Esther 1:1-9
A Hundred and Eighty Days
1This is what happened in the days of Xerxes, who reigned over 127 provinces from India to Cush.
2In those days King Xerxes sat on his royal throne in the citadel of Susa.
3In the third year of his reign, Xerxes held a feast for all his officials and servants. The military leaders of Persia and Media were there, along with the nobles and princes of the provinces.
4And for a full 180 days he displayed the glorious riches of his kingdom and the magnificent splendor of his greatness.
5At the end of this time, in the garden court of the royal palace, the king held a seven-day feast for all the people in the citadel of Susa, from the least to the greatest.
6Hangings of white and blue linen were fastened with cords of fine white and purple material to silver rings on the marble pillars. Gold and silver couches were arranged on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother-of-pearl, and other costly stones.
7Beverages were served in an array of goblets of gold, each with a different design, and the royal wine flowed freely, according to the king’s bounty.
8By order of the king, no limit was placed on the drinking, and every official of his household was to serve each man whatever he desired.
9Queen Vashti also gave a banquet for the women in the royal palace of King Xerxes.
Berean Standard Bible
The book opens with a king and a map. Xerxes rules a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, from India to Cush, and the first thing we are told about him is how much of the world belongs to him. Nobody prays here. No prophet speaks, no altar is built, and God is not mentioned at all. We are in a palace in Persia, and for the moment that palace is the whole horizon.
In the third year of his reign the king gathers his officials and servants, the commanders of Persia and Media, the nobles and the provincial princes. They come, and then they stay.
And for a full 180 days he displayed the glorious riches of his kingdom and the magnificent splendor of his greatness.
Half a year. A man who could have shown those guests anything in the world chose to show them his own possessions, and it took him that long to get to the end of them. The room is full of the men who command his soldiers and govern his provinces, and they are the ones the gold is aimed at.
When the six months are finally over, he holds another feast in the garden court of the palace, seven days long, open to everybody in the citadel of Susa from the least to the greatest. The doors come open and the city walks in.
Gold and silver couches were arranged on a mosaic pavement of porphyry, marble, mother-of-pearl, and other costly stones.
The narrator could have written that the palace was splendid and moved on. Instead he takes inventory: the white and blue linen, the cords, the silver rings, the pillars, the couches, the floor, one item after another, until the sentence itself feels expensive. He is standing us in the courtyard rather than describing it to us afterward.
The wine matches the furniture. Every goblet is gold, and no two of them have the same design.
By order of the king, no limit was placed on the drinking.
Nothing there got out of hand. Somebody decided it, it went out as an order, and the household staff were told to serve each man whatever he wanted. Before this chapter is finished, that decision will cost the queen her position.
The last thing we hear is quiet after all the noise. Queen Vashti held a banquet of her own for the women, in the royal palace of King Xerxes, and it gets one sentence and no description. No linen, no couches, no goblets. Only her name, and a room of her own, while the men are still drinking.
How We Know
Something is missing from this book, and it can be counted rather than argued over.
In the Berean text printed on these pages, the words God, LORD, pray, worship, temple and covenant do not appear anywhere in Esther's ten chapters. Jerusalem appears once, at 2:6, and only to say where Mordecai's family was carried from.
That is a fact about this translation, which is the one in front of you, and it is worth knowing at the start because it changes what kind of book this is. Nobody here gets a message from heaven. There are no miracles, no prophets and no prayers on the page.
What there is instead is a run of coincidences that get harder and harder to call coincidences. The book never explains them. It just keeps putting them down.
Questions
1 Before anybody in this book says a word, we are told what the king owns. What does that tell you about where we are?
AnswerThat we are inside the palace and nowhere else. A hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India to Cush, and no prophet, no altar, nobody hearing from God. The book opens by measuring one man's reach.
2 When you want people to think well of you, what do you put on show?
AnswerXerxes had six months and an empire to answer that, and he spent all of it displaying what he owned. The rest of us work with less, so we do it with the tidy front room, or the new shoes, or the story we tell twice. It helps to say out loud what ours actually is.
3 Six months of display, and then another seven days of it. Why does it take so long?
AnswerBecause nothing he owned was ever going to finish the job. He was not showing those men the treasury, he was showing them himself, and no quantity of that ever settles the question. So one feast ends and another one starts.
4 The drinking had no limit, and that was written down as a royal order. Who does that put in charge of it?
AnswerThe king does. It was not a night that got away from anybody. He decided it, it went out as an order, and his household staff were told to serve every man whatever he asked for. By the end of the chapter the decision has cost the queen her place.
What This Means for Us
A hundred and eighty days of showing people your things, and then another week of it, because the first six months settled nothing.
Nothing Xerxes owned was ever going to be enough, since what he actually wanted was not the couches or the gold cups. He wanted to be looked at. Most of us do the same on a smaller budget. We tidy the front room and not the cupboards, and we mention the promotion twice. The question is not whether we own things, but what we need people to see when they look at us, and whether we would still want it with nobody watching.
Prayer
Father, we spend more of our lives displaying than we would like to admit, and we call it working hard. Thank you that you are not impressed by any of it. Free us from needing to be seen, and give us something better to want. Amen.