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 marital 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 may think we know the Esther story. Yet in some ways, we may never have seen it at all.
How many of us have grown up in church cultures that romanticized Esther’s life? Perhaps naively, perhaps willfully, how many of us have missed:
- the true character of the king Esther married?
- the true nature of her relationship with him?
- the cruel process that made Esther queen?
I confess: For much of my life, I saw that appalling pick-a-queen scheme as a sort of beauty pageant. Now I know: More accurate terms include kidnapping, sex trafficking, sexual abuse, rape.
Have we seen the discarded queen?
As the story begins, 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? Queen Vashti. Her unforgivable crime, in Xerxes’ eyes? She refused his drunken summons to parade herself before a very large and very wasted crowd. In short, she embarrassed him.
The verdict decreed on the spot? Her title, position and privileges stripped from her, Vashti could never again enter the presence of the king. But she could not leave, either. She must spend the rest of her life in exile and disgrace – inside the king’s harem.
Then, plot twist! The king sobers up. His anger calms down. Intoxicated with his own power and eager to rule the world, he invades the weak and divided Greek city-states – and takes a military trouncing.1
That’s when “he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what he had decreed about her” (2:1).2
Have we seen the heartless hijacking of human lives?
King Xerxes thought only of himself. He regularly lopped off people’s heads. His ego had just taken a horrific beating. And now, he wanted his queen back.
His longing for Vashti created a huge problem for his closest advisors: The king wanted the very queen they had urged 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. In the process, it would 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.” (2:2-4)
The down side? The plan legitimized abuse on a grand scale. It gave Xerxes license to kidnap and violate hundreds of virgins, scattered across his empire “from India to Ethiopia,” and to hijack the rest of their lives. Most would have been teenagers when taken, below the age we count as adult.3
Have we seen the trafficked teens?
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 I’ve already bedded – and make her the new queen.”
Nope. Xerxes liked the idea of pitting the most beautiful young virgins in the Persian Empire 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. Someone showed up at their door, admired their beauty – and took them from the home, family and community they would never see again.
Each young woman carried off in this way was sent to the king’s new “virgin harem” in the Persian city of Susa. For some, no one around may have even spoken their language.
They were groomed
In Susa, these already deeply traumatized virgins 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. (2:12)
Beauty pageant? Love story? The only love in this story is a king’s infatuation with himself.
What’s more, the “pageant” is not one we would want anyone we love to go through. It imprisoned and dehumanized hundreds of girls still growing into womanhood. It goaded them to brutal rivalry.
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. (2:13-14)
Each knew what the contest entailed: The king would be the only real winner. He would take from all of them what none of them had any say in giving. Only one woman would be named queen. All would remain under the thumb of the same predatory man for life.
One by one, they went in to the king
After a full year of beauty treatments, a teenager 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, 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, they moved to the second harem
The morning after Xerxes stripped each woman of her 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 used and kept by the same man.
And if she “won” the contest? 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 he would treat his new queen heartlessly in other ways, any time he chose.
Indeed, 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.
We ignore the obvious at our peril
“Many, perhaps even most, of the greatest crimes have been committed not in the dark, hidden where no one could see them, but in full view of so many people who simply chose not to look and not to question.”
So writes Margaret Heffernan in the intro to her book, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril.4
In her Ted Talk on “The Dangers of Willful Blindness,” Heffernan acknowledges, “We’re all, under certain circumstances, willfully blind.”
Why? For several reasons, but in short: “Human beings want to feel good about themselves and to feel safe, and being surrounded by familiarity and similarity satisfies those needs very efficiently. The problem with this is that everything outside that warm, safe circle is our blind spot” (p. 11).
For Heffernan, “What’s most frightening about this process is that as we see less and less, we feel more comfort and greater certainty. We think we see more – even as the landscape shrinks” (p. 21).
Yet she assures us: “That willful blindness is so pervasive does not mean that it is inevitable” (p. 4).
And she concludes the Introduction to her book with this “central truth”:
We may think being blind makes us safer, when in fact it leaves us crippled, vulnerable, and powerless. But when we confront facts and fears, we achieve real power and unleash our capacity for change. (p. 4)
Esther chose to see
Trapped in cruelty, Esther might well have believed she would always, only, be a victim of harsh circumstances and harsher people. She might have felt the only way to survive it was not to see it.
Yet Esther chose a different way. By grace, she reigned in life, even when her life was far from the fairy tale many have imagined. She saw the truth of it, and overcame in the midst of it. By grace, that lovely dove still sings.
What else have we not seen?
If we today have trouble seeing the abuse Esther suffered long ago, what else have we not seen?
Might we, for example, believe the appearance that someone we know has a loving marriage and a fairy-tale life, and close our eyes to the tell-tale signs that they do not?
Might we blow off a woman who tries to confide in us that a man we respect is hurting her? Might we shut down her attempt to make sense of the bewildering and demeaning behavior she hasn’t yet dared to call abuse?
Might we close our eyes to cruelty in our own home, believing that’s our safest choice?
Unleashing our capacity for change
Esther the woman chose a different way, not only for herself, but for others. Esther the book is still speaking out, to show us how one woman who did not live blindly ever after:
- Faced down what threatened to swallow her up.
- Rose up in behalf of others when evil seemed unstoppable.
Esther’s story calls to each of us:
When you think,
“This cannot be happening!”
face what is happening.
When you don’t want to see,
open your eyes.
Refuse the lie that
not seeing will keep you safe.
Really listen. Really look.
Esther’s life included much pain, yet in God she found stunning serenity, courage and triumph. You too, dear one, unleash your capacity for change – by the superabundant grace of God.
Adapted from chapter 2 of The Esther Blessing: Grace to Reign in Life, © 2013, 2017, especially pages 28-30. This post replaces a post published March 26, 2018, and simply titled, “#EstherToo.”
More surprising insights from Esther
- When evil seems invincible: Two surprising sources of hope
- A sign and a wonder: The amazing grace cycle
- Grace triumphs over power
See also
- Can we talk about shame?
- Beware the illusion of refuge: Abuse in the church
- #SilenceIsNotSpiritual – except when it is
- Defender of the forsaken – this is God
- People of God, befriend the forsaken
- Heartcry of one who overcomes
- I will change your name
Footnotes
- See The Esther Blessing, pp. 27-28, for an overview of Xerxes’ invasion of Greece. ↩︎
- All Scripture quotations in this post are from the book of Esther. ↩︎
- Esther 1:1 tells us that Xerxes ruled over 127 provinces stretching from India to Ethiopia. ↩︎
- Willful Blindness, © 2011 Margaret Heffernan, electronic edition published 2011 by Bloomsbury USA, p. 1. ↩︎
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