Book of Esther

For this, my first blog entry, I am going to focus on the themes of obedience and respect within the first few chapters of the Book of Esther. This relates, not so much to Advent, but to a more generalised Faith area – the whole book is about Purim, the closest thing many Jews have to advent, and I am going to put a modern / Quaker theme on it. This is because I am a Quaker, and I feel that advent and Christmas are no longer purely Christian, but are celebrated by many faiths.

Still, to start on my real entry, I have been studying the book of Esther in Bible study, and have become quite fond of the characters.

To begin, I will give a brief overview of what happens in the first few chapters, I will then pick up on the themes, and look at their appropriateness in Biblical times and relate that to what is appropriate nowadays.

There was a king – King Ahsuerus, who ruled over a very large area, from India to Ethiopia, and he had his capital in Susa. There, he chose to hold a banquet that would last for 180 days, and give him a chance to show off his wealth. On the seventh day, the King, who was slightly drunk, demanded that his wife, Queen Vashti come, all dressed in finery, for him to show all these people. She refused, and the King's wise men dictated that she should never appear again before the King. This was not just due to her misdemeanor, but also due to the fact that if the Queen could disobey her husband, there was a fear that all women might follow suit. Following that, he needed a new wife, and so all the beautiful young girls were found and brought to the palace, there to be paraded in front of the king. They were made part of the King's harem, but one in particular, Esther, soon caught his eye. Esther was in fact a Jew, but her guardian, another Jew – Mordecai, had demanded that she tell nobody she was Jewish, and she kept his secret. After a year of preparation, she was shown to the King, who crowned her his new wife, and held a banquet to celebrate her.

There are a few major of the themes of obedience here – firstly that the King ordered his first wife – Queen Vashti, to show herself, and she refused, and secondly that he could demand any woman he chose to be his wife.

In those days, whilst the punishment meted upon Queen Vashti was severe, it would not have been seen as unreasonable, because it would have been seen as very bad if all women were able to leave the control of their men, and so a severe punishment had to be selected. Also, as the King, he could easily have got any wife he chose, due to the prestige attached to him. Nowadays, both of these would have been shown as inappropriate. The first example would have been, because in those days, the premise was that men were essentially better than women, whereas nowadays, the premise is that men and women are equal. The second would be also wrong, because it negates any women's emotions, but at the same time is more acceptable, because if someone with the same level of fame, a rock star, or Prince, for instance, chose someone they wanted to marry, the chances would be that they would indeed marry. So why were womens rights so minimized in the beginning of the book? At that time, they were an unknown concept, and a man would have a harem of wives – a large group of women there to service his every needs. Nowadays, with equal rights therefore, does the story lose it's relevance? I personally do not think so. This is because the story could easily be written as a leader of a gang, and his girlfriends, easily re-written to recapture a high level of point and relevance. None of this is fixed, and the book of Esther is real enough still, that we can take points from it, whilst remembering the mistakes made. Nowadays, womens rights are seen as almost a certainty, that everyone has a right to, but we often forget, in our liberal Christian society, that it is not, and has never been that simple. In some religions, women are still a separate, or less significant class, seen as housewives, whereas at other extremes, there are religions that worship Mother Earth, or a female God. To people following some religions, especially stricter groups within said religions, women still have to live as a lesser group. In some countries, a man still has the right to marry many wives. Yet who are we to judge these age old traditions? Who are we to press for women's rights in countries where the women may prefer not to have rights? Who are we to fight for the freedom of Muslim women from the veil, when the women may want to wear the veil? Who are we to demand rights for people, when demanding those rights infringes on their beliefs?

Whilst everyone has a basic human right to food, water, shelter, people are not getting these, whilst the West attempts to impose it's democracy and views on countries that work effectively already, with their own systems. This made me think about Palestine and Israel, and how the West has firmly imposed it's own justice upon it, to disastrous effect. Or Iraq, which was invaded in an attempt to give it democracy, and instead the infrastructure of the country has been destroyed. We choose to present the countries as pitiful, and desperate for Western wisdom, this countries that have their age old ways of working. “This is the Western way, we speak up for you who have no voice, and give you what we know you always wanted.”