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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 entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the Journey.
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Family. Welcome to day three 38. We are finishing up the book of Esther today. We've been in Esther now for two days. Today is the third day in Esther. We are looking at chapter 7, 8, 9 and 10. If you haven't done the reading, how about you stop this episode, Stop the video, pause the audio, go get the reading done. I mean, we're talking soap opera level drama today on Esther. All right? I Mean Esther Season 2, Episode 8 Boy Haman about to die on the very same stake that he designed for Mordecai. We talk about a reversal, a role reversal. The tables have turned. Like this is one of the most like just kind of edge of your seat, just like nail biter kind of story in the Bible. And my job is to give you some context clues, some nerdy nuggets and a timeless truth. I'm excited about today's episode, honestly. Chapters 7 through 10 are pretty self explanatory. It's narrative, it's a story pretty easy to understand. So I'll go light on the context clues, but really I want to give us some nerdy nuggets about the book as a whole and like how we're supposed to use this book as Christians because that is not apparently or glaringly obvious. So let's start with the context clues. This is Esther's second banquet. Okay? By the time we get into chapter seven, this is Esther's second banquet. And the moment we realize there's a second banquet, my spidey senses start to sense we've got a chiasm on our hands. That's right. The first banquet and the second banquet are mirror images of each other. The entire book of Esther is a chiasm. All right? So the center of that chiasm is the humiliation of Haman and the exaltation of Mordecai, which is right in the middle of the book. We just read that yesterday. And so that is the center of the chiasm, which the center of a chiasm really tells you what the point of a story is. And that is that God's people will never be humiliated in front of pagans, but the other way around, that God will use all kinds of scenarios, not to humiliate his people, but to ultimately humiliate those who are persecuting his people. So that is the message of the chiasm right at the center of the book. Some more context. Kings cannot revoke a decree that has already been made. Okay? This is especially true in the Babylonian Persian world. I will read it exactly how I've got it in my notes here. The villain of the story is dead, killed in a delicious twist of ir. But the program is still looming over the Jews. The problem was that Persian law was irrevocable. The edict of the king could not just simply be reversed or annulled even by the king who signed it. A similar issue happens in Daniel 6, 8 and in 15, which is why the king cannot simply command Daniel not be thrown in the lion's den. The king signed the law which condemned him, so it cannot be revoked. Another example from history. Another example is just from history, when the last Persian king, Darius iii, executed a man he discovered to be innocent because he had earlier decreed he should die because of a crime he thought he had committed. So that's just a real example from history that's not in the Bible. Okay? The only solution was for the king to sign a new decree to neutralize the earlier one. This decree was an authorization for the Jews to defend themselves. In said program, they had the king's permission to gather, arm themselves and defend themselves from anyone who took advantage of the earlier decree to attack the Jews. This decree, as the first, was sent out all over the empire in numerous languages. This made it clear to all the people of the empire that the king was not in support of the first decree, but his favor was now upon the Jews. The the result is that the mourning of the Persian Jews is turned into joy. And this is shown by Mordecai changing his clothes from sackcloth to royal robes. This is also a picture of what God is doing with his people. Not just with Mordecai and Esther, but with the people, period, in this historic moment with them. All right, that's all the context for the day. I'm now going to give you five nerdy nuggets. Not just from today's reading, not just from Esther chapter 7 to 10. But really, these nerdy nuggets are a reflection on the entire book as a whole. Number one, Esther is essentially just using her beauty in order to win a beauty contest so that she can have sex with Xerxes before they're married. Okay, this is fantastic. If there was an influencer in the ancient world, it's Your girl Esther. Esther's like, I'm a baddie, okay? And essentially, like, enters into, like, a beauty contest that involves having sex with Xerxes. This is like the part of the Bible that I just