Esther.

The literary style of Esther is discouraging for those who want ‘clear Bible teaching’. It does not tell us what to do, nor does it provide a clear assessment of what happens. Its style x

Preface of writing, though vivid, is also subtle and opaque, and requires patient pondering, rather than rapid reading! It is an un-interpreted narrative. That is, we have to decide what ideas and values are right, and what are the implications: the book does not do this for us. In the words of Jon Levenson, ‘though the action of the book is often blunt and exaggerated, its underlying attitudes, perceptions and hopes require a more careful listening’.1 On the surface, it may look as if it is encouraging Christian participation in beauty contests: but we should look for a deeper message. Of course it is best read aloud, like all books of the Bible, whether you are reading it alone, or in a group.

I think of the book of Esther as ‘slow-motion proverbial history’! In the book of Esther we see proverbs being worked out in human lives, the wisdom of God being worked out in history in the Persian Empire during the reign of Xerxes.

Here is some proverbial wisdom (from the book of Proverbs) that comes to my mind as I reflect on the book of Esther: Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

(16:18) The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord. (16:33) A person finds joy in giving an apt reply—and how good is a timely word! (15:23) Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone. (25:15) In the Lord’s hand the king’s heart is a stream of water that he channels towards those who fear him. (21:1)

You will see these proverbs, and others too, fulfilled as you read through the book of Esther. All this makes it an attractive and intriguing book to read. It can stand alone, as a powerful and convincing book. However it is even more illuminating to read it in the light of the whole Old Testament, and to read it in the light of the whole Bible: we will take these steps in this commentary. And that will lead us to read Esther for today. We will also discover that the 1.

Levenson, JD 1997, Esther, Old Testament Library, SCM, London, p. 12.

xi

For such a time as this book of Esther helps us understand the world of the New Testament.

It is an excellent and apt book for our post-Christian age, where Christians around the world are facing persecution, and where God’s people are increasingly treated as an inconvenient, subversive or distasteful minority. It is a book for a persecuted church. So it is relevant for many of our fellow believers in Christ in the Middle East, in Africa, and in Asia today. And it will become more relevant for Christians in the west, as the Christian identity and values of our society dissolve so rapidly around us. It helps us to realise that like God’s people in the book of Esther, we are strangers and exiles, scattered among the nations, and that our citizenship is in heaven.

This realisation should make us fervent in evangelism, brave in witness, energetic in good works, and faithful as we wait for the return of Christ the lord of lords and king of kings, for the new heavens and new earth, and for God to dwell among us. Truly this book of Esther is relevant ‘for such a time as this’.

I am grateful to Bishop Paul Barnett and to the team at Aquila Press for publishing this book. My special thanks to Natasha Percy and John McIntosh for their help. May God continue to use his book of Esther to edify and train his people in godliness and good ministry.

xii

Chapter 1

Reading Esther today: Entering an alien world

There are not many people today who read ancient books and expect them to be relevant. Our society prioritises newly discovered sources of knowledge, because of our belief in progress and improvement. So we find it hard to believe that we have much to learn from ancient and primitive books. Our firm trust in progress makes it hard for us to value the past. So it must be an odd experience for someone who does not have a Christian background to go to church or to go to a Bible study and find us reading a book like Esther, which covers events in the Persian Empire in the years 483–474 BC! And I suspect that many Christians who are used to reading the New Testament find reading the Old Testament more challenging. For those used to reading the Old Testament, reading Esther might be an even greater challenge. For the book is not set in the Holy Land and we are not familiar with life in the ancient Persian Empire.

Even the name Esther is ancient Persian, not Jewish.

There is no mention of Esther or Mordecai in the New Testament, and this story of the persecution and then deliverance of the Jews is not mentioned, nor is the feast of Purim, instituted at the end of the book. The book of Esther is not quoted in the New Testament, Esther and Mordecai are not named in the list of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, and the deliverance they experienced is not part of our usual summary of salvation history. Some words are common to Esther and the New Testament, such as 1

For such a time as this ‘sackcloth and ashes’ and ‘fasting’, as are the ideas of giving a ring, and caring for the poor,2 but these examples just show that the New Testament uses common Old Testament expressions and words: there is no significance derived from their use in Esther. So there are no direct clues in the New Testament on how to read the book of Esther or what use to make of it.

The description of royal luxury is remote from our lives, and we are naturally unnerved by the account of the king’s harem of attractive sexual partners, and of eunuchs as part of everyday life! And then there is the violence, which is always a challenge. And what use is a book which tells us nothing about God? If God is the hero of all biblical narratives, why is he not even mentioned?

