Since God’s name, Y-H-W-H, meaning “He [=God] is in a state of continuous and eternal being, is not mentioned in the Esther Scroll, and since the theme of the Scroll is that God is watching the world, neither slumbering nor sleeping, we find that the question put lays the seeds that require a very analytic answer.
We learn Hebrew Scripture critically. This idiom does by no means that we criticize what we read, but rather commends that we render a judgment upon what we read. To this end, we first summarize the questions that the narrative raises:
1. What is it in the Hebrew Divine Name that makes its absence notable?
2. How was this absence misunderstood by the Qumranide Dead Sea sectarians?
3. Who are the characters and what are their names?
4. Where does the narrative begin and where does the narrative end?
5. Why does the Scroll’s opening sound so much like Plato’s Symposium?
6. Why is it imperative that God not appear in the narrative by name?
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1.What is it in the Hebrew Divine Name
that makes its absence notable?
The Divine Name in Hebrew [Y-H-W-H] is a third person imperfect form, meaning “He is being.” The verb refers to continuing action In later Hebrew, this form was taken to be a future tense. By remaining hidden in the narrative, God, as a literary character, is never present to the secular eye and is ever present to the religious eye. The secular or mundane eye cannot penetrate the actions or piety of the believing, behaving and identifying Jew. The absence of the Divine is therefore ironic; the God whom the mundane mind is unable to sense is the God Who pulls all the strings, arranges all accounts, and directs history toward its providential telos, or goal.
2. How was this absence misunderstood by the Qumranide Dead Sea sectarians?
The Dead Sea sectarians were religiously very strict, theologically very stark, simple, absolute, and extreme. Their readings were not nuanced; the Qumranide reading of Scripture and reality was apocalyptic, the forces of evil are arrayed against the forces of good. Their commentaries are re-writes of Scripture called “mediations,” or pesharim. Since the Esther Scroll did not mention God’s name, this no nonsense, no nuance sect misread Esther as a secular tale and as a consequence did not include the book in its community canon; there was not one exemplar or fragment of the Esther Scroll found at Qumran. On the hand, both the Pharisees and their rabbinic successors composed glossation commentaries called midrashim, highly nuanced and insightful observations regarding the multl-valenced meanings of Israel’s canonical documents. The rabbis, with their nuanced religious—and literary—sophistication, understood that God is hidden in a social and political world that wants to keep God out.
3. Who are the main characters and what are their names?
Ahashuerus is the King of Persia and Media, which really was a double monarchy in antiquity. He ruled from India to Ethiopia, the precise range of Aramaic documents, the lingua franca of the Achaenamid empire, for which Persian was used for private, religious purposes. The Hebrew Scripture reports that this empire, in which the Jews/Judeans of the 587 BCE exile, retain but are in danger of loosing their religious and ethnic identity. According to Persian reports, the empire was divided into 20 administrative districts, or satraps. But Scripture reports that Persia possessed one hundred twenty medinot. The historically aware and theologically attuned nuanced reader does not find a contradiction, as do the secular critics. The Persians thought as tryant rulers in administrative terms; the Jews/Judeans believed in ethnic identity, which is preserved in the city, the original meaning of medina, a place of localized law, or din in Arabic, Aramaic, as well as Hebrew. Ahashuerus rules blindly, almost always influenced by alcohol, women, intrigue and a congenital addiction to physical pleasure, over a vast kingdom. Inasmuch as Bigtan and Teresh tried to initiate a coup d’etat, were foiled by Mordecai, whom the King ineptly forgot or otherwise fails to reward for his efforts, we see a king who in principle is all powerful and in fact cannot manage, much less master, the power that is his. Note well that the verbs with which he is associated are intransitive, without direct objects. The King merely “is.” He drinks and sits on his throne; he does nothing but pleasure himself with women, gainful winnings, and wine. [See Esther 1:19, 3:9, 5:4-5, ‘im ‘al ha-melech tov] In this chaotic kingdom, one gets what one wants by anticipating the wants of the King.
