An Orphan Becomes Queen Series

Three years past before Esther’s turn came with the king. She was wise enough to ask Hegai, who knew the king’s desires better than anyone, what to take with her.

Can you imagine that walk? Can you imagine her heart pounding? She was a virgin. She didn’t know what to do. Did the guilt eat at her gut for sleeping with an uncircumcised pagan king? We are not told.

All we know is that something extraordinary happened that night!

Oh What a Night!

“Now the king was attracted to Esther more than to any of the other women, and she 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. And the king gave a great banquet, Esther’s banquet, for all his nobles and officials. He proclaimed a holiday throughout the provinces and distributed gifts with royal liberality.” (Esther 2:17-18)

Mike Cosper, in “Faith Among the Faithless: Learning from Esther how to Live in a World Gone Mad” describes her experience this way:

“Preparing to meet the king took on a contest-like quality, with each girl jockeying for the chance to become queen. Some of them probably sang; some dance or told stories; others looked for more salacious ways to dazzle and entertain the king.

But in Esther, the kind encountered something different. She was beautiful for sure but she had the knack for winning the favor of everyone she met….

…while the other girls came to him looking to delight his senses, Esther came to him to provoke his greatest weakness. This was not Xerxes the great, remember, but a defeated and humiliated king, and this beautiful girl, a girl with secrets, a girl - as we’ll see later - had political savvy and insight into the way people thought and worked…this girl came with a very different set of skills than any lyre player or singer or story teller.

The king fell in love with the girl that preyed on his humanity.”

Esther had won the “contest”and she wore the crown - she was still a captive but she would not have to disappear into the haram of the concubines. ?

And Xerxes does what Xerxes does best - throws a party! He gave everyone the day off and the empire celebrated their new Queen Esther.

We’ll stop there for now. Next week, we will meet our final character - the villain of the story, Haman.

Observations

Let me make a few observations and then we will get to the main point.

The Cult of Beauty

The Persian culture was obsessed with beauty. Women were viewed as sex objects. Beauty wasn’t something you were; beauty was something you did.

Aren’t you glad that things have changed?!

Maxine and I did nearly 20 years of youth ministry and out of the hundreds of girls that we ministered to only one of them thought she was beautiful, and she was incredibly humble about it.

Can you imagine the king’s representative rounding up the girls for the contest? You, yes you, and you. Um…well, you can stay at home dear. I’m sure you have a nice personality.

Each of them thought they were too short or too tall, too fat or too thin, not enough up top (to the point that we’ve had a couple former students undergo plastic surgery), and every one of them had someone in their past that told them, in subtle or not so subtle ways, that they didn’t measure up.