Thinking About...Esther and Joseph

From the Bible, that is...

I read parts of a book this week called "Hadassah: One Night With the King", a fictionalized novel based on the story of Esther.

I've read a few books based on Esther.  The Biblical record has many of the features necessary to make a great novel -- a beautiful girl, a powerful king, an unscrupulous and vicious enemy, and dependence on God that leads to the "day being saved" for the Jewish people.  It is a wonderful story, a powerful story.  I LOVE the Book of Esther from the Bible.

Having said all that, I wouldn't wholeheartedly endorse the Hadassah book. The author doesn't get too graphic but it is a very adult book with plenty of themes surrounding Esther's plight...and it was a plight.

All of the novels I've read based on this story take the stance that Esther was grabbed and forced into the harem of the king, and I think that is probably accurate.  This particular book delves into that whole issue quite a bit and I'll be honest, it is a stomach churning possibility. 

Esther sounds like...a romantic story.  A beautiful girl is plucked out of obscurity and becomes queen of an empire. Through her courage, and due to her position as queen, she saved her people from genocide.  That is awesome. That is God filled.

But...let me back up a bit and talk about what happened to Esther and scores of other young women.

From Esther 3

Each young woman’s turn came to go in to King Ahasuerus after she had completed twelve months’ preparation, according to the regulations for the women, for thus were the days of their preparation apportioned: six months with oil of myrrh, and six months with perfumes and preparations for beautifying women. Thus prepared, each young woman went to the king, and she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the women’s quarters to the king’s palace. In the evening she went, and in the morning she returned to the second house of the women, to the custody of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch who kept the concubines. She would not go in to the king again unless the king delighted in her and called for her by name.

So, each woman spent a year in preparation, then went off and was forced to have sex with a pagan king who had slept with hundreds of women before her, and then (unless she was fortunate enough to really impress the king) was bundled off to the House of the Concubines for the rest of her days, without any hope of a normal married life or family.

Yuck.  Yuck, yuck, yuck, yuck.

In the Hadassah story I read, the author chose to say that Hadassah and the King genuinely fell in love.  I ... think that unlikely, honestly.  Obviously Esther (Hadassah) was gorgeous and for some reason the King really liked her, to the point that he made her queen. But in love?  In lust, maybe.  I kind of doubt that a man who could go through women like that could form a godly, close, intimate, soulmate relationship with any woman, even the woman who caught his fancy.

The king sickens me.  I know that his attitude was completely normal in that day and age.  He was ruler of a vast empire, and he believed that he was therefore more important than anyone else, and should have whatever he wanted whenever he wanted.   The women were treated quite well and I'm sure their lot was way better than some of the other women of that time.  But still...to grab a woman and make her a concubine and then lock her away (even in luxury) for the rest of her days is disgusting.

So ... why did God allow it?  Well, that's the big question that haunts us all sometimes, I would guess. Esther's situation was better than some.  Millions of Christians (and Jews, and gypsies, and Russians, and a host of other people) have died unpleasantly in concentration camps and to jihads.  So I guess from that perspective, being a concubine who became the queen sounds pretty good.

I am not God so I don't know WHY He allows what He does.  I know there is evil and that God limits himself to allow human freedom.  No one has ever entirely explained evil and God's allowance of it, and I won't even try.

What did happen this week was that I made a mental connection to Joseph (the Genesis Joseph) as well. His story is actually somewhat similar to Esther's!  He was sold into slavery (by his brothers, no less!)  He was a slave, then a prisoner, then was raised to the position of being the 2nd in command to the Pharoah of Egypt. A decade after that, he saved his family from starvation. 

Again, rough life.  Rough, rough, rough life.  The 2nd in command part sounds cool and it was, but there was a whole lot of suffering before that.  His father Jacob, who adored him, was separated from him for 20 long years and thought Joseph was dead for most of that time.  Lots of suffering.

I think what I can carry away from both these stories is that 1.) God allows very hard things sometimes and 2.)  God can use very hard things for the greater good. That comes right out of Romans 8:28.

Romans 8:28

New Living Translation (NLT)

²⁸ And we know that God causes everything to work together^[a] for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.


 I would definitely argue that not all things ARE good. They are not.  Some things are just downright bad and evil. But God can use ALL things for good. That is encouraging.