Not A Matter of Talk

By Amy Lee Hartmann

August 20, 2012

     Being the heroine in any event is always thrilling.  Being heralded as the leading lady who brought about great victory – or salvation – or deliverance causes many a woman to aspire to achieve great things when under personal, social, moral or political pressure.  Rising to the rank of queen, or brave woman, or leader is cause for great celebration. However, the shoes of the defeated, swept away, rightly disposed individual often hold just as a compelling human being whose failures leave key life lessons too!  Such is the story of the renowned beauty, Queen Vashti, royal hostess and much admired companion of  King Xerxes.

“Xerxes (also known as Ahasuerus) was a Persian king who reigned 486-464 B.C. …He was the son of Darius The Great and grandson of Cyrus the Great.[1]  Persia was a vast collection of states and kingdoms reaching from the shores of Asia Minor in the west to to the Indus River valley in the east.  It reached northward to southern Russia, and in the south included Egypt and the regions bordering the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman”.[2]

This territory encompasses modern day Iran.  The book of Esther describes this kingdom as reaching from India to Ethiopia – over 127 provinces all together.  By today’s reckonings, that would include many well recognized nations.  Vashti had the world and this powerful man at her feet.  All the wealth and resources of one of the largest and most well organized kingdoms in biblical history were at her disposal.  Her very name meant “the once desired, the beloved.”[3]

King Xerxes had been on his throne for three years when he decided to hold a feast for all his princes and servants.  Biblical accounts suggest that these sort of celebrations were not that unusual.  King Solomon and King Hezekiah are leaders who utilized these events to proclaim their status to their world.  The court of King Xerxes feasted for 180 days.  During this time he showed off his “glorious kingdom and the splendor and excellence of his majesty.”[4]  At the end of this elaborate extravaganza, the king then made a feast for all the inhabitants of the royal city, from the least to the greatest alike.  This banquet carried on for seven more days.

Vashti’s story unfolds in this majestic setting of the citadel of Susa, the winter capital of the ancient Persian Empire.  The palace gardens were decked with elaborate, sumptuously colored linen hangings fastened with white linen cords laced through silver grommets.  These draperies were supported by marble columns seated on a mosaic pavement of mother-of pearl, marble, costly stones and porphyry (red marble stones composed of feldspar crystals embedded in a dark red or purple ground mass)[5].  Couches of gold and silver provided the perfect seating for this imperial garden party.

Royal wine was abundant and liberally served by the wine stewards.  The people were encouraged to drink according to their own desire.  Queen Vashti made a feast for all the women of the palace household at this same time.  Susa was rocking!

On the seventh day of the final feast, the heart of the king was gladdened by much revelry and wine, so he decided to show his subjects one of his greatest treasures, his beautiful Queen Vashti.  The texts say that she was very fair and lovely to look upon.  It was at this very moment that divine destiny crept in and raised one of those unique portals that caused time and chance to shift.  Maybe Queen Vashti was tired; after all she had played hostess to a large banquet of high maintenance women from the palace.  Maybe she just didn’t feel good and hadn’t been wise about all of her banquet choices.  Regardless of her reasons, at this critical juncture of her life, she chose to disregard the royal eunuchs sent to prepare her to appear before the king.  She refused to wear her crown.

Her husband was enraged.  The princes and royal advisers trembled with anger and fear.  The wise-men were called, “those who understood the times, the law and judgment.”[6] Memucan, one of the king’s closest advisers gave this reply:

“Vashti the queen has not only done wrong to the king but also to all the princes and to all the peoples who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus.  For this deed of the queen will become known to all women, making their husbands contemptible in their eyes, since they will say ‘King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him but she did not come’.  This very day the ladies of Persia and Media who have heard of the queen’s behavior will be telling it to all the king’s princes.  So contempt and wrath in plenty will arise.”[7]

Another translation says, “This very day the Persian and Median women of the nobility who have heard about the queen’s conduct will respond to all the king’s nobles in the same way.  There will be no end of disrespect and discord.”[8]

Contempt, wrath-in-plenty, unending disrespect and discord….such are the fruits of dishonor.  How many of us have stood in similar shoes…maybe not as politically heeled as Vashti’s…but still shoes that carry the same weight in our world and our circumstances?  Another renowned wise king named Solomon gives us this perspective, “The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish woman tears hers down”.[9]

The Apostle Paul, gives this insight into the topic of honor and respect in marriage when he writes to the Ephesian church:

“Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.  For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church; He himself being the Savior of the body…Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself up for her…nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”[10]

Paul repeats this same directive to the church at Colossae:

“Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.  Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.

