Esther 1
King Xerxes fires Queen Vashti
King throws party to honor himself
1This is a story from the time of King Xerxes[1] the Great. He ruled a Persian empire of 127 provinces. They stretched from the borders of India in the east to Ethiopia in the south. 2Xerxes ran the empire from his capital city of Susa.[2]3He hosted a royal dinner during his third year as king. Officials, nobles, and military leaders came from Persia and Media,[3] along with the provinces scattered throughout his sprawling empire. 4The king followed that dinner with six months of extravagant displays of his wealth and power—180 days of regal pomp and circumstance.
5Afterward, the king hosted seven days of dining in the garden courtyard. He invited everyone in Susa, from the high and mighty to the low and hungry. 6Cotton curtains, blue and white framed the garden. Purple linen cords tied them back to marble pillars. Gold and silver benches provided guests a place to sit and rest. Under their feet lay a canvas of mosaics etched into pavements of marble, mother-of-pearl, and expensive stone.
Cheers!
7The king brought out wine, and plenty of it—served in expensive cups, including gold goblets. 8King Xerxes ordered no limits on the wine.[4] Everyone could drink all the wine they wanted. If someone wanted more, they got more.9Queen Vashti,[5] threw a palace party, too. This one for the women.
10At the end of the seven days of drinking lots of wine, the king was juiced and happy. He called in seven eunuchs[6] who serve the palace women. The eunuchs were Mehuman, Biztha, Harbona, Bigtha, Abagtha, Zethar, and Karkas. 11He told them to bring the queen, wearing her crown. He wanted officials who served him to get a good look at her because she was easy on the eyes. Yessir.
12The queen said no.[7] The king wasn’t happy anymore. And he got hot-headed.
When the queen tells the king “No”
13The king asked his advisor what the Persian law had to say about a situation like this. That’s what he did whenever he had questions about the law. 14Xerxes had appointed seven top advisors from the territories of Persia and Media. They were Carshena, Shethar, Admatha, Tarshish, Meres, Marsena, and Memucan.15The king asked them, “I gave the eunuchs an order to pass on to Queen Vashti. She snubbed me. What does the law say I should do about this?”
16Memucan told the king, “Queen Vashti has done more than hurt you. She hurt every man here and every man in every province of Persia.[8] 17Women everywhere will hear what she did. Then they’ll start treating their husband with disrespect, too. They’ll say, ‘King Xerxes gave Queen Vashti an order and she refused.’ 18Word of this is already spreading. Women everywhere in Persia and Media are going to hear about this. When they do, men better brace themselves. Women are coming, and they’re mad and bringing baggage.
King’s decree: Men boss the home
19If you’re willing, here’s what you should do. Fire the queen. Forbid her from ever coming to see you again.[9] Then replace her. Find another top wife to serve as your queen. 20If you do this, women everywhere in your vast empire will show respect to their husbands, rich or poor.”[10]21King Xerxes and his officials loved Memucan’s advice. 22So, he sent orders to every province in his empire—written in a letter translated into their own languages.[11] He declared every man the boss of his own family. Period.
Footnotes
The writer uses the Hebrew version of Xerxes’ name: Ahasuerus. It’s a bit like the difference between the English name of “Stephen” showing up in Spanish as “Esteban.” Xerxes the Great reigned from 486 BC until his top bodyguard assassinated him in 465 BC. He’s the king perhaps best known for defeating King Leonidas of Sparta at the Battle of Thermopylae and then destroying Athens and taking control of mainland Greece. Xerxes later left and took his army home. But many scholars say this Xerxes is fictional—a weak-minded caricature of the powerful ruler.
Susa is in Iran. It was one of four capital cities, but the main one.
Media was a nation of people known as the Medes. They united with the Persians to defeat the Babylonian Empire. They lived in what is now northern Iran, just south of the Caspian Sea. Mount Ararat lies within this region. That’s where a Bible writer says Noah’s boat ran aground after the Great Flood (Genesis 8:4)
Some say this means people could drink all they wanted. Others say it simply means that wine typically reserved for the king was now available to everyone. They get a taste of the best wine, too.
Women of nobility didn’t typically go to drinking parties with the men. Dancing ladies went there as entertainment. So, it would make sense for the queen to host the wives of the men. There’s no known mention of Queen Vashti in ancient Persian history outside of the Bible. That’s one of several reasons some scholars say this story is fictional and intended to teach readers a lesson about courage and justice and resilience of the Jewish people.
Eunuchs were the kind of men entrusted to take care of harems of wives and concubines. Eunuchs were castrated, so they couldn’t get any of the ladies pregnant. But they could make them happy for a while, at the risk of getting their heads castrated. They were often sexually active, not at all celibate.
The king’s wife was reserved for the king’s eyes only—for no other man. So, what self-respecting queen would put herself on display as a trophy wife in a room full of men on a seven-day drunk? She tried to protect her honor and possibly the honor of her husband, who was too drunk to realize that he was embarrassing himself.
And the sky is falling. This exaggerated reaction would have been dangerous…telling the king to fire his favorite wife. Who would do that, but a crazy man? Scholars today often criticize the advice as unwise and unbelievable and part of a fictional story, somewhat like a long parable.
This could have been a polite way of talking about her execution.
This flaky and paranoid advice is another reason scholars often say the story reads like an exaggerated and fictional view of life in the Persian palace.
Like the Romans, Persians had an excellent system of communications throughout the empire. They often sent messages in Aramaic, the leading language throughout the region. Locals generally translated Aramaic messages into the regional dialects and languages.
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