[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
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[00:00:37] Speaker B: So if you would go ahead and turn to Esther, we're going to get into chapter two again.
I'd like tonight's goals are to try to finish up chapter two and crack open chapter three. We'll see where we get with that, but we're going to pick up kind of where we left off with our characters as they're mostly all getting on the board here. As we're getting closer to this scene in a few chapters to come. Right.
We're not quite to such a time as this, but we will get there. So tonight I want us to look a little closer again at chapter two and three.
Finish off two and pick up with some of the things we were talking about with the harems and some of the cultural stuff there.
Keeping in mind, we've met Esther and Mordecai and I don't mean to turn it to a game, but it very much is like a chess game in a way. God is playing a very long form game here. There are some parallels. We're going to look at characters tonight again that we can see some things we just can't overlook where God is really doing some fun stuff, interesting stuff for his kingdom.
We're going to talk get to the conspiracies. A conspiracy in the palace. It's definitely not something Xerxes was a stranger to. The Persians were nothing if not backstabbers. This happened a lot and God is setting up his queen for a winning move later.
Haman's plot to destroy the Jewish people. We're going to get to that, I hope kind of get that started.
Looking at that as well as Haman and Mordecai, I teased a little bit last week to be thinking about 1st Samuel and some of the relationships between Haman and Mordecai.
Some long term game here that God is really playing and making a statement.
He's going to right some wrongs before Esther's done and hopefully get to talking about purpose or Purim holiday. Purim, the Jewish festival that comes out of this book.
But we will get to pur toward the end. A Persian word for lots.
And actually this week is a great week for us to do this because we are in. This would have been. I kind of tried to time it this way. This week is it.
This is when this would have gone down. Okay. Tonight we're going to almost within a couple of weeks be on when. When Haman set things in motion. And we have about 11 months will pass, so it comes another year when it actually goes down. But we're. We're in the moment now as best we can be. This is the time of this setting.
So taking us back to the palace, the three settings that we'll be at here. We talked a little bit already last week about the apadonna. That's that thing at the top.
That's the. This is a very, very, very NASA high view here. You could put the Biltmore estate in that one section up there. Okay, okay. Massive palace, several acres of a sprawling facility. And up there is where he had that big conference.
And Mordecai, we're going to meet him all the way down here. This is the King's gate, the gate of nations, the gate of the King of kings, the great gate where Mordecai is going to be.
And that is in chapter two here. And the harem, of course, we see this part really was down here. There's a whole complex down here that is in ruins that runs pretty much the length of this thing that Xerxes built on to house all of his women. And I will say his women, his playthings, his women. Again, I'm not trying to be. To dwell on that too much. I want you to understand that's how these women were treated. It's not a glorious thing. These women's lives were over once they got into the harem. Esther didn't exactly win here in terms of hooray. I get to be Xerxes. But she wins because of many other reasons here.
In the end, she's as smart as she is beautiful. And I want us to remember that that is where we pick up if we pay attention to the text.
So Esther 2, 1, 8. We read that already, I think last week, so I don't want to read it all again.
But remember, we're looking at this point, if you missed last week where we're now looking for a new queen now that Vashti has been banished. Explaining how Vashti, we think from history is the woman named Amestris. I think it's true, may not be, but probably is. There's a few other evidences that point to, that we'll talk about.
But Vashti, we've had to find a new queen. Xerxes, the hangover is hit. The party's over, right? He is having to listen to his people. We talk about Xerxes and God a bit. The wisdom of man and the wisdom of God. And I talked about the divine passive last week. The idea of that tense. Whenever you see in Hebrew, in Esther, there's a tense that's used like had this had happened, but the Hebrews would have meant it happened because God. It happened because God. So when we see Esther found favor because God, they would have read it that way. If you talk to any Hebrew scholars, Genesis 1 teaches us that passive. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That's not right.
Exactly. The first verse, if you talk to Hebrew scholars, in the beginning God created the heavens. You see what I mean? There very much is a hesitation on first let's establish God.
That's important distinction. We want you to hesitate and say God is, was and always will be. And then he did these things.
