Five years after they began, the Jews finished rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. They celebrated the temple’s dedication by sacrificing a hundred bulls, two hundred rams, and four hundred lambs as offerings to the Lord. They also sacrificed twelve male goats to atone for the sins of the twelve tribes of Israel. (Ezra 6:16-17)

The priests and Levites were installed for service in the house of God and their first duty was to observe the Passover for the first time in over seventy years. The priests slaughtered the Passover lambs and all the people who had returned from exile, along with people who remained behind and had kept themselves clean from pagan practices, joined in the Passover meal. The feast went on for seven days. (Ezra 6:18-21)

They had an extra reason to celebrate because God had changed the attitude of the king of Assyria. At the beginning he opposed their work on the temple, but after God changed his heart he helped them do the work. (Ezra 6:22)

There was peace for the Jews in the Persian Empire for about twenty years, but then trouble came again. It happened during the reign of Xerxes king of Persia. (Ezra 4:6)

The Splendor of Xerxes

The Persian Empire was vast and provided almost unlimited sources of wealth for King Xerxes. Three years after he came to the throne Xerxes decided to showcase his wealth and majesty in a six-month exhibition. Military officers, nobles, and provincial heads all came to see the great display.

Xerxes closed the great event with a seven-day party in the beautiful garden of his palace. Guests drank as much wine as they wanted from unique golden goblets that were refilled by wine stewards as soon as they were emptied. Inside the palace Queen Vashti gave a banquet for the women.

After seven days of adulation from his nobles, King Xerxes was quite drunk and he decided to show off the one treasure he hadn’t shared yet, his beautiful queen. He sent for her, but she refused to come to him.

King Xerxes was furious at being refused this way. He didn’t know what he should do about his lovely, rebellious queen, so he consulted his legal experts. They recommended she be banished as punishment and as a warning to the other women of the Empire.

“For the queen’s conduct will become known to all the women, so they will despise their husbands and say, ‘King Xerxes commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him but she would not come.’ 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.” Esther 1:17-18

The men of the empire were very concerned about their wives following Vashti’s example and refusing them. There was good reason for them to worry.

The Fearful Power of Women

While Xerxes ruled his empire in the fifth century BC, across the Mediterranean Sea, the Greeks were beginning to write plays. Aristophanes wrote one of the first Greek comedies, Lysistrata, a tale of Greek women who stopped their men from fighting by refusing to have sex with them. The men became so unhappy that they agreed to the women’s terms, stopped their wars, and peacefully resumed life with their wives.

Women have used this tactic successfully to end injustice and bring about political reform many times since then. In 1600 Iroquois women stopped wars and gained the power to veto future conflicts when they withheld intimacy from their husbands. They also withheld moccasins and seed corn until the men gave in to their reasonable demands.

In our own century, women have ended brutal conflicts in Liberia, Colombia, Kenya, and the Philippines by refusing to sleep with their men until they stopped fighting. Leymah Gbowee got the Nobel Peace Prize after organizing the women of Liberia to carry out the women’s strike that led to the end of that nation’s civil war in 2003.

This kind of action only works when there is a clear demand on the table, like the end of a war. It also helps if the men are in love with the women in their lives and miss them – the way King Xerxes missed Queen Vashti after she was sent away.

But his edict against his wife was written into the law of the Medes and Persians and could not be revoked. Xerxes became a lonely man.

A New Queen for Xerxes

The king’s personal attendants cheered him up with an entertaining plan for finding a new queen. They suggested that the most beautiful girls from all over the empire be brought to Susa, given beauty treatments, and presented to Xerxes night after night until he met the woman who pleased him the most. She would become his new queen.

“This advice pleased the king and he followed it.” Esther 2:4

Not far from the palace lived a Jewish man named Mordecai. Nebuchadnezzar had carried Mordecai’s great-grandfather into exile in Babylon a hundred years earlier, but Mordecai never forgot his Benjamite heritage. He was a kind, wise, and generous man who took in his young orphaned cousin named Esther and raised her as his own daughter.

Esther grew into a beauty and was chosen in the round up of young women for the king’s harem. She had a pleasing character as well as a lovely face and figure and the chief eunuch in the harem took a special interest in helping her prepare to meet the king.

Four years after he banished Queen Vashti, Xerxes fell in love again and Esther became his new queen. He didn’t know he had married a Jewish girl because Mordecai counseled Esther to keep her ethnicity a secret.

Mordecai Saves the King

Mordecai hung around the king’s palace gate a lot and one day he overheard two men plotting to kill King Xerxes. He told Esther, who conveyed the message to Xerxes, giving Mordecai the credit. An investigation led to the execution of the two would-be assassins.

“All this was recorded in the book of the annals in the presence of the king.” Esther 2:23

Haman’s Plot

King Xerxes elevated one of his nobles, Haman, to a high seat of honor, above the other nobles, and Haman loved it when they all bowed to him as he passed by. The only person who refused to bow was Mordecai. He didn’t give any explanation; he just refused to honor Haman. Perhaps Mordecai saw through the pomp of Haman’s exterior to the character of the man.

Haman learned that Mordecai was a Jew and decided to wipe out not only Mordecai but also all the Jewish people throughout the Persian Empire. He chose a date for the great massacre and went to King Xerxes with an offer to personally fund the elimination of the Jews.

“So the king took his signet ring from his finger and gave it to Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. ‘Keep the money,’ the king said to Haman, ‘and do with the people as you please.’” Esther 3:10-11

There was no time to lose. The massacre was set to happen in twelve months and the Persian Empire was huge. Haman put the royal secretaries to work writing out the orders to kill all the Jews, along with the date it must be done. It went out in every language to all of the various provinces of the empire.

“The couriers went out, spurred on by the king’s command, and the edict was issued in the citadel of Susa. The king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was bewildered.” Esther 3:15

For Such a Time As This

Mordecai and all of the Jews throughout the empire were terribly distressed. Esther heard about it and sent her attendant to Mordecai to ask what was wrong. Mordecai told him the whole story and sent a copy of the edict to Esther, asking her to go to King Xerxes and beg for mercy for the Jews.

People didn’t just go into King Xerxes’s presence; they had to be summoned and Esther hadn’t been summoned for thirty days. She asked Mordecai and the Jews to fast and pray for her and she promised to go to the king, even if it cost her life. Mordecai encouraged her to do it with a timeless observation:

“He sent back this answer: ‘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 will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?’” Esther 4:13-14

The fate of the Jews was in the hands of one brave young woman.