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Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the.
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Entire Bible in a year.
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You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan.
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And join the Journey.
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Family. Welcome to day 336 here on the Bible department podcast. We are diving into a brand new book of the Bible. We are in the book of Esther today. And I assume that most people are.
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Familiar with the story of Esther with.
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The book of Esther. And so my goal is to put this book into context to highlight some details that maybe you missed when you were in Sunday school. Okay, so today we've got Esther chapters 1, 2 and 3. If you haven't done the reading, I'm going to challenge you. Stop the video, pause the audio and go get the reading done. Okay. Three short chapters of the Bible and narrative based chapters of the Bible. So this is story. So I feel like, you know, sometimes just narrative just reads easier, you know, so not a lot of chapters to read. Not a long reading today. Pretty easy reading. You're reading a story. It's awesome. All right, like every day here on the podcast, I'm going to start out with context clues. And typically when we're diving into a book for the first time, the context typically takes up the majority of the episode. So buckle up. Got a lot of context to give you, not just for Esther's Esther chapters 1, 2 and 3, but for the book of Esther as a whole. So we're in Esther for three days. Okay, day 3:36, 3:37 and 3:38 of this podcast of this Bob reading plan. And so today will probably be heavy on context clues and light on everything else, but then the other days will probably be light on context clues, heavy on everything else. So just want to give you a heads up. All right, let's dive into context number one. This book is post exilic. Now. We are about to like go pretty far into the future and then I want to like orient you or kind of help brace you for the whiplash. Because we're gonna go into the future and then we're gonna come back. What's gonna happen once we get to books like Ezra and Nehemiah? We're gonna have to come back. So like Esther, you know, maybe one of these years we'll do the Bible reading plan, like chronologically, because I think that's also helpful. Like if you've Ever read, like, the chronological Bible? It can be really, really, really helpful. Our Bible reading plan just isn't structured that way. It's. It's structured based on how Jews encountered the Hebrew Bible, AKA the Old Testament. So anywho, we're about to jump, you know, a hundred years, essentially, like after Ezra and Nehemiah. And then, you know, when we get to Ezra, Nehemiah, we're going to have to come back in time. So just want to, like, help you get oriented, say. So this is post exile. This, like, roughly 100 years after the.
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Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem.
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So remember, Jews are exiled to Babylon. The Persian Empire defeats the Babylonian Empire, and then the Jews are allowed to go back to wherever they come from. And other groups, too. They in. Instead of living in deportation, they can, like, go back to their homeland. And so the Jews are just one of many ethnic groups that are allowed to go back to Jerusalem. Okay? But not everyone takes, you know, the Persians up on that offer. Some people, it's like they've built homes, they've planted vineyards, they've established life. And so a bunch of people do remain in the Persian Empire. Okay, so this story is a story of Esther and her uncle Mordecai, who didn't go back, okay, With Ezra and Nehemiah, okay? They didn't go back to Jerusalem once the deportation was over. They stayed, okay. As foreigners in the Persian kingdom. Okay? So there we go. I just want to give you context for that. Next, the villain in the story, his name is Haman, and he's going to use dice to decide the day where they're going to kill all the Jews, that those dice are called purr.
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Okay?
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Purr. And so, because God, through Mordecai and Esther, are able to overthrow the wicked plan of Haman, the festival to celebrate the fact that all the Jews didn't, you know, get systematically killed off is going to get called Purim. Purim, okay? So it's based on those dice that Haman was using to base the date of their execution. And so this is a story of reversals. Okay? So also the Book of Esther is the background for the festival of Purim. Okay? Purim. It's the.
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It's.
