Day 336: Esther 1-3 | Read The Bible In A Year | Bible Study with Commentary by Dr. Manny Arango

Welcome to the Bible Department podcast powered by Arma. We are walking through the entire Bible in a year. You can go to the description or thebabeldepartment.com to download a reading plan and join the journey. (upbeat music) - 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 familiar with the story of Esther, with 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 one, two and three. If you haven't done the reading, I'm gonna 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 sometimes just narrative just reads easier. 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 gonna start out with context clues and typically when we're diving into a book

for the first time, it's context typically takes up the majority of the episode. So buckle up, got a lot of context to give you, not just for Esther chapters one, two and three, but for the book of Esther as a whole. So we're in Esther for three days, okay? Day 336, 337 and 338 of this podcast of this bobbering 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 wanna 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 wanna like orient you or kind of help brace you for the whiplash 'cause we're gonna go into the future and then we're gonna come back. What's gonna happen once we get to books like Esra and Nehemiah, we're gonna have to come back. So like Esther, you know, maybe one of these years will do the bobbering plan like chronologically. 'Cause I think that's also helpful. Like if you've ever read like the chronological Bible, it can be really, really, really helpful. Our bobbering plan just isn't structured that way. It's structured based on how Jews encounter the Hebrew Bible, AKA the Old Testament.

So any who, 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 and Nehemiah, we're gonna have to come back in time. So just wanna like help you get oriented, say. So this is post-exialis like roughly a hundred years after the Jews are allowed to return to Jerusalem. 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, 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 wanna give you context for that. Next, the villain in the story, his name is Haman. And he's gonna use dice to decide the day where they're gonna kill all the Jews.

That those dice are called per, okay, per. 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 gonna get called per in, per in, okay? So it's based on those dice. 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, it's 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 this story in Esther, 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. 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, there really is no clear definite answer for who the author is. So we're gonna just go ahead and say unknown author. So in terms of context, we know the timeframe in which this book would have 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 Esther chapter 2. 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 1, okay? So in Esther chapter 1, 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 2. So what many people don't realize is that there are four years in between Esther chapter 1 and Esther chapter 2. 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. It's 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 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. Okay, 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. Okay, next, let's dive into our nerdy nuggets for the day. Family, the weight is over. My brand new book, "Crushing Chaos" is- and I signed a bunch of copies at a physical location. So you can grab this book at a physical Barnes & 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 toms 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 dug it. God has not mentioned in the book. One of the things you're going to realize, or maybe you already have realized after reading, is that God has not mentioned this is going to get us into 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 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. 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 and his three friends, Shadrach 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 live a different lifestyle than y'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 y'all always 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 to Persian, how Greek is to Greek, how Roman is to Roman, aka how secular is to 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 to Greek, how Roman is to Roman, how secular is to 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. 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. The 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, Assyrian, Babylon, are not anywhere near the level of Persia. The Persian Empire was the first true world empire with its territory in three Pilacer 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 bashty 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 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 gonna 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 time of truth in and of itself but we won't get there we won't go there right now. Chapter 2 verse 1 starts with these words after these things the events of Esther's rise take place four years after that initial banquet. We know this from chapter 2 verse 16 when Esther is taken to Xerxes in the seventh year of his reign. The banquet in chapter 1 took place in the third year of his reign that's chapter 1 verse 3 which means the war with the Greek city-states took place in between these chapters chapters 1 and 2. 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 thieves 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 "Spurna!" You know Esther is put up to 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 the beginning of Daniel 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-coacher 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 just like the plot that Mordecai uncovered that actually resulted in the end of Xerxes life in fort 65 BC. So Mordecai is then acknowledged. He overhears two eunuchs plotting and they were promptly executed and Mordecai's name was recorded as the 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 agogite. Kay that means that he's a descendant of Agag the Amalekite king whom Saul defeated but did not kill. Kay but who was then killed by Samuel. This entire story is in first Samuel chapter 15. He had been promoted within the court but Mordecai did not bow down and prostrate himself before him. Hey this this may be connected to 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 Auro Sanji'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 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 so he is literally manipulating Xerxes and the entire rest of the story is now going to unfold. These first 3 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 he seems to be nowhere in the story which gets us to our timeless truth and I've wrote and 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 it's filled with all these moments where it's like Mordecai just so happened to hear of a plot to kill the king 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 asking God moving things behind the scenes which means that Yahweh doesn't have to be explicitly present in order to be present 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 what if he's present in a way that you're just not used to what if he's present but he's present keeping you from dangers that you're not even aware about what if he's present but he's just not doing the things that you associate with his presence maybe his presence looks different than the box you've placed it in that's a timeless truth for the day tomorrow we got day 337 we're going to be an Esther chapters four 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 same place for day 337 love you guys peace thanks so much for joining us on the bible department podcast if this episode was helpful how about you leave a comment share with a friend and subscribe so that you never miss an episode to learn more about the show head to the bible department.com we'll see you right back here tomorrow