But the Hebrews would always make sure we understood. And that's what we see in this book.
We see God very present in the language, the clever writers. I don't know who wrote Esther exactly. I don't know if we know exactly who did. There are a lot of different scholars. Could have been Mordecai. I have my feelings, it might have been. But there are definitely someone who wrote this book. If you read any historical book, any. And I bring several from week to week. I cite a lot of sources, but I mean, I go to Bible commentaries, general Persian Empire textbooks. And it's funny to me that Esther is in most academic books about Persia. Esther is cited as a historical source sometimes until it gets uncomfortable. Then academics tend to go the other way. But you know, we tend to see this in our history, we see this in our texts. So I want to move on a little here as we get into my formatting off.
But just reviewing again. We have in those first eight verses in verse three, we talked about the houses of the women. It's called right Xerxes harem, may the king appoint overseers. And we talked about how many there would be. So we have women that have been Brought into the palace from 127 provinces.
We have Hegai, the king's eunuch. We've met him. Someone in the first week mentioned they were curious about the eunuchs. The there are several eunuchs. We know that Hegai, and we have him. He's mentioned in some of the Persepolis fortification tablets I mention every week.
He is the chamberlain, the chief of the women, and this is how they would do it. Xenophon, Caesius, all these philosophers and names I'm throwing out every week we've got this verified 4 different places least.
We talked about that a little. And we know that someone with intimate knowledge of the palace wrote this book and that that's why I'm bringing this up.
Mordecai could have been somebody, but there's too many details about the court that you just can't duplicate.
So we know there was a harem. I mentioned these tablets that we get a lot of our information from. We know exactly the process these women went through. One thing I don't know if I mentioned last week is that in the text they were state property. Okay. I mean, I think of it like a cattle ranch. It's brutal, but it was. They ran them through. And if you take away the pretty decorations, had the women of a certain kind down here got to move up if you were good, sent back down if you weren't.
These were not human beings at that point.
We have records of the grains and quality goods. And how nice of Xerxes to get the best cloth and food for his women because he couldn't have an impure woman visit his bedroom. The women were definitely treated through a process.
They went through a preparation phase.
And then if they were good, they got moved up to the second house where they really got a scrub down. They went through this 12 month period. We'll talk about a little more in a moment.
And then if they got really good, they got elevated to the first house. And that's essentially the one Xerxes would pick from. The eunuchs were responsible for picking good ones because they would get punished if they didn't please him too. So the eunuchs had a lot of skin in the game.
And then if they were really lucky, they would get to become queen. So in verse seven we introduced Hadassah or Esther.
And I mentioned, for time's sake, I do want you to get the parallels.
It's kind of a tale of two queens, you know, Esther and Jezebel. Think about those parallels that just 400 years earlier, a foreign queen comes in and brings down Israel to its knees by manipulating a king.
She's a true believer, Jezebel was. And we need to remember that. Didn't care.
Esther's a true believer too. And God's going to twist things back around with Esther. He's going to win this game with the queen.
I think to make a point too, he's going to do that. Mordecai. The important thing was to remember Mordecai. We know he's of the tribe of Benjamin, and that comes up in a bit.
We think he was named after Marduk. That's the Esther, the Persian name for a God that they inherited from the Babylonians.
And then in verses 8 to 14, I think we read through this a little bit. And I won't read through it all again, but this is where I wanted to pick up.
If you recall, in 8 to 14, it references the process they went through. The second first house consorts.
These were what we call the concubines. Right. So all these women that were taken were given concubine status. And I want us to remember that even though they had high status, it wasn't good status.
It really wasn't. And I'm not trying to speak for these women, but honestly, in Persia they had a pretty good society compared to the rest of the world at this time. It was better to get unnoticed.
You had a pretty good chance of getting a job if you were a woman in this society, you got to make money alongside the men. It was a pretty progressive society in terms of women. They had it pretty good. We have records about medical treatments and the first mastectomy actually happened in Persia. All these cool things that I think were just neat that were going on that unless you got picked by the king.
And now once you got picked by the king, that was it.