Haman is an Agagite. Agag was the Amaleqite king that King Saul, the Benjamin tribe member, was supposed to execute according to the Divine but did not. Like the Amaleqites of Saul’s time and Moses era, Haman wants to destroy Israel because Israel is Israel; because there is no reason for Haman’s hatred, no reason is offered for it. But we may find a hint in Haman’s case before Ahashuerus, “there is a nation scattered and dispersed among the people [of the empire], they have laws that are different from all the nations, and it is not worth it to the king to leave them be. [Esther 3:8] Realizing that his own hatred of Israel is irrational, Haman appeals to the king’s utilitarian instincts: the people are not indigenous, this people by habit resists acculturation needed for order and tax collection, and it simply is not worth it to the king to suffer their potentially irredentist presence. And to seal the deal, Haman pays the King for the right to stage a pogrom. [Esther 3:9] By portraying Israel as “other,” the nation whose Laws demand that one treat others with dignity, Israel is subversive of every hierarchy, tyranny, and aristocracy. This people, because of the Torah that makes this people distinct with dignity, is born free. Haman is so possessed with himself that his evil plans are thwarted, as we will see below, by his own sick sense of misplaced importance. Recall that he enters the King’s courtyard for the right to hang Mordecai, not aware that the King could not sleep, was read the account of the Bigtan and Teresh abortive cou d’etat and Mordecai’s unrewarded act of good—and salvific—citizenship. The King, now for the only instant in the narrative sober--a state unnoticed by the full of himself Haman—plays Haman the way the King was played by Haman to date. The King, now scared sober, wants to know what’s on Haman’s clearly twisted mind, being invited to the King’s rolling bar by the King’s favorite wife and entering the King’s courtyard in the dead of night. The King asks, with grim sobriety, high anxiety, and piercing insight, playing on Haman’s hapless hubris, “what shall be done for the man whom the King desires to honor?” [Esther 6:6a] The now scared, sober, and sleepless King is playing the player even as he is being played by the Player, the unseen King of kings, the real Emperor who keeps the King from slumber. Realizing that Haman does not suffer from modesty, but is obsessed with ambition, the King asks Haman what his wildest wish would be. And Haman’s hubris overtakes his malevolent cunning; he would wear the royal robe, ride the royal steed, and don the royal crown and be so proclaimed as friend of the Throne in public. The signet ring of administrative power on his finger is not enough for Haman; he who would destroy Israel for no reason and now cannot be trusted, any more than Bigtan and Teresh whom Mordecai had thwarted, from assaulting the Kingdom in the dead of night to kill the human King who cannot sleep.
Like Jacob, Joseph, and Mordecai, Haman is a manager of men. But Israelites are able to manage themselves. Not so Haman, who when Haman sees the insubordinate Mordecai not obeying the human king’s order to bow before him, [Esther 35:5. 5:9] Haman out of control “is filled with rage.” The unseen King fills Haman with his blinding rage, leading to his downfall.
Esther is the Scroll’s round character who undergoes development in the Scroll that bears her name. Like the pagan Ishtar, to which her name is cognate, has a private hidden Hebrew name, Hadassah. Raised by her uncle, Mordecai, the Jew or Judean, Esther is on one hand named by her now deceased parents as the pagan “star,” and grows in Judaism, the cult of the Judeans who serve the unseen God Who is King of the Cosmos, the Father in Heaven, the Redeemer of Israel, and the Player who plays and preys upon those who would prey and play upon His people. If her Indo-European name represents the visible shining star, the very same word in Hebrew, the language of her people [Esther 8:9 and Esther 9:27] means “hidden,” the root str in Hebrew. When God’s presence is hidden and God’s Presence is unseen, the nations hear the decree to destroy the Jews in their vernaculars and scripts [Esther 3: 12]; Esther’s name and God’s now apparent presence appears when Israel, now redeemed, is recognized as a nation.
In Ahashuerus’ empire, people are passive pawns to be exploited and manipulated by power poeple. In need of a trophy talent to replace the deposed Vashti, who actively and insubordinately refused the royal order to appear before the King in order to display her natural assets, [Esther 1:17] a beauty contest was suggested to pick the appropriate replacement. The notion that Vashi was asked/ordered to appear/come in the nude, with her crown on her head her only attire, the Talmud suggests that the assembly’s intentions were not honorable. Read the end of the verse, and mQeddushin 1:1.
Esther is taken to the the King’s harem, in
passive voice. [Esther 2:18, 16] As a subject of
the tyrant, she is subject to that very tyrant.
When challenged by Mordecai that she cannot
hide in the Harem and to escape the King’s
decree. Recall two at first seemingly insignificant narrational facts: that edict which is signed and sealed with the King’s seal cannot be rescinded. [Esther 8:8] and that was decreed against the recalcitrant Queen Vashti by the de jure omnipotent King could not be overturned, even by the King himself. The deliciously caustic irony is that the Law the human King advances, a Law that once given, cannot be changed, is precisely the Law of the Jews given by the God Who does not change. [Deut. 4:2, 13:1, and the Epilogue to Hammurapi would have that Code, written in stone, not to be effaced or changed.] Ahashurus acts as if he is a god but appears, except when he is scared sober, to be an inept drunkard.
