The search for Queen Vashti’s replacement was in some ways a competition like today’s Golden Raspberry Award. The original idea when Vashti was deposed and sent away from the king’s presence was to find a better woman to fill her royal position. By “better,” the king’s advisors presumably meant someone more compliant than Vashti, someone who would toe the royal line and obey her husband. Yet strangely enough, in their search for a replacement it never seems to have occurred to those in charge to include a character assessment. Instead, only three virtues were necessary in this “better” woman: she had to be young, she had to be unmarried, and she had to be extraordinarily good-looking (vv. 1-4).

In the midst of this all-consuming empire, two relatively insignificant people, Mordecai and Esther, step onto the stage in verses 5-7. Mordecai was a descendent of Kish, from the tribe of Benjamin. He was related to King Saul, a fact that will become significant later on in the story. One of his ancestors was carried off into exile in the time of Jehoiachin in 597 B.C. In fact, exile was the defining feature of Mordecai’s position, as verse 6 makes clear. As a second or third generation exile, he would thus have known nothing other than life in Persia under the empire.

Mordecai lived in the citadel of Susa, along with the imperial employees, rather than out in the city of Susa itself. The other member of his household was his cousin, whom he had taken into his care because she was an orphan. She had a kosher heritage; she was the daughter of Abihail (v. 15). Esther was her Persian name. She too, like all the exiles, had to live in two worlds. As her life unfolded, though, there would come a day when she would have to decide which of those two worlds define her.

Those two worlds collided one fateful morning in the citadel of Susa. Ahasuerus’s officials were collecting his new flock of young women, according to the edict that his advisors had framed for him (v.8). We had anticipated this fate as soon as Esther was introduced to us as a woman who had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at. In fact, the text makes the point that she is actually more than qualified. Visually speaking (which is all that the empire – then and now – cares about), she is doubly blessed.

Esther quickly learned not simply how to survive, but how to thrive in her new situation (v. 9). Esther learned that the harem was simply life in the empire in miniature” a relatively pointless existence, where life was regulated in all its details, and promotion depended not on talent or character, but on pleasing those in charge. Thus, Esther learned to be a pleaser, first of all charming Hegai – the “keeper of the women,” to give him his official title. In return for this compliance, Hegai rewarded Esther with special food and an early start to her beauty treatments (v. 12).

Esther had apparently no ethical qualms about eating the empire’s food and being used as the emperor’s plaything, and following Mordecai’s advice, her Jewishness remained perfectly concealed (vv. 10-11). After a year of preparation, Esther’s turn finally came to go in to the king for her one-night audition, she was careful to follow Hegai’s instructions (vv. 13-15). At this point in the story, Esther was the perfectly compliant child of the empire, the ultimate anti-Vashti, and her tactics appeared to be succeeding. Wherever she went, she won with her compliant ways the favor of all who saw her.

We are therefore not surprised to find out that sweet little Esther also charmed the heart of King Ahasuerus (vv. 16-17). Here surely was the “better woman” than Vashti that he had been seeking: as beautiful as the former queen, but much more compliant. The king “loved” Esther more than all the other women; he found what he was looking for. Ahasuerus made Esther queen in Vashti’s place, a substitution that is underlined by the reference to the royal crown and to a feast given in her honor (v. 18). The result of Eshter’s promotion was happiness and blessing all around.

Through all of this lengthy procedure Mordecai had been keeping a watchful eye on his cousin, advising her along the way. He was the one who advised her to keep secret her Jewish identity – not because the empire was inherently anti-Semitic, but because, in his opinion, one could never be too careful in a place like Susa. He knew the way the empire operated. Walls have ears and information is power. Even after she became queen, it was because of Mordecai’s command that Esther kept her ancestry quiet (vv. 19-20).

Mordecai himself proved the power of the right information used in the right way, when he uncovered a plot to harm Ahasuerus (vv. 21-23). Two of the king’s eunuchs conspired to kill the king. Mordecai became aware of their plot while he was sitting at the king’s gate (this location identifies him as an official to the king). He passed the information on to the king through Esther, who herself was careful to give credit to Mordecai. In that way, both positions were made a little more secure by putting the empire in their debt. The result was that the conspirators were hanged, while Mordecai’s name was inscribed in the royal annals.