You either would get selected, but once Xerxes picked you, if you didn't like you, you'd still get filed away in concubine area.
But we talked about this. Six months of myrrh and six of oils, if you'll notice there down in between eight and 14 in verse nine, Esther was provided with beauty treatments and special food.
When she was chosen by Hegai for being exceptional, she was given seven female attendants and moved her and her attendance to the best place in the harem. So she moved up a house.
Now, the beauty treatments in food I mentioned a little bit, the food for the most part was, you know, just fine stuff you could think of.
Honestly, the rudest and lewdest way it was described in some of the historical texts. They got these women from all sorts of ranks of society. They weren't just nobles, they were just. Did they look good?
But unfortunately some of these women were in poverty. Some of these women ate diets that they would claim. Well, they smelled like this sauce or something all the time or that kind of thing. And they would scrub them down and feed them a meal to make sure that they didn't even Xerxes. You must smell like roses at all times, right? Pomegranates and oils.
But they were treated to that special food, a good diet. But again, they were eating well, but just like a fatted calf. Honestly, you know, that's not for their health. Okay. They were given things that were meant to cleanse their system. Right. Just to make sure they were cleansed.
And that also got into pregnancy. And it's a difficult topic. But one of the reasons they would do that was to have a six month period where they would administer certain oils that was. We have the recipes. I mean these are in sources where they would essentially apply them that would work as a contraceptive and also kill any unwanted children. You gave it six months, they figured that was probably long enough.
That way any impurities would be removed and that's the harsh wordage they would use. So this was not a good situation. Hopefully these women were, if they were maidens, supposedly, who knows? If the king picked you, you're going.
But that was part of the process.
But the other part, that's a little bit of a downer, I know. But the rest of it was to make them pretty. And one thing that's interesting, so you've probably seen this before. What they used when it talks about the beauty treatments was a. This was maybe more pleasant than the previous. But you've seen these before in Egyptian art, Middle Eastern cultures, something called coal. Not C O, A L, but it's something called coal and was made and taken from a substance called antimony or stibnite ore. And this at the bottom is a flask at the British Museum that was uncovered about four years ago. And there are several of these where they're basically little perfume holders or oil holders.
They found these at the various harem sites at one of the four or five different palaces. They would take these shiny ores and grind them up and add some other chemicals that gave it that black look. Now this is kind of what I'm talking about. These are just some pictures at the bottom. You've probably seen this, this goes way back. Have you ever seen Egyptian art or those Nefertiti, all these kind of characters, they have the little line out here, you know, that kind of stuff that was very popular even dating back to ancient Egypt. Even on the statues of the men, when you would see these sort of raised areas, they would wear that coal makeup. This is a woman, obviously, from now just kind of showing her putting that on. That's what it would look like.
And they had these little applicators. And what she's using is one that is from a couple hundred years later. That one's a little more Islamic in its design. You can see that after Alexander the Great takes over and we see the Islamic cultures begin to sort of move in, keep hitting the wrong button. But you would kind of put it on like that. In the middle, the little brown bottle is an applicator that was found. And. And this is just a sketch someone did of a woman showing how they would go on.
But someone at the top, there was a makeup artist who had taken it and actually used the recipe and made that. And it was a very shiny black. And I mention it because this is another one that was found in the palace of Susa in the shape of a woman. They would make it like a woman. You pull the applicator out and decorate yourself. And it was actually called. The Persian word for coal was called sorme, a dark powder made of manganese oxide. I just thought this was cool, since I'm a huge library nerd and have to cite my sources. This was just from last year, a couple of articles that were published. And these are scientists saying, hey, we found this stuff in the articles. It talks about Esther, and it's like, this is crazy. We're finding. We're seeing what they're saying. They used unique. That was unique to Persia in that this beauty application not only made them pretty, but supposedly it worked to block the sun a little bit. That's where we get the blacks. When you play football, how you get that? The blacks in your eye. But it blocked the sun and also apparently worked as sort of a repellent for insects. Okay. So it was supposed to also be beautifying. So all this science was going on as well.
I mention it because you may have seen that name if anybody's.