And all this seems a long way away from our contemporary and busy lives, and from the challenge of living a relevant Christian life at home and at work. We want to get immediate practical advice on daily living when we read the Bible, and the world of Esther seems several bridges too far!

Let me encourage you to believe that the book of Esther is worth reading and studying!

While we might prefer for God to communicate with us every moment, he has chosen to speak to us today through words from the past. God’s authentic and authoritative words in the Bible which are universally relevant today to everyone man, woman, and child, are words from the past, words that were originally addressed to people who lived long ago, but which God now addresses to us. We go back in history to find the fullest revelation of God—in Jesus Christ; we go back in history to find our forgiveness and eternal life in the death of Christ on the cross; we go back to his resurrection to find assurance of new life in Christ; so we go

2. See Beale, GK, and Carson, DA 2007 [eds] Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, Baker, Grand Rapids, Apollos, Leicester, p. 1175.

2

Reading Esther today: Entering an alien world back in history to the Bible to find God’s certain verbal revelation of himself. God’ great self-revelation in words and works happened many years ago, and these words and works are effective and powerful in our age and in every age. As Chris Green has written of another Bible book, we should believe that ‘God had this Sunday, this congregation and this sermon in mind when he inspired the original passage’.3 As Paul writes in Romans about the Old Testament, For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope. (Romans 15:4)

Though God is not mentioned in the book of Esther, God’s people are present. They are in great danger, and are rescued in their hour of need. If we are Jewish by race and Christian by grace, then it is our ancestors we are reading about. If we are Gentile by race and Christians by grace, then we have been adopted into God’s family, and the story of Esther is part of our family history. If we believe in Christ, these people in this book are our ‘spiritual’ ancestors.

An Iranian Christian once said to me, ‘Esther is the mother of all the Persian believers’. For Esther saved God’s people, the Jews, and the first Christians in Persia valued their Jewish ancestors in the faith. Esther is an ancestor of all Christian believers, as are all the Old Testament saints.

As Paul wrote, through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:6).

It is easy to relate to people like us, from our culture, subculture, neighbourhood, social class and background, and it is easier to do so. However if we go outside our safety zone, and meet people who are different to ourselves, we

3. Green, C 2005, The Word of His Grace: A Guide to Teaching and Preaching from Acts, IVP, Nottingham, p. 119.

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For such a time as this will always be enriched. If our only experience of multiculturalism is food, and if when we travel we don’t meet the real people of the places we visit, then we severely limit our experience of humanity. We are diminished if we lack the forbearance, tolerance and patience to meet people unlike ourselves, and even more if we are racist and arrogant. We dehumanise ourselves if we refuse to be challenged and enriched by our contemporaries who are not like us, and if we refuse to learn from people from the past.

For despite all our real differences, our common humanity is of greater importance. The fundamental reality is that God has made one human race, that he made us all ‘of one blood’ (Acts 17:26). We must not deny what God affirms about us: we all share a common humanity, so in the words of the ancient Roman dramatist Terence, ‘nothing human is alien to us’ from his play Heauton Timorumenos. Meeting and valuing people from other cultures and subcultures, and reading about people from the past is not only instructive in itself, but also gives us a place to stand and evaluate our own culture or subculture. This is a good way to recognise and assess our own deepest assumptions. For we should not assume that the way we are human is the only way or the best way to be human! Of course we are even more likely to benefit from meeting fellow believers alive today, or in historical records.

CS Lewis wrote of the value of studying old texts: A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.4

However receiving and preaching an old text is hard work!

In our society we receive no training and have no experience of treating ancient texts as living documents, and are given no ideas about how we might interpret them in 4. Lewis, CS 1965, ‘Learning in War-Time’, in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, pp. 43-54, p. 51.

4

Reading Esther today: Entering an alien world order to put them into practice. The Bible is God’s contemporary, powerful, authoritative and sufficient word, and it comes in the form of ancient texts like Esther that often seem alien to us. God’s voice is distant in mode, while contemporary in significance, power, relevance and authority. God’s words proceed from his mouth via a far country, whose words and ways often seem remote—to us and to our contemporaries.

It is perhaps a help that Esther seems such an alien text.

For CS Lewis also warns us that when reading old texts we are less likely to misunderstand words and ideas that are unfamiliar, but more likely to misunderstand words and ideas that appear familiar to us.5 So the very unfamiliarity of Esther means that we are less likely to read our assumptions into it, and more likely to be ready to work hard to understand it.

