Esther 1:1-22
Please read your Bible text: Esther 1:1-22
‘On the seventh day of the feast, when King Xerxes was half drunk with wine, he told…’1:10
While some 50,000 people returned under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah, many more were reluctant to leave their adopted Persian home. It was against this backdrop, the story of Esther took place. You will not find God’s name anywhere in the book of Esther; yet God’s fingers are everywhere in Esther, as He placed Esther in the Persian palace and her cousin, Mordecai in the Persian chronicles “for just such a time as this”. God was weaving a beautiful lesson on sovereignty from the threads in their lives, showing that in their days –as in ours—God is in control. This book is a striking record of the divine providence. It tells us how those who remained still in exile, scattered throughout the great heathen world, were marvelously preserved.
It is a real-life drama of a beautiful Jewish girl named Esther, who was taken and prepared to be the king’s harem. Selected as queen, she rose to be a heroine who pitted against a hateful villain who plotted to exterminate the entire Jewish race. Esther bravely stood before the king uninvited (a serious offense punishable by death unless the king himself relented), to plead on behalf of her people, and in a dramatic twist of events, God used the casting of lots (Purim) and the sleeplessness of the king to save the day and preserve His people; of course through Esther’s prayerful spirit and her witty intercessory stand before the king!
The story began with a royal feast…from it, two learning points as we begin with Esther 1.
1) Learn from King Xerxes’ Moral Weakness – vs.1-11
He who ruled over 127 provinces, stretching from India to Ethiopia (v.1) could not rule even his own spirit. That’s the weakness of king Xerxes. The royal feast lasted 6 months and finished with a banquet that lasted 7 days – his court was given up to revelry and excess (vs.7-8). Whenever men are overcome with wine, there is grave peril for the women. Coarseness, indelicacy, and impurity troop in at the door, which has been unlocked by the excess of wine (v.8). How many wives and even children were beaten because their husbands and fathers came home drunk! For half a year, the king put on a big show, displaying his egoism in his wealth and achievement. To top it all, in his drunken stupor (v.10), he decided to exhibit his wife (Queen Vashti). I don’t think the king did it out of a heartfelt appreciation of her beauty but rather in drunkenness and out of a lustful display of a woman’s body and to the lustful enticement of his officials. It is not a very decent thing to do to a woman you marry. No man in his right spirit would do that unless in the spirit of drunkenness. Also, the king had an inherent weakness to depend on his advisors (especially Memucan) who were flatterers and parasites and who held him by their whims and lust.
2) Learn from Queen Vashti’s Noble Strength – vs.12-22
Queen Vashti made a noble refusal to the King’s order. She refused her husband’s order to become an erotic exhibit. Here is a glimpse of a noblewoman who respected herself enough not to yield to a demand, wholly foreign to the custom of the time, which forbade women to appear in public. The king was enraged and humiliated; all the more he knew that he was in the wrong. The sense of moral weakness is always irritating, and instead of admitting his mistake, he consulted his advisors, who were only too glad to fall in with the king’s lustful whims and fancy. They advised the divorce of Vashti as a public testimony throughout the empire against the insubordination of the wives to their men. Men are not always to be trusted when they legislate about women. When wine is in them, they may be capable of saying or doing the most stupid things.
I know the putting down of Queen Vashti is good so that Queen Esther could arise but for the moment let’s appreciate the noble character of Vashti. She is a strong woman of nobility who would not violate her principle, even if it means to defy the king!
THINK: Don’t shortchange your principle even if it means to defy a higher authority. Stand up for what is right!
PRAYER: Lord Jesus, give me the strength to obey what is right and noble even if it means to defy my immediate authority who is compromising. Amen.
David Quek
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