think, like, we don't tell these parts when we tell these stories to children, but beauty contest? Yeah. Sex before marriage. Yeah. Esther, chapter two, verse nine actually says, not only do they have sex, but Esther spends a night with Xerxes and she pleased him. Okay? It says this in verse 8. When the king's order and edict had been proclaimed, many young women were brought to the citadel of Susa and put under the care of Hegai, not Haggai. This is another Hegai. This is. This is another guy. Another. Another. Another guy. Esther also was taken to the king's palace and entrusted to Heggai. Heggai, not Haggai. Heggai. Who had charge of the harem. The dude who runs the harem is who's managing Esther. I don't know if you know what a harem is. A harem is a group of women that the king just gets to have sex with. That's what a harem is. So, okay. Esther is now in charge to the dude who's managing the harem. Verse 9. She pleased him and won his favor immediately. He provided her with beauty treatments and special food. He assigned to her seven female attendants elected from the king's palace and moved her and her attendants into the best place in the harem. Moving on up, Esther had not revealed her nationality and family background because Mordecai had not had forbidden her to do so. Every day she walked back and forth near the courtyard of the harem to find out if Esther. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Before a young woman's turn came to go in to King Xerxes, she had to complete 12 months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women. Six months with oil of myrrh, six months with perfume, blah, blah, blah. And this is how she would go to the king. Anything she wanted was given to her to take with her from the harem to the king's palace. In the evening, she would go there and in the morning return to another part of the harem to the care of somebody else. The king's eunuchs. Who's in charge of the concubines, okay? She would not return to the king unless he was pleased with her and summoned her by name. When the turn came for Esther, the the young woman Mordecai had adopted, the daughter of his uncle. Okay. To go to the king, she asked for nothing other than what Hegai, the king's eunuch, who was in charge of the harem, suggested. And Esther won the favor of everyone who saw her. She was taken to King Xerxes in the royal residence in the tenth month and the month of Tibeth in the seventh year of his reign. Now, the king was attracted to Esther more than any of the other women. Any other. Of the virgins that he had sex with. Yeah, okay. Won his favor and approval more than any of the other virgins. So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. Okay, so newsflash. She wins a beauty pageant, which is like, low, low key, like, sex work. She. She's now in a harem, and she. She pleased the king. She pleased the king. Okay, so definitely sex before marriage. Okay, NERDYDY Nugget number two, Xerxes is a pagan. Pagan. Like, she's not even allowed under the Torah to marry this guy. He's a total pagan. And unlike other pagans that have been married, he does not pledge any kind of allegiance to Yahweh. Okay, so she uses her beauty in order to gain influence. Gets influence, and then, you know, sexes her way into more influence, becomes a part of a harem and marries a pagan. Okay, number three, third nerdy nugget. The woman consumes a lot of wine, lots of banquets. In today's reading, she's throwing banquet number two. Banquets equal wine in the ancient world. Ok, number four, Mordecai's low key. Like a pimp. Like, Mordecai allows all of this to happen. Low key. And then number five, Esther honestly joins a long line of women in the ancient world who, like, aren't asked what they want. Hagar. Hagar's not asked whether or not she wants to have kids for Abraham. And Sarai, like, she has no bodily autonomy. Bathsheba. Bathsheba's not asked if she wants to have sex with David, who's the king. There's. There's no asking. Esther's not asked. If you actually read what's going on between Esther and Mordecai, it's a fascinating relationship, man. Mordecai, verse seven of chapter two. Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother. So she's an orphan, but she's cute.
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This is, this is the Bible, man. This is the Bible. And anyone who tries to sanitize the Bible, I'm sorry, like, I'm just not gonna do like the Veggie tales version of these stories. Like, on the Bible department. Like, we're gonna get the real. Like, what the Bible actually says. All right. Sorry, I'm distracting myself. Mordecai had a cousin, okay? Hadassah is Esther, by the way, whom he had brought up because he had. She had neither father nor mother. This young woman who was also known as Esther, had a lovely figure, nice body, that's. That means.