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Why do Jews celebrate the festival of Purim? Well, this story found here in Esther is actually going to give the answer for why Jews celebrate this festival. Okay? Still a festival that Jews celebrate today. Now, I've been to enough, like, Jewish events and festivals to know that it's very common for Jewish people to say things like, haman who's obviously the villain in the story of Nestor, is the first Hitler. Haman is the first Hitler. Okay? So in terms of leaders, government leaders that want to systematically destroy, exterminate or kill off the Jewish people, this is a. Is a biblical story of a political leader who wants to, you know, get rid of an entire ethnic group. Okay? So that's not just a modern problem. This is an ancient issue, okay? Purim, the word for the systematic elimination of Jews throughout history. That word is called pogrom, okay? P O G R O M. And this story here in Esther is considered the first program. The next thing that is important to know in terms of context. So we don't know who the author of the Book of Esther is. A lot of people may think maybe it's Mordecai. Other people think it's the group of 70 Jewish elders, okay?
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There really is no clear, definite answer.
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For who the author is, so we're going to just go ahead and say unknown author. So in terms of context, we know the time frame in which this book would have taken taken place, but we don't necessarily know when it was written. We know when the events are happening, but not when it is written or who writes it. Next thing you need to know, if you've seen the movie 300, then you are literally, like, historically acclimated to what's happening in the Book of Esther, because that King Xerxes that is depicted in the movie 300, that would have been the man that Esther is going to marry here in. In Esther Chapter two. Not only that, but it is the collision or the clash or the war, the battle with the Greek city states that is depicted in the movie 300 that they are preparing for in Esther chapter one. Okay? So in Esther chapter one, they are about to go to war with the Spartans, okay? Or Sparta, okay? Like, they're about to, like, go to war with them. They lose, which is depicted in the movie 300. And then Xerxes and the Persian army comes back to the capital, the administrative capital of Persia, and regroup, okay? Now when they come back to regroup, that is when we get to Esther Chapter two. So what many people don't realize is that there are four years in between Esther Chapter one and Esther Chapter two. So just want to, like, orient us around that maybe it's a good excuse to go watch the movie 300, but. And I know in the movie 300, the Persians are the villains in that story, but just from a historical perspective, it's good to just get your mind Wrapped around, like. Oh, got it. Like. Like these are the Persians. Like, this is the Persian kingdom, is the Persian Empire. Eventually, a man by the name of Alexander the Great is going to overthrow the Persian Empire. And that's when we're going to get the. Essentially that. That changing of the guard. And just so that everyone kind of understands, the Assyrian Empire kind of ran the show. Okay. In the ancient near east. And then the Babylonian empire overthrew the Assyrian Empire, like, swallowed it up, took all the land and. And all the assets, and then the Babylonian empire came and swallowed them up. Okay, no, sorry. Assyrian Empire, Babylonian Empire, Persian Empire, Greek, and then Roman.
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Okay?
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So these empires are just kind of like. These empires are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but it's because they are conquering the next biggest empire, if that makes sense. All right, so think 300. Next, this is going to get into our first Nerdy Nuggets. Okay? So that's all the historical context you need.
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Okay.
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Next, let's dive into our Nerdy Nuggets for the day. Family. The wait is over. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, is out now and available everywhere. Books are sold, Literally. Today I walked into a Barnes and Noble and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes and Noble or you can go to a Books A Million or Amazon or anywhere books are sold and grab a copy. If you enjoy reading the Bible from an ancient perspective, if you understand that the beauty of scripture is actually knowing it in context, then you'll love this book. And if there's any chaos in your personal life, I think that reading the Bible from an ancient perspective can actually help to crush the chaos in your life. I think this book is going to be a New York Times bestseller. I really do. I think we wrote a good one. I think you should get a copy today. All right, back to the episode. First Nerdy Nugget. God is not mentioned in the book.
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One of the things you're going to.
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Realize, or maybe you already have realized after reading, is that God is not mentioned.
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This is going to get us into.
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Our timeless truth later. So I won't say anything else about that. But you may have realized, like, the absence of God's name of any mentions about him. In a. In a real sense, Yahweh is pretty quote unquote absent. Okay. Throughout the entire book. Okay. Second thing that you need to realize is that the characters are really morally compromised. Like, number one, they're marrying foreigners, literally. Esther is marrying a whole pagan a Whole. Okay. Number two, they're drinking alcohol and like eating, eating non kosher food and very, very comfortable being mixed in with Hagen idol worshiping, non Jewish folks, Gentiles. If you were to take a book like Daniel and kind of contrast the Book of Daniel with the Book of Esther, you'd realize that Daniel, Daniel and his three friends, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego are like, in and of themselves like those four boys are a contrast community to the wider Babylonian culture. They won't eat the king's food, they won't drink the king's wine. They just are conducting themselves in a very sacred way. That it is a clear, like, we.