Maybe you shop at Walmart or somewhere and you see this brand there on the shelf. But there's actually a brand of cosmetics you can get today called Sormet. So if you've done it, that's where it came from. Congratulations. You're dressing like Esther and the picture they have on the website, I noticed that it was this sorme and that's. It's Persian for that coal. They use that sort of clay. But I thought that was interesting. But these beauty treatments, that's what we know they were.
So I want to pick up in verse 12 and continue reading after we have these sort of beauty treatments. Let me pick back up here. Now, when the turn came for each young woman to go into King Xerxes, after being 12 months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their beautifying, six months of oil myrrh, six months with spices and ointments for women. When the young woman went into the king this way, she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the harem to the king's palace.
In the evening she would go in. In the morning she would return to the second harem in custody of Shazgaz, the king's eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. She would not go into the king again until the king delighted in her and she was summoned by name.
So this verse, in addition to beauty, I want us to understand there was a reason too. I've mentioned this a few times.
Their religion was Zoroastrian. Okay?
The 12 month period was not just for beauty. They had a cycle of 12 months where the very religious part of them, more spiritual really, when they would do anything like this or any sort of presentation, they had a 12 month cleansing period, period. The Zoroastrian culture, that religion, they were more spiritual than religious. I'll say that. They didn't have gods, they sort of stole gods from Babylon. They used them, they were useful ciphers for. But they worshiped elemental things like fire, water.
The Zoroastrians did believe in good and evil, but it was more like the pure and the defiled, right? It wasn't really God and Satan, but they believed in being very clean. The Greeks made fun of them for taking multiple baths. Who does that? Right?
They were pretty clean people.
So after this treatment, I just want us to remember after they went through this, you either were elevated or exiled. They had one shot, you say, one night with the king. It was one night. They got to go in, hopefully impress him. That's why it says the eunuch let them take in whatever they wanted. Historical details get a little more graphic. They can bring in anything they want just to make him feel happy.
But if he wasn't pleased with them, which clearly in the text, he picks one, our hero. But the rest of them would have been sent back to the harem and never seen again. They weren't allowed to marry or ever leave. You would just be there. So you were exiled. This was a horrible fate. So Esther's in trouble, right? She's really got to win this or not. So now if we look at again while we did this, I mentioned this already again. They used the oils for everybody hair removal. They would soften their skins so that when Esther goes in she probably did look amazing.
Nothing tells us she didn't. This was a beautiful woman by their standards, by any standards I would imagine. But she was very clever as well.
And I wanted us to remember maybe think about this, how many times we see God use sexual metaphors to refer to the shame of the people.
We see symmetry here with Esther and what she's having to go with and the way Xerxes and, and the people that are no longer captive but subjects of Persia, the women are now nothing but playthings. In Hosea and Ezekiel we see them say Israel, you play the prostitute, you're lewdness and prostitution.
So we see that God really leans on this, that the sexual relationship in a marriage is sacred. And what's happening with Xerxes is very much not so a lot of you. There's a lot of questions. People say, you know, look, I mean I'm not gonna. Let's not. I mean Esther was with him for a very long time.
So it's. I don't think she just had conversation with him every night, right. Esther did what she had to do to survive.
So the question then comes, you know, what was Esther a godly woman, you know, what she went through and she was subjected to a lot.
Again at this point in the story we see that Xerxes is taken with her, loves her.
But again I wouldn't take that too far. He is taken by her, but you know, she was beautiful. That was step one. And they do seem to develop a relationship. But we see often the opposite of this in Proverbs first Peter, you know, talking about what beauty actually is and how it's not the adornment.
And I think we're going to see that with Esther's soul and her kindness and her wisdom.
Now I'll pose this question to you all because it's something that was always interesting to me and some of these questions are a bit open ended but I think have some evidence in history. In the text in verse 10 it says Esther did not reveal her people or her kindred, didn't say she was Jewish because Mordecai instructed her. She was not to do so or not to reveal them. So here's the thing. If you remember, the Jews aren't slaves at this point. Don't forget that Cyrus freed them, okay. Two generations ago. The ones that stayed are subjects of Persia.
