Esther 7 – The king’s eunuchs
come to get him for the banquet with Esther. There, the king asks Esther what
it is she wants; and she tells him she desires only “the lives of [her] people”
(7:4). In the course of talking to him about the matter, Haman’s name comes up
as the one behind the terror. The king leaves the banquet in a fury and Haman
realizes the “gig is up.” He begs Esther for mercy and help. When the king
returns he thinks Haman is trying to assault Esther. One of the eunuchs throws
a “veil” over Haman, and the end of it all is Haman is hanged on the gallows he
erected for Mordecai.
Esther 8 – Esther receives all
the property of the “House of Haman” and Mordecai the ring with the king’s seal
that Haman had. Esther asks the king to revoke the order he had issued at
Haman’s prompting – for the extermination of the Jewish population.
Xerxes
feels that it would be unacceptable to revoke a proclamation issued in the his
name and stamped with the royal seal (8:8), but it would be acceptable to her
to write a letter of warning to the Jews and also have it stamped. She may
write “whatever [she] wants. . . in [the king’s] name” and have it stamped with
his seal. So Mordecai assembles the king’s secretaries and has them write
letters to all 127 provinces in the empire explaining that “the king would
allow the Jews in every city to organize for self-defense” (8:11). The Jews
would be permitted to “fight back and destroy the attackers; they could
slaughter them to the last man and take their possessions” (8:11).
The Jerusalem Bible also includes
translation of the Greek additions to the Hebrew text. There
follows in the Greek version a long letter, ostensibly from Ahaseurus [Xerxes],
lamenting the ill-influence of bad advisers [like Haman] on kings and
describing the things Haman did. Haman is called a Macedonian attempting to win
for Macedon a victory over the Persians, but a note indicates they probably
meant he was a Mede, as it was the Medes who had had a struggle for mastery
with the Persians.
The letter goes on to say, “you will . . . do well not to act on
the letters sent by Haman . . . since their author has been hanged at the gates
of Susa with his whole household” (8:12). “Put up copes of this letter
everywhere, allow the Jews freedom to observe their own customs, and come to
their help against anyone who attacks them on the day originally chosen for the
maltreatment . . . Jews, for your part, among your solemn festivals celebrate
this as a special day with every kind of feasting, so that now and in the
future, for you and for Persians of good will it may commemorate your rescue”
(8:12). It refers to the Jews as people “of the Most High, the great and living
God to whom we and our ancestors owe the continuing prosperity of our realm.”
Then
the text returns to the Hebrew. The edict is greeted with “feasting and
holiday-making” (8:17). An interesting last sentence from the Hebrew text says,
“Of the country’s population many became Jews, since now the Jews were feared”
(8:17).
Esther 9 –
With Mordecai’s growing power and influence at the court, the persecutions end,
and indeed it was the Jews who struck out, bringing their enemies down “with
the sword, with resulting slaughter and destruction” (9:5). In Susa, five
hundred are killed, including ten of Haman’s sons, but no plunder is taken. At
Esther’s request the reprisals are permitted to continue for one more day,
another three hundred are killed, and the bodies of Haman’s ten sons are displayed
on the gallows.
Elsewhere
in Persia, 75,000 are killed in the same way. The Jerusalem Bible notes says that there is
no historical record of any such reprisals, that they should be taken as a way
of showing how God will bring justice in an “eye for and eye” way.
When
it is over, the Jews have a day of feasting and gladness—the 14th
day of the month of Adar becomes the day for Purim – the word Purim comes from
the word Pur for “lot.” Haman “had cast lots to determine the day for
destroying the Jews (9:24). The festival was on the 15th in the cities.
Mordecai writes the Jews everywhere and tells them to celebrate these days
annually as days on which “their sorrow had been turned into gladness” (9:22).
They are to celebrate and give gifts to the poor. Verses 9:20 on are, the note
says, additions to the book from various sources.
Esther 10 – The deeds of Xerxes
[Ahasuerus] and Mordecai are recorded in the Book of the Annals of the Kings of
Media and Persia. Mordecai was “honored and well-liked; he worked for the good
of his people and for the security of all their descendants” (10:3).
Reflections:
The
OT reading about Queen Esther is the prayer in which she (joined through a
common memory with her whole people) begs for God to remember his promises to
the Jewish people. She accepts that
the “handing over” of her people to their enemies has happened because of their
unfaithfulness. Still, the
promises and favor of God do miraculously endure even when we are punished for
our failures and are scattered.
God will listen to the “voice of the desperate,” (New Jerusalem 4:19 –
the book is garbled organizationally). The relationship with God is wonderfully
reciprocal. He hears our cries,
our calls to him, our praises; and in return he expects us to listen for His
voice, observe His commands, respond to His majesty, and fulfil His will with
respect to what He has created.
This reciprocity is at the center of the psalm #138 “I will give thanks
to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth.”
It is also at the center of the gospel (Matt. 7:7-12) where Jesus tells us that
God will give if we ask, open if we knock.
Acts 3 – Peter and John
encounter a man “lame from birth,” being carried to the temple, to the gate
called the Beautiful Gate where he begs for alms. He accosts the two, and they
approach him, looking intently at him. They tell him to look at them, and Peter
says “I have no silver or gold, but what I have I give you in the name of Jesus
Christ of Nazareth, stand up and walk” (3:6). Immediately he is able to get up
and walk and leap. The people who know who he is are amazed and filled with
wonder (3:10).
The man clings to Peter as they go into Solomon’s Portico.
Peter uses the occasion as an opportunity to preach again. He says to the crowd
that it is not through any power of theirs that the man was healed. The God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob healed him as a way of glorifying the name of his
servant Jesus “whom you handed over and rejected” (3:13). You “rejected the
Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you
killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead” (3:15). But he says,
he knows they “acted in ignorance” (3:17). It is in this way though that “God
fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would
suffer” (3:18).
He asks them to repent, “and turn to God so that your sins
may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the
Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who
must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God
announced long ago through his holy prophets” (3:21). He refers to Deut. 18:15. “Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up
for you from your own people a prophet like me. You must listen to whatever he
tells you.” He tells them they are the descendents of the prophets, that in
them “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (3:25). That is why God
sent Jesus first to them, to bless them and turn them from their wicked ways.
I left this
chapter and turned to Penn’s No Cross, No
Crown and found this very apropos reflection on the state of early Friends
minds when they came to be aware how far they had strayed (with all of Christendom,
in ignorance of the spirit) from the true path of Christian faithfulness:
“ . .
.we were made to see him whom we
had pierced, and to mourn for it. A day of humiliation overtook us, and we
fainted to that pleasure and delight we once loved. Now our works went
beforehand to judgment, a thorough search was made, and the words of the
prophet became well understood by us; ‘Who
can abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appears. . . . .
.the terrors of the Lord took such hold upon us, because we had long, under a
profession of religion, grieved God’s Holy Spirit, which reproved us in
secret for our disobedience; that as we abhorred to think of continuing in our
old sins, so we feared to use lawful things, lest we should use them
unlawfully” (Penn 104-105).
