Esther 1:10-22
The Rabbis may have been going beyond the text when they interpreted the command to Vashti to appear wearing her royal crown as requiring her to wear nothing else apart from the crown, yet they were not too far off the mark in discerning the offensiveness of Ahasuerus’s intentions. To command his wife to appear dressed up in her royal finery for the enjoyment of a crowd of drunken men was to treat her as a doll, a mere object who existed for the king’s pleasure, and to show off his power—a “trophy wife,” in the contemporary jargon. Not for her the decree “There is no compulsion” (1:8). Here we see the dark side of placing so much power in the hands of a man whose only thought is for himself.
in other words, he was breaking the bounds of propriety in every way—whether that’s true or not. Because Josephus, the Jewish historian, records the fact that it was a violation within the code and ethics of Persia for a man’s wife to be the occasion of observation, approbation, on the part of any other men.[5] And if you think about Mideastern or Eastern dress, no matter what you might think about these things, it certainly covers up a lot of potential difficulty, doesn’t it? It saves from a lot of harm.
And it is in that context that he issues this command, so that they may be able to observe her beauty, see her beauty, because she was good to look at. Now, okay, you can say he was proud of his wife. She was good-looking, and that was fine. But there’s a progression here, and I want to point it out to you. See if you think this is accurate. First of all, we’re told that his condition in verse 10 was that it was “on the seventh day, when the heart of the king was merry with wine.” “With wine.” It would be fair to translate it “On the seventh day, when the wine had gone to his head…” All right? When he’s not totally out of control, but he’s sufficiently knocked off balance. And the writer wants us to understand the part that is played here.
let’s just lay this down as axiomatic: that Paul is making it absolutely clear for the Ephesians and for the church at all times that there is a huge no-go area when it comes to the issue of a Christian being controlled by anything other than the Holy Spirit. There is no legitimacy—no legitimacy—in the Scriptures given to us to be out of control. The only out-of-control that it envisages is being so filled with the Spirit of God that we’re out of control, as it were, with love and affection for God and with the good news that is then conveyed.
I just want you to notice the point. Esther 7:7: “And the king arose in his wrath from the wine-drinking.” He “arose in his wrath from the wine-drinking.” In other words, the writer wants us to understand that there is a correlation here between his intake and his output. What he’s taken into himself is in some way influencing what is coming out of him.
His condition: the wine had gone to his head. His reaction: he lost his temper. He was enraged. This is a bad combination: a big ego, an inordinate interest in alcohol, and a quick temper.
Do you realize how in a moment of foolish passion you can alter your life forever?
Within our modern culture we think of drinking as a social custom, often with negative connotations. However, the Greek historian Herodotus explains the interesting fact that the Persians drank as they deliberated matters of state (cf. Est. 3:15):
Moreover it is their [the Persians] custom to deliberate about the gravest matters when they are drunk; and what they approve in their counsels is proposed to them the next day by the master of the house where they deliberate, when they are now sober and if being sober they still approve it, they act thereon, but if not, they cast it aside. And when they have taken counsel about a matter when sober, they decide upon it when they are drunk.
This custom may seem bizarre to us, but the ancients believed intoxication put them in closer touch with the spiritual world. If Herodotus is right on this point, excessive drinking would have been an essential element of Xerxes’ war council.
It is not sound hermeneutics to interpret an ancient text through the lens of any modern ideology, regardless of the social value of that ideology. The interpreter must respect the concerns of the author of Esther, which were indigenous to his own times and culture, not ours. Therefore, we must not read Esther as if the author’s intended purpose was to address the concerns of feminism as articulated in our own time.