What this chapter of Esther teaches us is that disobedience and sin – even the disobedience and sin of others – have far-reaching consequences. Why was Esther caught up and condemned to this apparently meaningless life in a gilded cage? In part, at least, because she lived in Susa. Why was she living in Susa? She was there because of the sin and disobedience of her forebears. It was disobedience that had brought the family of Mordecai and Esther into exile at the time of Jehoiachin. The destruction of Jerusalem was not simply and accident of fate: it was the culmination of the judgment of God upon His own people who had abandoned Him. Disobedience brought God’s people into exile in the first place.

What’s more, it was disobedience that kept Mordecai and Esther’s family in exile. In 538 B.C., Cyrus issued a decree permitting the Jews to return home. Some went back with Zerubbabel at that time (Ezra 1-2), but many stayed, comfortably settled where they were, outside the land of promise. Had Mordecai and Esther (or their parents) returned to Jerusalem at some time in the previous fifty years, would Esther still have been taken by the harem recruiters? Perhaps, but she certainly wouldn’t have been such an easy target. The result of the family’s history of disobedience compromise was that Mordecai and especially Esther found themselves in a position that, for all its worldly advantages, was potentially disastrous spiritually. Esther ended up married to an uncircumcised pagan and virtually cut off from the community of faith, successfully pretending not to be a child of the true and living God.

Yet we see in this chapter more than just the bitter fruit of disobedience. We also see God’s ability to turn our disobedience – and the sour fruits of our parents’ sins – to His own glory and His people’s good. Ahasuerus and his cronies meant their edict purely for the satisfaction of the king’s selfish pleasures. Mordecai and Esther found themselves impaled on the horns of a dilemma because of their earlier compromises with the empire. They found it much easier to comply with the empire’s wishes than to resist assimilation – and which of us can be sure that we would have charted a different course? Yet God’s hand hovers over every detail, moving the pieces into the place He has determined – even through their sin and compromise – in order to achieve His own good purposes.

This observation presses us to see both similarities and differences between the empire of Ahasuerus and the kingdom of God. Like the empire of Ahasuerus, God’s claims on our lives are absolute. He owns our bodies, our sexuality, our career plans, our hopes, our dreams, our children…everything we have are His to do with as He wills. When we were baptized into His community, we were marked out with His name – the name Christian – and He will not share our loyalty with others. God demands and will exercise complete sovereignty over our beings. Of course, this is relatively easy to confess in the abstract. What is much harder is to continue to confess that sovereignty joyfully when God takes our lives and the lives of those around us in directions different from those we had hoped and prayed for, and of which we had dreamed. When God brings trials into our lives and calls us to submit willingly to the loss of the very things that this world calls most precious – money, friends, reputation, health, strength, dreams, and aspirations – how do we respond? With Esther’s sweet and compliant spirit? On the contrary, our hearts swiftly revolt against God whenever things do not go our way, whenever our will is not done.

When God exercises His claims on our lives, He does so to bring us good. He wants to move us on in our spiritual walk, to develop and deepen and display our faith before a watching world (1 Peter 1:6-7). As we suffer loss, and He pries our fingers off the idols to which they are so desperately attached, then our hearts are prepared more and more to be with Christ, and to see in Him our only good in this world.

Esther 2:1-23 Study Questions:

How are we sometimes tempted to become frustrated with God regarding His timing? When have you struggled with unanswered prayers or unfulfilled dreams? How were you tempted to view God in the midst of those disappointments?

What evidence, if any, of personal faith and courage do you see on the part of Esther and Mordecai in this passage? Where do you see evidence of the sovereign hand and plan of God?

How is the hidden hand of God evident in the “favor: that Esther quickly wins (vv. 9-15)? What effect does she have on those around her?

What are you learning about the sovereignty of God as you study this passage? How does the kingdom of Jesus Christ (and His role as Bridegroom in it) clash with the values of King Ahasuerus and his kingdom, as revealed in this chapter?

