Esther 2:1-7
A Jewish Man Named Mordecai
1Some time later, when the anger of King Xerxes had subsided, he remembered Vashti and what she had done, and what had been decreed against her.
2Then the king’s attendants proposed, “Let a search be made for beautiful young virgins for the king,
3and let the king appoint commissioners in each province of his kingdom to assemble all the beautiful young women into the harem at the citadel of Susa. Let them be placed under the care of Hegai, the king’s eunuch in charge of the women, and let them be given beauty treatments.
4Then let the young woman who pleases the king become queen in place of Vashti.” This suggestion pleased the king, and he acted accordingly.
5Now there was at the citadel of Susa a Jewish man from the tribe of Benjamin named Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish.
6He had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon among those taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah.
7And Mordecai had brought up Hadassah (that is, Esther), the daughter of his uncle, because she did not have a father or mother. The young woman was lovely in form and appearance, and when her father and mother had died, Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter.
Berean Standard Bible
Time passes, and the king's anger wears off the way anger does. What is left over is what the anger did while it lasted. The account is blunt about it:
he remembered Vashti and what she had done, and what had been decreed against her.
Remembered, not regretted. The book gives him no apology, and the decree is past recall anyway, because everyone involved made certain of that. His attendants see a king with a gap in his household and offer to fill it. Let commissioners be appointed in every province, they say, to gather the beautiful young women into the harem at Susa under the care of Hegai, and let whichever one pleases the king become queen in place of Vashti. The king likes the plan and acts on it.
It helps to hear that for what it is, not for what we would prefer. Nobody enters this. There is no applying, no declining, no consent asked for anywhere in it. Officials go out, young women are collected, and a household is restocked the way an empire restocks anything.
Then the account stops the machinery and introduces a man.
Now there was at the citadel of Susa a Jewish man from the tribe of Benjamin named Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish.
Four generations, for a man who has not yet done anything. The tribe of Benjamin and a forefather called Kish are labels a reader of Israel's older books would know on sight, and this book sets them down and walks on without a word of explanation. It does that with a great deal.
Then it tells us how his family came to be in Susa in the first place.
He had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon among those taken captive with Jeconiah king of Judah.
Carried. Not moved, not sent, not gone looking for work. Mordecai's people did not leave Jerusalem, they were removed from it, and the sentence names the king who did it and the king of Judah who went in the same column. One line, and it takes for granted that we know what it cost.
Then the girl. Mordecai had raised his uncle's daughter, Hadassah, who is also Esther, because she had no father and no mother, and when they died he took her as his own. She was lovely in form and appearance, which in this particular chapter is a dangerous thing to be. So the book has its two people, a man whose family was marched out of Jerusalem and the orphan he brought up. Neither of them chose any of it, and nobody in that palace knows either name.
How We Know
The genealogy in verse 5 is longer than the story needs, and the last name in it is doing the work. Labels landing this precisely on an older story are hard to explain as accident, and what they carry is the book's expected reader rather than the descent itself.
Mordecai is introduced as a Benjaminite, son of Jair, son of Shimei, son of Kish. 1 Samuel 9:1-2 does the same thing in the other direction: verse 1 introduces Kish, a Benjaminite, and verse 2 gives his son Saul. Esther 3:1 introduces the villain as Haman the Agagite, and 1 Samuel 15:8 has Saul son of Kish sparing Agag king of the Amalekites when he was told not to.
The book puts those labels on the page and never once explains them.
Verse 6 does something similar with the exile. It names Nebuchadnezzar and Jeconiah, which 2 Kings 24:15 records as the deportation of the king of Judah to Babylon. One sentence, and the reader is expected to know what it cost.
Questions
1 What does the king remember, and why does that land so badly?
AnswerVashti, what she did, and what was decreed against her. His anger had worn off and the decree had not. The book never says he was sorry, only that he remembered, and remembering was no use to anybody by then.
2 How does the search for a new queen actually work?
AnswerBy appointment and collection. Commissioners go out to every province and the young women are gathered into the harem at Susa under Hegai's care. Nobody volunteers, nobody applies, and nobody is asked. The state organizes it and the king approves it.
3 Mordecai gets four generations of ancestors before he has done a single thing. Why would the book bother?
AnswerBecause the names are the point. Tribe of Benjamin, and a forefather called Kish, are the same labels the older books hang on Saul. This account sets them down and offers no explanation at all, which is how it tends to work.
4 What in our own family was settled before any of us had a say in it? Both people here are introduced by what was done to them.
AnswerMordecai was carried out of Jerusalem into exile. Esther lost both parents and was brought up by a cousin. Neither of them picked their situation, and the book does not treat that as a disqualification. It is where the two of them are standing when everything else begins.
What This Means for Us
They were carried away. Jerusalem gets named right there, and it gets named in order to say what the family had lost, and from then on everything happens a long way from it, in a palace belonging to somebody else, under laws they had no part in writing.
Nobody in these seven verses picks their circumstances. The exile was done to Mordecai, the search is being done to the young women of the empire, and not one of them was consulted. What is left to them is what they do inside it. Where this family is living inside something none of you chose, that is the ground the whole book stands on.
Prayer
Father, parts of our lives were settled for us before we had any say in them. Thank you for a book that begins in an exile nobody chose. Teach us to be faithful inside circumstances we did not pick, and to trust that you are not absent from them. Amen.