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Live a different lifestyle than y'.
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All. Whereas once you get to the Book of Esther, there is none of that like these, these folks, Mordecai and Esther are not like the billboards for cultural holiness or not blending in or being in the world, but not of it. They are very much so in it and of it and drinking and partying and being married to pagans and all of it. Okay, so in a real way, the Book of Esther is a story of God's grace. Because at no point does Yahweh say, well, you haven't kept kosher enough, I'm not going to rescue you, or y' all been drinking, I'm not going to rescue you. No, actually one of the themes of the book is how Persian is too Persian, how Greek is too Greek, how Roman is too Roman, AKA how secular is too secular. This is an issue that we're going to deal with not just in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament. Everyone around Jesus's world would have been asking how Greek is too Greek, how Roman is too Roman, how secular is too secular. That's also a question that Christians are asking today that all religious people really wrestle with. Where's the line of compromise, but also where's the line of like relevant? How can you witness to a world that you have no relationship with? And Yahweh essentially is going to act on Mordecai and Esther's behalf, even though they're pretty entangled or they're pretty enmeshed with the secular world around them? And so we're going to get a pretty anti legalistic approach here. I would say that the thing that's highlighted in the text is not the holiness or the separateness of Mordecai and Esther, but the grace of God, despite their lack of holiness and cultural separation or distinct distinction or distinctiveness. All right, the story starts out okay.
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Xerxes wants to parade his wife Vashti. I'm just going to kind of read this because I think that's the best thing to do in the interest of time. First paragraph of the book highlights the immense wealth of the Persian Empire. The empires we have become used to in the biblical story, Egypt, Assyria and Babylon are not anywhere near the level of Persia. The Persian Empire was the first true world empire with its territory in three continents. Its wealth was beyond the imagination of the pharaohs of Tiglath, pileser of Ashurbanipal, of Nebuchadnezzar. The world had simply never seen anything like this before. And this wealth is reflected in the description of the seven day banquet that ended the invasion planning. Okay, they're planning to invade the Greek city states. Okay. At the end of this seven day long party, Vashti refuses to parade before the kings and his nobles. This results in her being deposed and a law sent out for husbands in the empire to be given more honor and power over their wives.
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Which is insanely ironic. Okay, as this is a story of a wife, AKA Esther, gaining power and getting her husband to do what she wants through the use of banquets. Okay, so man, we've got Vashy's refusal to do what, you know, Xerxes wants at a banquet, and then Esther's literally going to use banquets to get Xerxes to do what she wants done. And in a world where women are legally given less power, Esther's gonna have more power, which that's a whole other timeless truth in and of itself.
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But we won't get there. We won't go there right now. Chapter two, verse one starts with these words. After these things. The events of Esther's rise take place.
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Four years after that initial banquet.
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We know this from chapter two, verse 16, when Esther is taken to Xerxes in the seventh year of his reign. The banquet in chapter one took place in the third year of his reign. That's chapter one, verse three, which means the war with the Greek city states took place in between these chapters, chapters one and two. This gives us a new perspective on Xerxes, his character. In the Book of Esther, this is a defeated man. He is the richest, most powerful monarch in the world. Yet Athens, Sparta, Thebes and more small or little Greek cities had just humbled him. The quest for a new wife and his marriage to Esther is then about the court officials trying to placate a broken king to keep him happy and distracted and also intoxicated. It also explains a Little of why this great king seems to be manipulated by the other characters in the book so easily. Also explains why he's got sleepless nights. He's probably got freaking nightmares of Gerald Butler's character in 300 shouting sp.
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You know, Esther is put up to.
