The Message Remix (153 page)

Remember me, O my God, for this. Don’t ever forget the devoted work I have done for The Temple of God and its worship.

Remember me also for this, my God. Treat me with mercy according to your great and steadfast love.

Remember them, O my God, how they defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priests and Levites.

Remember me, O my God, for good.

INTRODUCTIONESTHER

 

It seems odd that the awareness of God, or even of
the people of God, brings out the worst in some people. God, the source of all goodness and blessing and joy,
at times becomes the occasion for nearly unimaginable acts of cruelty, atrocity, and evil.

There is a long history of killing men and women simply because they are perceived as reminders or representatives of the living God, as if killing people who worship God gets rid of God himself. We’ve recently completed a century marked by an extraordinary frenzy of such “god” killings. To no one’s surprise, God is still alive and present.

The book of Esther opens a window on this world of violence directed, whether openly or covertly, against God and God’s people. The perspective it provides transcends the occasion that provoked it, a nasty scheme to massacre all the exiled Jews who lived in the vast expanse of fifth-century B.C. Persia. Three characters shape the plot. Mordecai, identified simply as “the Jew,” anchors the story. He is solid, faithful, sane, godly. His goodness is more than matched by the evil and arrogant vanity of Haman, who masterminds the planned massacre. Mordecai’s young, orphaned, and ravishing cousin, Esther, whom he has raised, emerges from the shadows of the royal harem to take on the title role.

It turns out that no God-representing men and women get killed in this story—in a dramatic turnaround, the plot fails. But millions before and after Esther have been and, no doubt, will continue to be killed. There is hardly a culture or century that doesn’t eventually find a Haman determined to rid the world of evidence and reminders of God. Meanwhile, Esther continues to speak the final and definitive word: You can’t eliminate God’s people. No matter how many of them you kill, you can’t get rid of the communities of God-honoring, God-serving, God-worshiping people scattered all over the earth. This is still the final and definitive word.

 

 

From:
This unknown Persian Jew probably lived sometime within 150 years of the events. That is, he probably lived while Persia was still in charge of the Middle East, before Alexander the Great took over.

 

To:
Haman wasn’t the only one in the vast Persian Empire (or the Greek empire that followed it) who hated Jews. Jews refused to say that their God was only one among many options, and for that they endured social put-downs, job discrimination, and sometimes violence.

 

Re:
About 483-478 B.C. After the Persian king Xerxes dethroned Queen Vashti, he took a 150,000-man army and a 600-ship navy to avenge his father’s defeat by the Greeks. He beat the Greeks in one great battle, but a year later they skunked him badly. His army and navy limped home. That was when he started having girls rounded up in the villages in his hunt for a new queen.

A generation or two before Esther became queen, a few thousand Jews returned to Judah from Babylon and began trying to recreate some kind of Jewish homeland. Despite severe challenges, they had managed to rebuild a small temple, but in Esther’s time Jerusalem was still a shabby settlement without defensive walls. The walls were finally restored during the time of Xerxes’ son, Artaxerxes I.