The Book of Esther begins by introducing us to the great empire of Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes) (vv. 1-9). This Ahasuerus was no teacup tyrant: he ruled 127 provinces from India to Ethiopia, from sea to shining sea. What is more, Ahasuerus knew how to throw a party, a six-month-long event, for his military leaders, his princes, and his nobles – all of the power brokers of the kingdom. Anyone who was anyone was there. There were marble pillars and hangings of white and violet linen in the gardens, couches of gold and silver – even mosaic pavements made of costly materials. The very ground on which the guests walked and the seats on which they sat were made of things that other hosts would have kept safely locked away as precious treasures. Not two of the wine cups were identical and the wine flowed freely, matching the king’s generosity. Ahasuerus is the very picture of power and wealth, both of which are squandered on his own appetites. And remember, these would have been our tax dollars at work!

A key detail begins the process of deconstructing the empire in front of our very eyes; the detail that comes in verse 8: “And drinking was according to this edict: ‘There in no compulsion.’ For the king had given orders to all the staff of his palace to do as each man desired.” This continues the theme of Ahasuerus’s power: even the drinking at his power must conform to his law. No detail escaped the empire’s notice and regulation: an edict was required to ensure that no one was under compulsion! But power that must regulate conformity at this level inevitably invites a petty bureaucracy.

The process of deconstructing the empire continues in the next scene. The king – Great King Ahasuerus – had been drinking for seven straight days and was predictably in high spirits. With a characteristic touch of overkill, he sent no fewer than seven of the royal eunuchs who served him to summon his queen, Vashti, wearing her royal crown, so that the people and the nobles could admire her beauty (vv. 10-11). Here we see the dark side of placing so much power in the hands of a man whose only thought is for himself.

But here the raw power of the empire encountered a snag: “But Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command delivered by the eunuchs. At this the king became enraged, and his anger burned within him” (v. 12). The law of the Medes and the Persians, which could not be revoked, could nonetheless be refused. Queen Vashti, who in accordance with Persian custom had been holding a separate feast for the women (v. 9), refused to comply with Ahasuerus’s unreasonable demands. The law might be able to compel people to drink as they wished, but it could not ultimately compel the king’s wife to be treated as a sex object. A mere woman stood up and said “No!” and the empire was powerless to enforce its will. The mouse had roared and the glorious empire was shaken to its foundations by her refusal.

What was to be done? A royal conference of the wise men of the empire was required to work out how to deal with this dangerous threat to authority (vv. 13-15). For their part, Ahasuerus’s advisors were terrified that the queen’s “just say no” policy would spread to every home in the empire (vv. 16-18). What would happen to a man’s position in his home once it became known that Queen Vashti had refused the command of the king? Yet what did Vashti’s resistance really achieve? She personally lost the position of power and prestige as the queen (vv. 19-20).

Thus Vashti was stripped of her title. The law, it appears, triumphed, for the regulation that she resisted also set her punishment (v. 15), though it’s clear already that “the law” merely serves as a fig leaf to cover the whim of the king and his advisors. Since she chose not to appear before the king when she was summoned, she would never again appear before him. Instead, the place would be given to someone “better than she.” Esther would have to be much more circumspect and subtle in dealing with the empire if she was to defuse its danger. Yet Vashti’s refusal nonetheless serves to reveal the weakness of the law to command behavior. Resistance is possible. Assimilation to the will of the empire is not inevitable.

That lesson appears to have been lost on the empire, which busily set about making another law that it was powerless to enforce (vv. 21-22). Consider the futility of this regulation: “that every man be master in his own household” (v. 22). The entire weight of imperial authority was placed behind this edict: it was a royal decree, a law that could never be repealed (see v. 19). But what was actually achieved by all this huffing and puffing? Was the social order of Persia really by this one woman’s resistance? Even if it were, can such a principle of male authority in the household really be imposed by government decree? Are all men to exercise power in such a self-centered way as Ahasuerus did, and then expect instant obedience? Is every man supposed to banish his wife if she fails to submit to his will?

In fact, the edict deconstructs itself, serving merely to publicize throughout the vast empire and in the language of every people group Ahasuerus’s lack of authority in his own household. If it was meant to inspire respect for husbands and respect for Ahasuerus, its actual effect was surely the exact opposite. If he was afraid that the story of his impotence would spread through gossip, now his own edict has done its best to ensure that everyone would hear the story.