So they weren't slaves. Why is Esther not revealing her heritage here, do you think?
What do you think? I'd really like to hear your thoughts. Why is Esther told not to do so? What do you think?
Yeah, so I think there's a lot of water to that. I've read the same. Some of you may agree Ben was basically saying anti Semitism within the palace.
Anti Semitism is a thing. And anti Semitism isn't just hatred of Jewish people. It specifically is hatred of a minority people. Jewish people within a greater society. Right. You are the other. And this was alive in Persia.
And in the women, there were sources that the women. There was a lot there. There was danger of taking them out.
So I will say we know from history, again these were Persian subjects.
But there were again several other peoples in this area that were also Persian subjects that still had a long memory about what the Jews had done.
We have several references of a few revolts that happened through Cyrus and Darius time where even though the Jews were away from their temple worship, there were a few run ins similar to what happened to Daniel. Right. Refusing to bow to the king, but doing what the king says, where the Jews were where. It was pointed out that, well, we think you're being. There was a little concern about revolt. Okay. And the Jews had a history of being a problem.
Right. So there is some of that in history.
There was a little bit of anti Semitism in the court.
So I think, I agree.
Most of the sources tell us that it was just better to lay low. Right. And not brag about it. Yes, I'm Jewish because the neighbors in Persia were people like the Amalekites, the Moabites, the Elamites. Remember those people.
They're still there. And just because, hey, we're both citizens now, let's be friends.
That's not how it happened.
People were still remembering this. So. And the Bible tells us that. I think if we look at something, this is what I think. If you guys have any other comments, I think this backs up with scripture and what Ben said. History does tell us the Jews were still sort of made some people nervous. You know, in Exodus 17 the Amalekites are brought up. They are the perennial enemies of the Jews.
They are, they had a vendetta, right, against the Jews. Psalms 83 tells us about the Assyrians, Edomites and Moabites.
They say, come, let us wipe them out as a nation, that the name of Israel be remembered no more. Ezekiel tells us the house of Judah is now like all the nations. See, they mocked them. So in some ways, the Jewish memory was very much, well, look how the mighty has fallen.
So there was some bullying. Anybody else hear anything different? Anybody have anything you want to share?
A lot of it, I think, comes down to some anti Semitic talk.
So let's read further, because I do think we see more of this, because Mordecai is going to tell him, and we're going to meet one guy who I think that that's true about. So in verse 15, if you'll follow along with me through verse 19, we'll get closer to the end of the chapter of verse 18.
Okay? So in verse 15, we see when the turn now came for Esther, the daughter of Abiha of Abihail, the uncle of Mordecai, who had taken her as his own daughter to go in to the king. She asked for nothing except what Hegai, the king's eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised.
Now Esther was winning the favor in the eyes of all who saw her.
And when Esther was taken. There's that passive again. And when Esther was taken by God's will to King Xerxes into his royal palace in the 10th month of which is the month of Tebeth in the seventh year of his reign, the king loved Esther more than all the women, and she won grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.
Then the king gave a great feast for all his officials and servants. It was Esther's feast. He also granted a remission of taxes to the provinces and gave gifts with royal generosity.
So now we have Esther, who's been chosen, right? And in verse 15, do you notice something that's different here? This is just something that I noticed. You know, when the other women go in, it says, you know, they could take whatever they wanted. The eunuchs gave them this and that and that. And it says here, when Esther's time came, she did not request anything except what Hegai, the king's eunuch, advised. What's different about her approach here than the other women? Does anything stick out to you?
What do you notice?
Yes, I'm not. You know, this is kind of a Let go and let God thing, I guess, but what else can she do? But I don't want us to look over that. All the other women tried to play the game, right? And this makes sense. Esther goes to Hegai and says, essentially, what does he want, right?
He knows.
He's been around all these. He knows exactly what the king wants, what makes him happy, what, what she should say, where she should sit, what she should wear. And she lets wisdom be the better part of valor here, right?
She takes that opportunity. And I think that is something we see about Esther for the first time. She's very calm and collected.
