One of the very simply practices I would recommend to someone who wants to engage at a deeper level but doesn’t have the time to take advanced greek and Hebrew classes would be to compare and contrast an English translation form the category of thought-for-thought translations such as the NIV or NLT with an English translation form the word-for-word translations such as the NSRV or NASB. Neither is better than the other and the broad categories of thought-for-thought and word-for-word are actually fairly misleading since the grammatical differences between Greek, Hebrew and English would render a literal word for word translation as gibberish but what you will begin to see is where others have struggled to express the intent of the text in English. You start to see where things are not as clear as they might seem on first glance and what happens is that you’re pushed into a place where instead of outsourcing your homework to someone else you begin to wrestle with the work that others have done.

The Bible is a complicated collection of stories but as we wrestle with the nuance and the implications of the text what happens is over time we begin to become aware that even though the Bible and the surrounding culture can be difficult to separate at times there are moments where the text is very specifically and consciously and clearly pushing back against what was expected of it.

This is really important for us to remember. Yes, the Bible has a cultural context. Yes, we have a cultural context.

However as we wrestle with the Bible we soon discover that it is constantly finding ways to push against the status quo for change. As followers of Christ we have to expect the same courage from ourselves.

The very fact that the Bible includes a book like Esther, a book that centres around a female protagonist in a heavily male dominated culture and story should be a clear challenge to us even before we open the story because we are forced to acknowledge that while the story around us impacts us it does not ultimately define us. Culture is not bad. You don’t have to move to a mountain top and shun society to follow God. You do however, have to be aware of the ways that God is calling you to push for change.

This idea often gets shortened into the pithy statement, “be in the world not of the world” a statement which is actually not the Bible anywhere. Nevertheless it’s a useful shorthand based primarily on Rom 12:2 which Eugene Peterson paraphrases this way, “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God and you’ll be changed from the inside out.” The point being, that yes, culture influences us and that can be okay but we can never allow ourselves to be completely dominated by that imagination. We are part of a bigger story.

For me, simply reading the title of the book of Esther is a reminder of that reality, that in the midst of a very patriarchal society we can still be reminded that God’s imagination transcends the particular to point us towards what is timeless.

In the story of Esther we’re reminded that the world is broken. In Esther we are reminded that things are not as they should or could be but in esther we are also reminded that it does not have to be that way.

The struggles of Esther may at times seem distant to us. The way women are treated might seem foreign to us, something we have largely, thought not completely overcome. At other times the story of Esther may seem closer. The way it shows a world where there are some with power, extravagant, opulent power and others are without. This perhaps seems less distant. What is important is that the Bible is that doesn’t pretend these realities aren’t true, it doesn’t try to whitewash them away. What it does, is undermine the assumption that this is the only way it could be.

Imagine you wanted to make a point about role reversals and the seat of true power in the kingdom of God. Imagine you wanted to say that the truth of the universe is will one day turn everything we understand about power upside down. Perhaps the best way you could do it, rather than with an explanation or a diagram or a long speech, might be to tell a good story about an unexpected hero. Perhaps if lived and wrote in the time of Esther, that her o would be a women, or a slave or a foreigner or any of the categories that represented the marginalized and oppressed within your culture. Esther in this story is all three, a woman, a slave and an illegal immigrant and before we even crack the spine and begin to read her tale, I would argue that we are already clued into one of the major themes that we should be looking for, role-reversals and unexpected heroes and the upside down perspective tat comes with the kingdom of God.

Esther begins this way

This is what happened during the time of Xerxes, the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces stretching from India to Cush: At that time King Xerxes reigned from his royal throne in the citadel of Susa, and in the third year of his reign he gave a banquet for all his nobles and officials. The military leaders of Persia and Media, the princes, and the nobles of the provinces were present. 

Immediately we have a major contrast with Jonah. If you remember back to that story we talked about how the first word of Jonah is “and” as in “and the word of the lord came to Jonah”. It’s almost as if the writer of Jonah, has specifically removed every reference to time and place so that Jonah could be anyone and instead of specifying the context the writers leave you  on your own, to fill in all of the background details about who Jonah was before the word of the lord came to him. Here things are very different. This is what happened during the time Xerxes, and just so that we’re not confused, that’s the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces from India to Cush.

Xerxes you might remember him from the Persian armies in the movie 300. There he was depicted as very tall and lean,  had lots of gold jewellery and a grudge against Gerard Butler. In some Bibles his name will be translated Ahasuerus which is closer to the Hebrew rendering while Xerxes is closer to the Greek. One interesting idea is that some scholars think Ahasueras sounds very similar to the Hebrew word for headache and therefore see the names use as a pun intended by the author. Names are very important in Esther and we’ll discuss that later.

Xerxes and his sons, also named Xerxes (Xerxi perhaps) came to power around the late 5th century BCE with the first Xerxes coming to the throne in 486 BCE. The third year of his reign, which our story refers to, would then be 483 BCE. When the story was actually written down is tougher to say. While some attribute the story to Mordecai himself, that seem unlikely. The only real history we have from this era is written by a man named Herodotus. Herodotus was a Greek historian and wrote about the Grecko-Persian wars in 445 BCE. The problems we have are Esther and Herodotus seem to agree on some details and disagree on others and that Herodotus himself isn’t always completely reliable. If you ever decide to study Grecko Persian history you’ll deal with the inconsistencies in Herodotus so we’re not really sure if the writer of Esther and Herodotus were contemporaries. We do know that Purim, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Esther begins to be celebrated in the 2nd Century BCE so the story was definitely in circulation and by all assumptions had to have been written down by then. Basically, what all this means is that the book of Esther refers to a period in the 5th century BCE and it was written down somewhere in the following 300 years.

This what follows Xerxes introduction. The king throws a big party, a huge party, a 6 month party, followed by an even more elaborate 7 day uber-party which, as I understand it, is the technical term. There’s food and there’s drink and there are fancy fabrics and guests even get their very own custom made golden goblet to drink from. At one point King Xerxes actually makes a command, a law if you will, that says everyone must drink as much as they want. In most translations it will probably say something like, “By the king’s command each guest was allowed to drink with no restrictions” but what it actually says, is that he commands they drink as much as they want. It’s a fascinating picture of power and corruption and the character of Xerxes that even when he is trying to be generous he’s demanding things. Not that we would veer use our wealth or power or position to manipulate anyone…

So everyone’s partying and having a good time and Xerxes decides he wants to bring his wife out so everyone can see how beautiful she is. So he sends for her. However, Queen Vashti is having her own party and she doesn’t want to come. This does not go over well with Xerxes and his pals and so the King asks his advisors what can I do about this? To which they suggest he make a new law (same word that was used when he commanded everyone to drink by the way) that bans Queen Vashti from his presence. Now, the crazy thing here is that they specifically suggest he make this new law with the understanding that cannot be revoked. This odd Persian fine print becomes a major theme later in Esther as the King makes future commands that he cannot change despite perhaps wishing he could.

So Xerxes bans the Queen for life.

A couple weeks ago, I went to check out a coffee shop I heard good things about. I drove all the way across town only to find a note on the door that said, “closed early – try back tomorrow”. I banned that coffee shop for 2 years. That seemed reasonable to me given my inconvenience. For not showing up at his party Xerxes bans Queen Vashti for life. That seems excessive to me.