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THE LOTTERY QUEEN #5

STAGE RIGHT: THE VILLAIN ENTERS

A long time before actor Robin Williams did about a thousand voices in the Disney film, Aladdin, audiences around the world were entertained by the ancient stories from A Thousand and One Nights, sometimes known as Arabian Nights.  Here at the Voice of Prophecy, most of us aren’t really experts on classical literature, so all you’re going to get from us is a Friday fraction of the story, but some of you know how a young girl named Scheherazade manages to charm Schariar, the legendary king of Samarkand.  She becomes the queen of the empire, but then as the plot thickens he is considering killing her.  However, she can stave off her destruction only by entertaining him night after night with a wonderful story.  And she’s got to keep it up, a tale a night, for a thousand and one nights.  Some of the great stories to come out of these desperate evening ventures include Aladdin, of course, as well as the stories of Ali Baba and Sinbad.

In addition to her becoming queen, though, in A Thousand and One Nights, this girl, Scheherazade, also wrangles to get her father into the high court as a vizier, or a kind of prime minister.

And all of a sudden, people who read both classic world literature and the Word of God say, “Wait a minute!  That sounds an awful lot like the story of Queen Esther!”  Girl becomes queen.  Dad becomes prime minister.  Queen tries to save her life . . . and in this case, the lives of her entire race.  And sure enough, there certainly are some fascinating parallels to this story, which, as we said on Monday when we began this series on THE LOTTERY QUEEN, is one we fully have confidence in as a true Bible story.

Well, there are enough Persian plots in our own true story right here that we don’t need the fabrications of young Queen Scheherazade anyway.  As the Bible account concludes chapter two, we read that Mordecai, Esther’s cousin — who basically was a stepfather to her — was a kind of civil servant.  Some commentaries deduce that he was a fairly minor official, perhaps a palace attendant.  The New International Version’s text notes suggest, on the other hand, that he was actually holding already a fairly high position in the civil service of the kingdom.  To be “sitting in the king’s gate,” he would have to have some stature in the government; also, from this vantage point, he would be in a position to hear what comes next.  Here’s verse 21 and following:

“During the time Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate, Bigthana and Teresh, two of the king’s officers who guarded the doorway, became angry and conspired to assassinate King Xerxes.  But Mordecai found out about the plot and told Queen Esther, who in turn reported it to the king, giving credit to Mordecai.”  The King James says it this way: “Esther certified the king thereof in Mordecai’s name.”  And here’s the gruesome ending: “And when the report was investigated and found to be true, the two officials were hanged on a gallows.  All this was recorded in the book of the annals in the presence of the king.”

So this is a complicated plot from the very start.  Mordecai, and then Esther, basically save the life of the king.  So immediately there are brownie points all around, although no one in the kingdom knows that Mordecai and Esther have any connection.  But it all gets written down in the king’s White House transcripts.

It’s interesting that we hear about gallows and hangings here, and this is a dramatic “foreshadowing,” a story setup if there ever was one.  Actually, as we mentioned earlier in the week, it seems that impalement was generally how people were executed in this kingdom of Persia, and then the dead corpse was hung from the gallows as a way of displaying the awful results of treason.  In fact, you can read that right here in the Bible too, in places like Deuteronomy chapter 22.

Now on to the second plot point.  Chapter three of Esther skips down about four years, which would take us to 475 B.C.  Everything is going well in Persia — but now the antagonist in the story finally shows up.  So everybody in the balcony boos as we introduce him.  Here’s verse one:

“After these events” — in other words, four years later now — “King Xerxes honored Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, elevating him and giving him a seat of honor higher than that of all the other nobles.”

In other words, he basically becomes the vizier or prime minister of the empire.  And if you’re thinking about the One Thousand and One Nights, and wondering why Mordecai isn’t made prime minister here . . . well, just stay tuned.  But in verse two the plot thickens.

“All the royal officials at the king’s gate knelt down and paid honor to Haman, for the king had commanded this concerning him.  But Mordecai would not kneel down or pay him honor.”

There’s an instant rivalry here, bad blood, between these two men.  Why did Mordecai go out of his way to be a troublemaker, to not bow down as the king commanded?  Was it against his religion?  No.  Dr. David Clines, in The New Century Bible Commentary for Esther, shares this note:

“Jews shared the oriental custom of prostration [bowing down] which they did not regard as a breach of the first and second commandments.”

In fact, the Bible has many references where even people like the great patriarch Abraham bowed down to people as an act of respect.  The warrior David bowed down, prostrated himself with his face to the ground, before King Saul — his enemy King Saul.  That’s in First Samuel 24.  But here — and apparently this was day after day — Mordecai simply wouldn’t do it.  Why?

Well, talk about a plot twist.  Mordecai tells people it’s just because he’s a Jew, but it goes much deeper than that.  Haman, remember, was an Agagite, as we just read.  Mordecai, a Jew, was from the tribe of Benjamin; that’s back in chapter two, verse five.  Now the Agagites go clear back to a King Amalek, the enemy of King Saul.  There were ferocious battles between Israel and the Amalekites, with slaughters going both directions.  But that was 500 years earlier!  However, you add in the fact that Saul himself was from the tribe of Benjamin, and you can see here why Mordecai, five whole centuries later, isn’t about to bow down to a great-great-great-great-great grandson enemy of the tribe of Benjamin; no way.  So we have here a plot with tensions that are 500 years old before the opening credits have hardly run past us.

And when this not-bowing-down insult just keeps on hitting Haman in the face, he can hardly stand it.  It ruins his day every day!  “He was enraged,” the NIV says.  The King James: “Then was Haman full of wrath.”

Now friend, here is the overkill response of all time.  This is Plot #2 coming up, and it shows us just how very willing we are to go absolutely crazy to protect our dignity, our wounded pride.  This Haman, who’s really only mad at Mordecai, decides that the way to get his revenge is to wipe out the entire Jewish race.  That’s right.  Just because one man won’t bow down to him, he plans a holocaust right there in the year 474 B.C.  Here’s verse six:

“Having learned who Mordecai’s people were, he scorned the idea of killing only Mordecai.  Instead Haman looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people, the Jews, throughout the whole kingdom of Xerxes.”

I hope we don’t see ourselves in this picture of blind rage, of senseless revenge.  But here’s an Old Testament Auschwitz, all because one man won’t bow down to the prime minister.  It’s unbelievable, but how often in life do even we Christians plot and plan for overkill retaliations in the little hurts and squabbles of our daily lives?

Bible scholar David Clines picks up on a telling parallel here.  Notice:

“Like Ahasuerus who must put every woman in the kingdom in her place in order to assert his own dignity,” he writes, “Haman must butcher the whole race of the Jews to conquer his own inferiority feeling.”

The Bible tells us that Haman and his friends actually rolled the dice, they cast lost — known as the pur in those days — to find the best date for this empire-wide slaughter.  And the dice or the bones or the tea leaves or the black and white stones or whatever, indicated — this is verse seven — that Haman’s plan should go into effect on the twelfth month, the month of Adar.  In fact, the 13^th day of the twelfth month, it says a few verses later.  That would be some time in February or March, and this would now be down in 473 B.C.

Well, this is a terrible place to bring down the curtain on Part One, but you would think that this plot wouldn’t stand a ghost of a chance.  How can Haman kill all of the Jews when the queen herself is Jewish?  Of course, no one in the palace suspects that she’s a Jew.  But certainly the king isn’t going to buy into a campaign, a pogrom — or plan of systematic murder — that does away with his own beloved Esther?  Is he?

We’ll take a brief intermission and pick it up right here on Monday.