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The competition by her uncle Mordecai, who advises her to not tell anyone that she's a Jew. What is extra fascinating about this part of the story is how it contrasts so much to the beginning of Daniel. I already kind of talked about that. Daniel and his friends also become part of the king's court, Nebuchadnezzar's court. But they refuse to eat the court food and do not attempt to hide or change their identity. But here, Esther accepts the non kosher food and hides her identity when she enters the king's court. This is an example of the oddly un Jewishness of this Jewish story. Also in Daniel, he finds favor. David, sorry. Daniel finds favor amongst his fellow eunuchs because of his Jewishness. Here, Esther hides her Jewishness but also finds favor amongst the eunuchs. She wins the competition and becomes the new queen. And then last nerdy nugget is that there's two plots. And by plot I mean schemes. The first plot sees Mordecai uncovering a plot to assassinate the king. The irony here is that, number one, these plots to kill the king were common in the ancient world. And it was finally an assassination attempt.
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Just like the plot that Mordecai uncovered that actually resulted in the end of Xerxes life in 465 B.C.
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So Mordecai is then acknowledged. He overhears two eunuchs plotting and they were promptly executed.
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And Mordecai's name was recorded as the.
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One who uncovered the plot. And then the second plot that starts in chapter three is the heart of this story. It's Haman's plot to kill the Jews. The villain of the story, Kay, is now introduced. We could talk about more more about his villain character tomorrow. But Haman, we are told, is an Agagite. That means that he's a descendant of Agag, the Amalekite king whom Saul defeated but did not kill. Okay, but who was then killed by Samuel. This entire story is in 1st Samuel, chapter 15. He had been promoted within the court, but Mordecai did not bow down and prostrate himself before him. Hey, this may be connected to the previous plot. Xerxes may not have been aware of Mordecai exactly, but it was likely that Mordecai had at least been awarded a title for finding out about the plot to kill or harm the king. It was thought that he was awarded this Orosanji's title, which means benefactor to the king, which would mean he did not need to prostrate himself before Haman. Anyway, this plot results in Haman wanting to now kill all the Jews. He cast the purr or the dice to select a day and then manipulate Xerxes to make a decree allowing him to kill the Jews, not mentioning Mordecai and the reasons behind his anger.
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So.
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So he is literally manipulating Xerxes.
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And the entire rest of the story.
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Is now going to unfold.
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Okay, so this. These first three chapters are designed to give context and to introduce the main plot of the story, which is how in the world are Mordecai and Esther or Jews going to evade escape this plot to kill their entire people group? And how is Yahweh going to protect his people? He seems to be absent.
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He seems to be nowhere in the.
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Story, which gets us to our timeless truth. And I've written down here, God is most present when he seems the most absent. God's name is nowhere to be found in the Book of Esther. However, his activity is everywhere. The book is filled with coincidences.
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It's filled with all these moments where.
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It'S like Mordecai just so happened to.
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Hear of a plot to kill the king.
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Esther just so happened to become the queen for such a time as this. All of these moments that seem serendipitous or seem coincidental are actually God moving things behind the scenes. Which means that Yahweh doesn't have to.
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Be explicitly present in order to be present.
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Sometimes he can be absent, or it can seem like he's absent, but really what he's doing is he's moving things behind the scenes in your favor or in my favor, or in his people's favor. So those are all the nerdy nuggets I got. And that's our timeless truth for the day. That you may think God's absent, but.
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What if he's present and a way that you're just not used to? What if he's present but he's present.
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Keeping you from dangers that you're not even aware about?
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What if he's present, but he's just.
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Not doing the things that you associate with his presence?
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Maybe his presence looks different than the box you've placed it in. That's our Thomas truth for the day.
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Tomorrow we got day 337. We're going to be in Esther chapters four from five and six. I'm proud of you. If you're on a streak, I love you. Regardless of whether you're not on a streak or not. I'll see you right here, same time.
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Same place for day three.
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37. Love you guys. Peace. Thanks so much for joining us on.
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The Bible Department Podcast.
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You can find us online and learn more about the show@thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram and at the Bible Department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.