As the Book of Esther unfolds, we shall see that Ahasuerus has little political acumen or capacity for personal thought. His decree concerning Vashti is symptomatic of a more general weakness in his character. At the same time, he is surrounded and manipulated by advisors who likewise wield their power with more enthusiasm than skill. This is the world in which God’s people found themselves then, and often still find themselves: a world in which the reins of power are in the hands of the incompetent, and in which we are guided at best by the amoral and at worst by the immoral. It is that way for some in the workplace or even in the home. Many Christians throughout the world live in countries that are practical dictatorships, or where the real power seems to lie in the hands of the local mafia or a drug cartel, not in the elected government officials. The world is a dangerous place, where power and wisdom are frequently unconnected.

So, what do we learn from the opening chapter of Esther for our own walk in the world? First, Esther 1 reminds us not to take the power and the glory of this world too seriously. Sometimes we just have to laugh. The world takes itself all too seriously, and it wants us to take it seriously too. We live in a society that routinely elevates the trivial. The empire of materialism in which we live takes stuff desperately seriously. It wants us to study the empire’s laws and learn how to get ahead by the empire’s standards. The empire of this world is a glittering hologram that has no real substance. True value lies in the values of an altogether different empire.

Second, Esther 1 shows us that sometimes we have to wait to see what God is doing. God is nowhere to be seen in this chapter. That is no surprise, since He is hardly visible anywhere in the whole Book of Esther. However, that we cannot see God working doesn’t mean He isn’t at work. He is busily occupied throughout the Book of Esther as the unseen director of history, arranging all things for the good of His people. Esther and Mordecai have not yet even made an appearance on the stage, but events are still moving according to God’s good pleasure.

Third, this passage shows that God’s kingdom is not like the empire of Ahasuerus. The Book of Esther repeatedly invites us to compare and contrast the kingdom of God and the empire of Ahasuerus. There are superficial similarities between the two kingdoms, but in each case, they hide deeper differences. The Lord too is a great king whose decrees cannot be challenged or repealed. His sovereignty governs all things, great and small. He must be obeyed, or we will certainly suffer the consequences. Yet His law is beneficial for men and women, unlike the drunken meanderings of a man at the mercy of his shrewd counselors. God doesn’t use people for His own purposes as if they were disposable commodities. Rather, He graciously invites them into a loving relationship with Himself. His kingdom grows and does its work not through the outwardly powerful and attractive, but rather in hidden but effective ways. For that reason, Jesus compares the kingdom of God to the growth of a mustard seed, or to the work of leaven. It starts small and hidden, but it achieves its goals nonetheless (Matt. 13:31-33).

The gospel truth of Christ’s love for us is the foundation for new minds that delight to submit to His ordering of creation. Who then is your real king and to whom is your heart committed? The empire wants to make us its slave. It wants to assimilate us into its ways of thinking. It offers us glittering prizes for compliance of its ways – a “successful” life, according to its own definitions. Have you been enticed and trapped? Flee from these things to the kingdom that is solid and substantial, the kingdom that Jesus Christ came to establish. Learn to laugh at the emptiness of the empire’s priorities and edicts. Come to Christ by faith and rest on His provision of forgiveness and life, thanking Him for His gift of Himself for us on the cross. Live according to His edicts, in which true wisdom resides. Trust that He is at work as He promised, working through even evil impulses of the empire for good in our lives and the lives of all of His people. Finally, remember that this world is not our home: one day, when Jesus returns, our balancing act on the roof will be over and the true banquet will begin.

Esther 1:1-22 Study Questions:

What are you learning about the kingdom of Persia as you read and study this passage? Why might it have been difficult for a faithful, Godfearing Jewish person to live in this kind of kingdom?

What does verse 1 tell us about the power of King Ahasuerus and the vastness of the Perian empire?

As you read through verses 1-9, what does the narrator seem to emphasize? What seem to be the values and concerns of the king and his subjects? How does this contrast with the kingdom of Jesus Christ?

In verses 10-11, why might Queen Vashti have refused the kings request – despite the potential consequences?

How does the “wise men” of the king advise him to deal with the refusal of the queen, and why do they give him this advice (vv. 16-20)?

How might the final verse (v. 22) be ironically and subtly pointing to future events in the story of Esther?