Men and women throughout history are all equally capable of being very emotional, right? Sometimes we lean in and say, this person, if they were a leader, you know, if a woman was a leader here, they'd be emotional. Or this man was.
We tend to lead in history. We'll say, well, men behave this way, women behave that way. Well, there are truths in some things. But it's funny to me that the only guy in this story that's acting irrational, it's the guy, it's Xerxes. He's completely emotional.
Esther plays against historical part here. You're supposed to read these stories and think, well, there comes the queen. She's going to be obsessed with beauty.
She's very much a cool head and she is very calm and collected and has a good heart and a good head. She listens to Mordecai, she listens to her elders, she listens to those who know. And that's something we need to pay attention to as well. Okay, Just a little thing.
So another thing about these verses, I want you to notice through 18.
Once again, this is why I mentioned at the beginning, remember this story, it doesn't land as well. If you think it happens like when we're kids and we learn the story and that's fine to me it almost feels like it happens in a week, right? This happens and the king does this. He gets the queen, we get married, hurrah. But this was. It tells us and dates us here so we know exactly. This is in the seventh year of his reign, which would be 479bc 486bc. Do the math. Plus nine, right? Plus seven is when he reigned, he took over. He put down two years of revolts. And then in 483 is when he hosts the banquet to end all banquets, right? So about a four year span has passed here, which makes sense because Xerxes goes to war. Took him a year and a half to Planet Goes and fights for a year. And this aligns with history, which tells us in 479, Herodotus, Caesius, all these guys where he comes back in the seventh year to Sardis, the western palace.
Okay? And from there it says he returns to Susa after the failed Greek campaign. So this is after Xerxes. And he. For the rest of the story. This is important because Xerxes is a whipped dog. For the rest of this book, he's depressed.
He whines, he pouts.
All this bravado about the guy who had pictures of himself in the harem ripping lines apart with his bare hands so all the women would be impressed. That's what it looked like. This is a guy who suddenly can't do anything but drink, ask his friends for advice and mope.
He doesn't do what his father did. He retreats back to Sardis and then retreats back to Susa while the rest of his men continue the campaign. The mighty warrior, Xerxes.
Now, we see that this happened here, and I won't have to read it, but Herodotus tells us that he returned after getting beaten to his desires, which were wine and women. And we have our first instance. And I'll come back to this when we give Esther her moment when she asked for a favor. Xerxes gave gifts to pretty much anybody with a pretty face. He gets in trouble here at Sardis. If you remember, this is how Amestris, Vashti, she is banished. I think she's probably back at one of the other palaces. Remember, they would move him around, they had like, five palaces, and he would just put his wives where he didn't want to be if he didn't like them.
But we know when he was in Sardis, he has an affair. History tells us he comes back after getting beat, and he falls in love with the daughter of his best friend. He tries to have his best friend killed.
And he tells the daughter, ask me anything you want.
Up to half my kingdom, right? Sound familiar?
He's a broken record.
And he tells her that. And she wants a coat that he has.
Well, Vashti Amestris made him this coat.
And he winds up giving this woman this coat. He says, fine, I can't go against my word. And when he gets back to Susa, we have an account of him coming back to his banished wife, Vashti, who finds out he gave the coat away.
And then Vashti has this woman killed. Okay, so Xerxes cycle of revenge. He just keeps hurting people.
He's Giving gifts away to women. He's just drinking himself silly. But we know he's back now. And he comes home to Susa to tell his advisors, who'd you pick for me? Right?
So she's been going through this year and a half, and he goes through the next few months drinking himself to death and just sleeping with 100 women until he falls in love with Esther. Now, we don't know too much more about it from there, but in verse 17 and 18, we notice here, as we round out the chapter, Xerxes does crown Esther. He holds her a banquet. Again, symmetry from the beginning.
We open with a banquet for Vashti. We close here with Esther. There have been four banquets so far.
The first one was the big one for six months.
He throws a second one. If you notice in chapter one. That's a seven week banquet separate from that to celebrate. That's an after party.
Vashti has her own banquet for the women. And now we have this banquet, right? They party all the time.