These admonitions aren’t popular and politically correct attitudes now days, but that does not mean that they aren’t the foundational answer to many relationship problems between a husband and wife.  Why would God repeatedly command a husband ‘to love his wife as he loves himself ’unless there was going to be this disconnect in the attitudes of a husband.  God was warning  that this is a key issue in keeping the heart of a wife free from hurt and bitterness.

Why would God reiterate again and again ‘that the woman must respect her husband’ unless this was going to be a key issue in keeping the husband’s heart free from hurt, anger and bitterness?

Being subject does not mean being abused.  The Greek word is hupotasso and it really means to obey, to respect and to come up under and look up to.

At this solemn moment in Vashti’s life, her fate is sealed.  There is no second chance.  “Therefore, if it pleases the king, let him issue a royal decree and let it be written in the laws of Persia and Media, which cannot be repealed, that Vashti is never again to enter the presence of King Xerxes.  Also let the king give her royal position to someone else who is better than she.  Then, when the king’s edict is proclaimed throughout all his vast realm, the women will respect their husbands, from the least to the greatest.”[11]

The rest of the story goes like this:  “After these things, when the wrath of King Xerxes had subsided, he remembered Vashti and what she had done and what he had decreed about her.”[12]  The King’s personal servants suggest the king issue a call for all the fair young virgins of the provinces to be brought into the palace of Shushan.  This royal search will find a suitable new queen.  A multi-year long beauty pageant brings a host of young women and an orphaned Jewish girl named Hadassah into the palace for purification and beauty treatments.

Hadassah’s uncle Mordecai insists she use the Persian name of Esther to mask her nationality and family background.  The text says she continued to obey and follow her uncle’s directions the entire time she was in the palace, just as she had done when he was bringing her up.  One interesting aspect of Esther’s story is found tucked away in the technical details of this book:  Queen Vashti disobeyed the king’s command at the end of the banquet in the third year of Xerxes’ reign.  Esther’s turn to be with King Xerxes took place in the tenth month of the seventh year of his reign.  Four long years of complete obedience to the eunuchs in charge had to pass before Esther’s divine portal opened and her destiny came forth.

Esther’s time as Queen ultimately provides the opportunity for her to stand up for her people.  Hatred for the Jewish people rises up in Haman, one of the king’s closest advisers, and he plots ethnic cleansing of the entire kingdom of Persia. When Mordecai learns of this edict, he tears his clothes, dons sackcloth and ashes, and then goes out into the city, lamenting loudly for his people.  Esther’s maids and royal servants carry this distressing information to the young queen and she sends one of the king’s eunuchs to investigate.  Through the eunuch, Mordecai urges Esther to go before the king and plead for mercy.

Esther fearfully reminds her uncle that the laws of the royal province state that anyone who approaches the king in his inner court without being summoned directly by the king, receives an immediate death sentence, unless the king extends his royal scepter to that person.  She nervously confides that it has been thirty days since she was last called into the king’s chambers.

Uncle Mordecai gives this compelling direction to Esther, when the royal edict is released to all the other provinces of the kingdom:

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape.  For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish.  And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”[13]

“Go, gather together all the Jews who are found in Susa and fast for me; do not eat or drink for three days – night or day – and I and my maidens also will fast in the same way.  And thus I will go into the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish,” Esther replies.

On the third day, Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court of the palace in view of the king.  When King Xerxes saw her he was pleased and he held out to her his golden scepter.  Over the next few days, Esther humbly serves the king and the enemy adviser through a series of banquets.  The king is captivated and demands she make her petition before him, even up to half of his kingdom!

Finally, in a moment of high drama, she pleads for her life, and that of her people.  Haman’s evil plot of ethnic cleansing is exposed!  The King’s rage at the intrigue of this plot boils up and he races out of the banqueting hall to call for his advisers.  In a panic, Haman falls upon the young queen, begging for his life.  The king returns just as Haman grabs for Esther and that triggers the portal for Haman’s demise.

“Will Haman even molest the queen while she is with me in the house?” Xerxes angrily exclaims, as the guards cover Haman’s head and drag him away.  The very instrument of death Haman has erected for the killing of his Jewish enemies becomes his own execution site; and sadly, the same for his ten sons.  The king grants Mordecai the task of issuing a new edict that grants the Jews in every province the right to defend themselves from the previous order calling for their death.  Thus the Jewish holiday of Purim is created as a remembrance of the deliverance of Queen Esther and her people.

Regrettably, “…no (other) records yet have been recovered which name Vashti as the queen of any king of the Medo-Persian Empire…”[14]  Vashti was swept away without further mention. Vashti’s parting epitath might well be, “The test of honor came when least expected but its consequences endured for a lifetime.”