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A lovely figure, and was beautiful. So. So even the Bible understands that men, you know, men judge beauty based on face separate than body. Okay? A lovely figure and was beautiful. Mordecai had taken her as his daughter when her father and mother passed. So when the king starts missing his queen, Mordecai is like, I got a girl. Not. Not how I would treat my daughter. But, hey, Mordecai, I hear you, brother. So all this and more. I mean, even add the violence, the vengeance, the revenge of the Jewish people towards the end, this a brutal book. Like Esther is a pretty brutal book. Which means there's gotta be a couple things that we're supposed to get out of this, or else this is just straight Game of Thrones level entertainment. Smack dab in the middle of the Bible. So what's going on? All right, number one, now we're going to get into our timeless truths 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. Number one, Characters in the Bible are morally ambiguous, but the character of God is not. Characters are morally ambiguous, which means Esther is not supposed to be some example of, like, moral, like a standard. Neither is Mordecai. Neither is any character in the Bible. Okay. Characters in the Bible are more morally ambiguous. And what does that end up revealing? It reveals that God, his character is not Morally ambiguous, he's unchanging. And that is the big thing. If you are getting your cues from the characters in the Bible, you're getting accused from the wrong person. So if you read this story and you're like, dang, Esther had sex before she was married. I'm gonna have sex before I'm married. Wrong. Just cause the biblical character sin doesn't mean you get to sin. Because the standard that we're judging ourselves by is not Esther, it's God. God says, be holy because I'm holy. Not be holy cause your friend's holy. Not be holy cause your pastor's holy. And I've heard this line of reasoning a lot where it's like, yo, if my pastor can't even be faithful to his wife, man, shoot, there ain't no way I can't be. No, what that really means is you want to cheat on your wife and, and you're using some leaders immorality as a reason to cheat on your wife. That's ridiculous. There's sin in your heart. You need to repent. Okay? Cause I know people who cheat on their wives and their pastors don't. Which means your pa, you should not be judging yourself based on what your pastor does or doesn't do. You should be judging yourself based on the standard set by the word of God and the model laid out before us, which is Jesus number two. Esther is the type and shadow of Jesus. That's right. She risked the palace in order to identify with her people. She risked her position in the palace, was willing to give it up so that she could identify with her people. And that's exactly what Jesus did for you and for I. He risked his place at the right hand of the Father so that he could identify with sinful people like you and I. John, chapter 14, verse 2 actually says that one day we are going to go to that palace. Jesus says, in my Father's house there are many rooms and I've prepared a place for you. Why do we get access to that heavenly palace? Because Jesus was willing to forego that palace to identify with you and I. And because he did that, now we all get access to that palace and Jesus invites us in. Third, and I think this is the biggest lesson that I'd love to hammer home, is that the Bible is not a moral object lesson. That's not the purpose of the Bible. And anytime you try to take the Bible and you try to take lessons from Ruth on like how to find your Boaz or how to date or lessons from Esther, on, like, how to be a leader. It's like, good luck.
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You're looking at a Bible of people who are drunk, who participate in beauty contests, who have sex in order to gain positions, who pimp their nieces. Like, if you want to use this book as, like, some guide for morality, I wouldn't do that. The Bible's not a moral object lesson. The goal of the Bible is to point you to a person. And his name is Jesus, and he reveals the heart of the Father to us. And the heart of the Father is that he would be our standard, not Esther said he would be our standard. No earthly leader, that he would ultimately be the one and only standard. And his standard is that he would forsake his position in the palace and identify with you and I, that he will become poor even though he was rich, that he would empty himself of glory so that he can take on flesh and blood and die in our place. The Bible is not a moral object lesson. It's pointing to the Gospel. And the Gospel is able to not just change your morals, but change your character. And if your character changes, your morals will follow. And that's not just true for Haman, for Mordecai, or for Xerxes, or for Esther. That's true for you, and that's true for me. Tomorrow we got a brand new book of the Bible. We're going to be diving into the book of Ezra. We got Ezra. Chapters one, two and three is going to be day three, 39, right here on the Bible Department podcast. I hope that you enjoyed the book of Esther. I hope I didn't ruin Esther too much for you. I know some of you're going to Google, you're going to, you're going to try to research did Esther really have sex with drug chase before marriage. It's going to drive you crazy. And if it does drive you crazy, you have to ask yourself the question, why? Why would that bother you? Do you, do you need the characters of the Bible to, like, live some certain lifestyle in order for you to live that lifestyle? Because if true, you're building your life on a house of cards. I promise you. All right, I'll see you tomorrow. If you're on the streak, I'm proud of you. Even if you're not. I love you. Love you so much. Peace.
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Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebible 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.