The Greeks blushed, you know, it tells us. But we've had a lot of this. Now it tells us too, if you'll notice in 18 that Xerxes distributed gifts and remitted taxes. History backs this up as well. What that means is throughout the land, to make them happy and to make them like Esther, there was sort of a queen's tax that was given, essentially taxes that they would have paid, they didn't have to pay.
They relieved soldiers from military service for a time. They basically got a government holiday, and they were given gifts of various items and they didn't have to pay taxes for a little while, which is good for everybody. Okay, Esther, we know, has been elevated to Vashti, spot of queen consort. At least remember, she cannot become the queen mother entirely because in Persian culture, the king would always have to marry one woman from one of seven Persian households. So you can imagine the incest there.
But one of seven households had to happen.
And so he had somebody there that was just the political wife. But Esther has been elevated to the one he likes.
Now Esther has the ear of the king. And now she's in place for what to come.
Now what's to come?
Let's look in verse 19 and round out chapter 2.
We see Esther has been crowned. And now we come back to who helped get her there with Mordecai in verse 19. Now, when the virgins were gathered together the second time, Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate.
Esther had not made known her kindred or her people, Mordecai had commanded her. For Esther obeyed Mordecai just as when she was brought up by him.
In those days, as Mordecai was sitting at the king's gate, Bigthon and Teresh, two of the king's eunuchs who guarded the threshold, became angry and sought to lay hands on King Xerxes. And this came to the knowledge of Mordecai, and he told it to Queen Esther, and Esther told the king in the name of Mordecai.
When the affair was investigated and found to be so, the men were both hanged on the gallows and it was recorded in the book of the Chronicles in the presence of the king. Now this picture here is what's left of the ruins of the Gate of Nations, where Mordecai would have been at one of these, probably the Gate of Kings, one of the massive gates there, where he was either. We're not sure he was either. He wasn't the vizier. That's Haman. Okay, Haman's second in command. We're going to meet him in a minute.
Mordecai was a high ranking official, though either a porter in the house of the king, kept him with administrative items. Based on some other things we found, again, Herodotus confirms this.
The Annals of the king. That's going to come up later too. Believe it or not. Later, when we see Esther 6, when Xerxes has insomnia and God's sending him dreams, he gets up and I can't read. I want you to.
This is recorded. He had a problem with insomnia and God's using this, Right? We have other records where he has woken up in the middle of the night and he asked people to read him the day's stuff, right? So see what I mean? This is important. This is not coincidence. This is providence.
This is a man who, God is going to use his insecurities and his illness to work some miracles here too.
So we have that in the text. So we're back here at the front, at number two there, where Mordecai is watching one day and hears about the plot. So kind of quickly what that means there in verse 23, we get hanged on the gallows. This happened a lot.
And there's no need to dwell too much, I suppose. But historical sources tell us, even though the Xerxes line was the right to rule, that was as long as you could hold on to it, right? They were better in many ways than the Babylonians. But here was the problem. They were Zoroastrian which means, again, they didn't really see Xerxes as God, but they saw him as sort of the closest thing to it here. You know, the Babylonians, if they wanted to assassinate somebody, there was a little bit of a divine punishment there. You had to be careful. But in the palace of Persia, you know, they went through a lot of assassination attempts. Rivals, Xerxes own children tried to kill him. At some point, they tried to kill each other. It's kind of ludicrous. You know, there was a lot of stuff going on. And I did want to point this out because this is, I think, one of the biggest misconceptions that we want to get out because it's a little worse than I think, how we read it. Does anybody else have a different phrase or translation in verse 23 where it says hanged on a gallows? I have hanged on a gallows. Anyone else to say anything?
Impaled on poles.
You got the good one.
That is what it is, though, and it's a little thing. But did they have nooses? Not sure. Problem is we don't really have evidence that's the case.
If I said an apple was hanging from the tree off a branch, that would be right. But also if I took that apple and impaled it on a stick and it was hanging, I could also say it's hanging from the tree technically, but that wouldn't be right.
The actual transliteration is impaled on poles.
So right here, this is one of the.
This is a stele.
Well, let me show you the. From one of the palaces where it's showing a scene of conquering and punishment.
