Thousands of years ago, a little book that lies near the center of the Old Testament broke the silence. Esther the book speaks openly of sexual, racial and domestic abuse. Esther the woman experienced all three. And in fact, she was probably Esther the girl – just past puberty – when the abuse began.
As Christians, we know the Esther story. Yet in some ways, we may never have seen it at all.
Consider our blindness regarding the character of the king Esther married and the nature of her relationship with him.
Consider our blindness regarding the process that made Esther queen. How often have we seen it as a beauty pageant? More accurate terms include: kidnapping, sex trafficking, sexual abuse, rape.
As the story opens, a man with great power and a strong narcissistic bent discards his first wife while in a drunken rage. He does so on the advice of counselors who do not want his fury turned on them. The man is Xerxes, king of Persia. The woman banished to irrevocable in-house exile is Queen Vashti.
Later, the king misses his queen and wants her back. Here’s the result, as I’ve described it in The Esther Blessing: Grace to Reign in Life.
Xerxes’ longing for Vashti created a huge problem for his closest advisors. Their king – who thought only of himself, who regularly lopped off people’s heads and whose ego had just taken a horrific beating – wanted his queen back. He wanted the very queen they had advised him to put away forever. If they helped Xerxes find a way around the irrevocable law he had made, a reinstated Vashti would surely come after them with a vengeance. But if they didn’t find a way to satisfy the king’s longing, he himself would take them out.
Soon, the advisors hit on a plan to locate a queen for Xerxes and save their own necks. An ingenious plan, it would keep the emperor occupied for quite a while with the hunt and, in the process, feed his insatiable need for “narcissistic supply.”
Then the king’s personal attendants proposed, “Let a search be made for beautiful young virgins for the king. Let the king appoint commissioners in every province of his realm to bring all these beautiful young women into the harem at the citadel of Susa. Let them be placed under the care of Hegai, the king’s eunuch, who is in charge of the women; and let beauty treatments be given to them. Then let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.” – Esther 2:2-4
The down side? The plan legitimized abuse on a grand scale. It victimized countless women and their families, and the young men to whom those women may have been promised. It gave Xerxes license to kidnap and violate hundreds of virgins and to hijack the rest of their lives.
Did Xerxes protest? “No, I couldn’t do that. It would be too selfish, too heartless even for me. I’ll just pick my favorite from the hundreds of women already in my harem, or maybe one of the other women with whom I’ve had an affair, and make her the new queen.”
Nope. Xerxes liked the idea of pitting all the beautiful young virgins in the kingdom against each other, vying to win him, so he set the plan in motion. And what a plan it was.
The young women were taken. They didn’t sign up. No one gave them a choice. They were removed from their homes, their families and their communities, never again to see any of the above. They were gathered into a harem in Susa with all the other young women taken in the same way. For some, no one around may have even spoken their language.
They were groomed. In Susa, the most beautiful women in the land were reminded day in and day out that they were not beautiful enough.
Before a young woman’s turn came to go in to King Xerxes, she had to complete twelve months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women, six months with oil of myrrh and six with perfumes and cosmetics. – Esther 2:12
Reading Esther today, many Christians see this Persian Queen Contest as a beauty pageant. They view the book as a love story. But the only love in this story is a king’s infatuation with himself. The “pageant” isn’t one we would want anyone we love to go through. It imprisoned and dehumanized hundreds of young women. It goaded them to brutal rivalry. Each knew what the contest entailed. Each knew only one would “win.” Each understood the lifelong consequences “losing” would bring.
And this is how she would go to the king: Anything she wanted was given 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 Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. She would not return to the king unless he was pleased with her and summoned her by name. – Esther 2:13-14
One by one, they went in to the king. After a full year of beauty treatments, a young woman who had never had sex with anyone faced the ultimate one-night stand. She did not know the man who summoned her to his bed chamber, and he did not care for her at all. He took whatever he wanted, regardless what it cost anyone else. He bedded a different woman each night.
Of course, he was emperor, which meant he could make the pain and humiliation worth her while. And he could create a frighteningly perverse magnetism, in a bad boy sort of way. When he chose, he could put on a great party, could lavish a person with gifts and offer her the world. But then, in an instant, he could turn. The slightest annoyance could trigger his rage. The slightest whim could change his mind or his mood. He destroyed people in the blink of an eye.
Prince Charming he was not. Yet he did reign over all Persia. So any woman who might want to opt out of this pageant had nowhere to run, no one to plead to for help.
One by one, the women moved to the second harem. The morning after Xerxes took each woman’s virginity, he sent her away to spend the rest of her life in the second harem, wearing the label “concubine.” She would not see the king again, unless he found himself wanting her and summoned her to another one-night stand. She could not go home. She could never marry anyone else. She would live out her days among a harem-full of women kept by the same man.
And if she “won”? She’d definitely get more perks. The queen suite, for one. The queen title. Some limited power, especially over the other kept women. Ah, but the other women would remain. The king would continue to sleep with them. And any “love” he felt toward his queen would never be a selfless, life-giving love for her, but rather an insatiable craving for how good she made him feel and how good she made him look.
Still today, Esther is speaking out – to show us how one abused woman faced down what threatened to swallow her up, and how we can do the same.
We cannot embrace the profound blessing the Esther story offers us unless we really listen, really look.
More surprising insights from Esther
- When evil seems invincible: Two surprising sources of hope
- Grace trumps power
- A sign and a wonder: The amazing grace cycle
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