The setting of the book of Esther is late in the Exile: after Persia had defeated the Babylonians, but while most of the Jews were still scattered around the Persian empire. In some translations the king’s name is given as Xerxes, and in others it is given as Ahasuerus. Why such different names? His name in Old Persian was Xšayāršā. That got transliterated into Babylonian, and then into Hebrew as אחשורוש (Akhashverosh), and then via Latin to Ahasuerus. But the name got transliterated from Old Persian into Greek as Ξέρξης, which then gets transliterated into English as Xerxes, a name more familiar to most of us from our history lessons.

The narrative begins with King Ahasuerus throwing a week-long party to show off all his wealth and splendor to his nobles (Esther 1:5-8). Then, merry with wine, the king decided that he also needed to show off the beauty of his wife, Queen Vashti; he ordered her to come present herself at this party. We should notice how the text tells us two important details: that the king wanted to display her great beauty to his officers, and that the king specifically ordered that she must wear her royal diadem; the narrator probably intended for us to discern, from the combination of these two details, that the drunken king intended to show off all her beauty, with her wearing her crown and nothing more (1:10-11).

When Queen Vashti refused to show up for the courtiers to leer at her, “the king was enraged, and his anger burned within him” (1:12). The nobles proposed (for flattery? For paranoia?) that her denial of the king’s command would mean that throughout the kingdom “this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands” (1:16-17). To prevent such a disaster, Vashti was deposed as queen, and many beautiful young virgins were added to the king’s harem, so that he could pick the one he liked the most to become the new queen (1:19, 2:1-4). As it turns out, Esther became the girl the king liked the best, and thus she became the new queen (2:16-17).

Intriguingly, although the book of Esther never mentions God by name, it gives us the chance to see God’s providential hand at work: Esther became queen just in time to be instrumental in thwarting the plot to assassinate the king (2:19-23) – and so that she could later be instrumental in thwarting the plot to destroy the Jews.

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We don’t always see it at the time, O Lord: yet even in the midst of human depravity you can arrange the circumstances to work in redemptive ways. Teach us to trust in you, and to know that you will bring us to the right place at the right time to fulfill your will.

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