These are some soldiers, and I know it's a bit gruesome, but these are three men hanged on gallows. Okay. You can kind of tell the three men impaled on poles in the background showing what they would do.
So I want us to realize, though, if you tried to assassinate the king, you better make it count. You're not going to prison.
And it's not going to be a quick death by hanging.
It was a very, very brutal death. The closest word we have is crucifixion. It was an early form of crucifixion, but I'll just let your mind wander. They just pop them right on the pole and it was a long and slow death. So later, Haman is going to be punished in the same way.
But when they were hanged on the gallows, these assassins were put down. And Xerxes is going to remember that.
Okay, so we're at the Last few minutes. We may just try to kind of start the first few verses and we'll close there to kind of talk about what's coming.
Chapter two ends with us getting to chapter three, where Haman is going to come in. So let's just read the first few verses and start thinking about. We'll pick up here next week in chapter three. So we jump forward in time a bit after these things. King Xerxes promoted Haman the Agagite, the son of Hammedatha, and advanced him and set his throne above all the officials who were with him.
And all the king's servants who were at the king's gate bowed down and paid homage to Haman, for the king had so commanded concerning him.
But Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage.
Then the king's servants who were at the king's gate said to Mordecai, why do you transgress the king's command?
And when they spoke to him day after day and he would not listen to them, they told Haman in order to see whether Mordecai's words would stand, for he had told them that he was a Jew.
And when Haman saw that Mordecai did not bow down or pay homage to him, Haman was filled with fury. But he disdained to lay hands on Mordecai alone.
So as they had made known to him the people of Mordecai, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.
So we think about the hatred here Haman harbors, and we see what we'll pick up with a little more next week. I do want to go ahead and mention Haman.
There are a lot of interesting things with Haman. I think we can read between the lines.
Haman might have been how it's pronounced. The name, I think was a Persian. A lot of historians think it was for Hamayun, which was a Babylonian Persian sort of deity.
He was the God of bestowing kingship in the Septuagint, which is the new test, the Hebrew Bible. In Greek they used the phrase alien to Persia, reminding us that even the Persians saw Haman as an outsider. But in verse one, we know he is the son of the Agagite.
And this is a picture sort of on the right of the deity he was named after. And also tells us a little bit about his upbringing. And the giveaway is the little hat. The little circular hat, either. What we're going to find is that Haman himself was a member of the Magi culture. Okay, he was very superstitious or he was very much in league with the Magi. We see as we see about soothsaying and some of the things he does. Ironically, Haman's superstition is going to outweigh his hatred for the Jews. And if he could have just gotten past that, when he starts casting lots, he might have won.
But God's going to use about a year ahead of time here to give the Jews time to prepare.
And again, one thing I'll mention, we know Haman is another name that's on these administrative tablets that Xerxes was reading. We found thousands of these.
What's funny is Haman is no longer mentioned in them, but there is evidence of a vizier that was sort of erased. Okay.
On those same tablets. And this is one of my favorite pieces of information that backs up Esther. This is one of the big ones.
There are records from this time dating to 480 B.C.
that do have the court personnel and the names mentioned. It doesn't mention Haman, but it mentions Hammedatha, his father, Arodai and Aradatha. It mentions four of the eunuchs or three of the eunuchs, Merckx, Marcina, those three of the princely advisors, and Mehuma, Karcus, Bigtha and Hathach are four eunuchs that we see in the text. They're in the tablets, so you can't make this up. Truth is stranger than fiction.
So they're there. All of those verses are where those names appear. But all of these people are mentioned because the Persians, again, if not good historians, were great record keepers. They may not be able to write down that date of something, but they're definitely going to hold you account for money they owe you. So we'll get into this some, I think next week. I want to get that tonight, but we'll talk more about Mordecai and Haman. I want you to read 1st Samuel 15, if you can, for me, and I want you to think about how that mirrors what we're going to see as God's going to put in place an ancestor of two different kings.
And God's going to come to you on making an old feud settled and he's going to continue to move Mordecai into a position of power as well. Thank you for tonight. We'll see you next week.