In fact we should not pretend that any Bible text is familiar to us, that it is easy to understand in its own context or easy to apply in our own context. While the Scriptures are clear, we have to use our minds and imaginations to receive them, as we have to read them in the context of the whole Bible. These ancient texts do not belong to our age, they are not easy to understand, they do not fit easily into our world views or culture, they do not automatically express our sentiments or ideas. They do not necessarily tackle the questions or issues that we think concern us, and do not match our natural ways of knowing. While we may rejoice that in these pages we see signs of our common experience of God’s grace in the lives of God’s people from the past, the greater reality is that these pages express the mind of God. And because of our sin and our sinfulness, the greatest gap is between God’s thoughts and our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8).

And in fact we are used to entering alien worlds every day, as we meet people who look like us, but are deeply different.

5. Lewis, CS 1967, Studies in Words, Second Edition, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 1.

5

For such a time as this Discovering these differences may take years. And people tell me that even in marriage there are moments of realisation that their husband or wife is not the same as them, and acts and reacts in unexpected ways! Attentive listening and learning are essential! And we enter alien worlds every time we see a movie, read a book, have a holiday away from home, or meet someone from another culture. We have to learn to listen, and be alert and attentive, so that we can understand what others are saying, and understand the world in which they live. In Kevin Vanhoozer’s words, ‘The Golden Rule, for hermeneutics and ethics alike, is to treat others—texts, persons, God—with love and respect’.6 So when we read the book of Esther, we should treat it with love and respect. We owe this love and respect to the human author, whoever that was, and more than that, to God, who inspired the words of this book by the Holy Spirit.

You are likely to be shocked by many things you read about in Esther, and some of these were shocking even for that time. If they are condemned by the Bible, then they are wrong. If they do not match our assumptions or our culture, they may be wrong, or they might just be different. Again the Bible is the standard, not our culture. As Brenda Maddox wrote, ‘The past is another country, impossible to approach without the condescension of hindsight’.7 And at a deeper level, Richard Francis, writing on the Salem witch trials of the 1600s in America wrote, To assume that (seventeenth century Puritans’) behaviour toward Native Americans was simply motivated by hypocrisy, cynicism, and greed is to fail to take on board the historical and cultural context, the structure of belief, which they inhabited—in other words, to be as blinkered in relation to them as they in turn were in relation to the Native Americans.8

6.

Vanhoozer, KJ 1998, Is There a Meaning in This Text? Apollos Leicester, p. 32.

7. Maddox, B 2009, George Eliot: Novelist, Lover, Wife, Harper Press, London, p. xiv.

8. Francis, R 2005, Judge Sewall’s Apology: The Salem Witch Trials and the Forming of an American Conscience, Harper Perennial, New York, pp. 16–17.

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Reading Esther today: Entering an alien world THE WORLD AND WORLD VIEW OF PERSIA

Though the world of Esther is an alien world, it is a world which is also described by historians of that time, including the noted Greek historian Herodotus, and especially in Books 7–9 of his History of the Persian Wars, written from the perspective of the Greeks, who were enemies of the Persians at that time.9 Here we find support for the extent of the Persian Empire at that time from India to Ethiopia (1:1); the council of seven nobles (1:14); the highly efficient postal system (3:19; 8:10); the keeping of official records, including of benefactors of the king (2:23; 6:8); the use of impalement for capital punishment and humiliation (2:23; 5:14; 7:10); ceremonial bowing to kings and nobles (3:2); belief in lucky days (3:7); setting crowns on the heads of royal horses (6:8); and reclining on couches at meals (7:8).10 It is also suggested that the timetable of events in Esther correlates with Xerxes’ activities in battle. The banquet in his third year (1:3) would fit the time before his war against Greece (483–479 BC). These four years explain the gap between his banishment of Vashti and the elevation of Esther in his seventh year (2:1). And the final date in Esther is the end of the twelfth year of Xerxes’ reign (9:1, 473 BC), which is well within his lifetime, as he was assassinated in 465 BC.11 Let’s enjoy entering an alien world, and let’s expect to hear God’s voice as we read this remarkable book.

9. Herodotus, 2003 The Histories, tr., de Sélincourt, A, rev., Marincola, J, Penguin, London. In case you are wondering, there is no known connection between Herodotus and the Herods we meet in the New Testament!

10. This list is taken from Clines, DJ 1984, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, p. 261.

11. Clines, Esther, p. 261.

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For such a time as this FOR STUDY, DISCUSSION AND PRAYER

1. How can we best encourage each other as we read the more difficult books of the Bible, like Esther?

2. Read Matthew 22:31–32, Hebrews 3:7 and 1 Corinthians 10:1–13 in context. How do these verses encourage us to find God addressing us through ancient words?

3. Read 2 Timothy 3:15–17. What should we ask God to do to us, with us and through us as we read Esther?

8