The Esther You Never Knew

Moralism controls our reading of Scripture, especially the Old Testament. When we dust off the first 2/3 of the Bible and seek to find some spiritual wisdom, we often scurry around to find examples of morally upright people to show us how to live. We want to be like Abraham, be like Jacob, and follow in the footsteps of Joshua, Gideon, Daniel, and Moses. And when we get to the book of Esther, the same moralistic lens remains plastered to our faces and we therefore see in this Jewish queen an example of what we should do to be a good person.

However, the Bible isn’t primarily about what we should do, but about what God has done. God—not humanity—is the main character in the Old Testament, and he is always the hero. Sometimes he uses good people to do good things; but since there are hardly any good people, he ends up using messed up people to accomplish his will. And so he uses liars like Abraham, thieves like Jacob, and porn stars like Judah and Samson to accomplish his will. Because the Bible is not about God responding to our goodness, but about God using humanity to accomplish his will on earth despite our moral bankruptcy.

And the same is true of Esther. The book of Esther is not about a morally upright girl whom God uses because she’s righteous. It’s about God using someone, who—like Judah (Gen 38)—is morally suspect. Here’s why:

First, Esther does not resist being taken into Xerxes’s (a pagan king) harem and participating in his beauty contest (2:8).

Second, Esther not only spent the night with the king before they were married, but of all the virgins that went in to the king, Esther “pleased him the most” (2:9, 16-17). I’ll let you do the exegesis on what went on that night, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t playing cards.

Third, after spending the night, Esther marries Xerxes—a pagan king—in blatant violation of Mosaic law.

Fourth, she wines and dines with the king (chs. 6-7), something that Daniel and his three friends explicitly chose not to do.

“But she didn’t have a choice,” you say. “She would have been killed if she resisted king Xerxes!” Yes, this is probably true. But the Bible encourage obedience even if it costs you your life. In fact, Daniel and his three friends also lived under foreign rule and yet they resisted all sorts of pagan demands, even though it cost them their lives (or so they thought; Dan 1, 2, 3).

In the Hebrew Canon, the book of Esther is interestingly placed right next to the book of Daniel. And the two stories could not be more different. Daniel contains examples of some Jews who long for the land of Israel and stick to Mosaic law even if it costs them their life, while Esther contains examples of Jews who couldn’t care less about the land (why are they still in Persia when God has paved the way for them to return, Ezra 1:1-4?) or about Mosaic law.

The two books are mirror opposites.

There is little about Esther that could be considered morally upright according to the standards of Mosaic law. I certainly wouldn’t want my daughters to follow in the footsteps of Esther. But I would want my daughters to embrace the God of Esther, who uses those who are morally inadequate to accomplish his will.

And that’s the point of the story. In fact, it’s the point of most stories in the Bible. That we have a God who is so powerful, so gracious, that our sin will not prevent him from fulfilling his promises to Adam (Gen 3:15), Abraham (Gen 12:1-3), and David (2 Sam 7:10-16), to redeem his good creation by using unusable people.

The beautiful point of the book of Esther—for you ladies out there—is that despite your sexual failures, your past (or present) addictions, God desires to use you. God delights in you because you are human and not because you have kept a purity vow. There’s nothing you have done that disqualifies you from being a conduit for God’s sovereign rule over his earth.

So don’t try to clean up your act in order to earn God’s favor. Submit to Jesus. He loves you with a stubborn delight in spite of your failures. He not only loves you, but finds you to be precious, beautiful, and a perfect candidate for his favor. He—and only He—can clean you up, in spite of how unclean you are.