Esther risks her life with an active leap of faith when she appears before the king uninvited and unannounced. [Esther 4:11] The King sits on a very fragile throne, certainly after the Bigtan and Teresh incident. Unless one is called/yiqqarei in the passive, one is subject to the death penalty for the precedented and legitimate fear that one who appears before the king without an appointment is intent upon regicide. The word for scepter, sharvit, is a Babylonian causal form meaning “to cause one to bow down,” i.e. make the requisite gesture of passivity before the King, who alone is authorized to be active. The King of kings predisposed the human king to look favorably upon his nervous first lady of the harem. After all, we, the omniscient readers, realize that Esther was not called to the King’s bedroom for thirty days [4:11] not because she fell out of favor with her royal husband, but because her her husband King was in nervous terror for his own life. Note well that Esther “was not called,” she was not deemed worthy of being passive in the presence of the appropriately paranoid impotent potentate.
Esther achieves religious maturity by being active, by being a moral agent, and by taking a dangerous risk. Idolatry religion makes a man into a god and people into slaves, as in the case of Pharaoh, or into passive subjects, as in the case of Ahashuerus.
Mordecai’s family heritage is from the tribe of Benjamin and Saul. Neither Saul nor Benjamin’s tribe acted honorably, and neither did those who gave Mordecai his non-Hebrew name, a name he shared with the pagan god called Marduk. In pagan Persia, the king is a tyrant. No one speaks independently but the human King so the real King, God the Creator, speaks silently. See Psalms 19:4. By protecting the King, adopting and nurturing Esther, by mourning publically and praying the unmentionable word in Persia, Mordecai’s acts testify to his politically astute enlightened piety. Throughout the Esther Scroll, the human king gives orders that render his subjects passive. But at Esther 2:22, the matter of insurrection is made known to Mordecai; there is a Commander/King Who talks and makes His will known to Mordecai. Haman’s critique of the Jews, ironically, is correct. There is a nation that obeys the commands of God before the drunken bumpkin who sits on Persia’s peacock throne. True Hebrew nationals answer to a higher authority.
4. Where does the narrative begin and where does the narrative end?
The narrative begins with Amaleq at Exodus 17:8 with the gratuitous attack on Israel by the Amalaqite enemies of Israel, who attempted to eradicate a society where every citizen is a moral agent and image of God, whose disposition leads to freedom, and the narrative ends with Ezra 2:2 and Nehemiah 7:7, when Mordecai goes home, to Judea. Saul was told by Samuel that God does not lie, I Sam. 15:29, and Mordecai told Esther that if she is not willing to be an active player and moral agent, Israel’s aid will come from another place, [Esther 4:14], she and her household will be lost—because as noted above the human King’s commands, including the command to kill all of the Jews, cannot be rescinded—but that God’s care for the Judeans cannot be abandoned. [Psalms 94:14]
5. Why does the Scroll’s opening sound so much like Plato’s Symposium?
Plato’s Symposium tells a story about the best, brightest, and beautiful people of Athenian antiquity. Plato the narrator recalls in the past that there was a drinking party, where men discussed—and tried to put into practice—love amongst themselves. The Hebrew word for such a party is called a mishteh, an occasion for party drinking, is where the affairs of state take place in the Esther Scroll. The hero of the party, Socrates, wins the day by speaking about true agape love, holding down his wine, and rejecting the advances of the knave general, Alcibiades.
The Jew in Esther joins the first drinking party in anonymity, as individuials in the mob. Drinking wine at the party of redemption shows the difference between the two cultures: the Greeks, and the
Persians who to our view are the “Greeks” for whom, under Greek rule, it is politically correct to mock, and to drink to and for diversion. The Jew drinks with a benediction, praising the Creator for creating the fruit of the wine, and showing how one may be both joyous and pious. The “ethic” of Plato’s Symposium was for invited aristocrats alone, where we get to see Socrates say “no” to Alcibiades not because of morality, but because the latter was not the former’s taste. In contrast, the Purim meal requires wine for all, sending of gifts to others, and care for the poor. When the Passover offering was being observed, only those listed to eat from the offering could legally do so; once the offering became defunct, “all who are hungry, may come and eat, all who are in need, join for the solidarity of the seder.” The Greeks, and the Persian characters who portray them, believe in fate, aristocracy, and honor; the Jew, who like Mordecai, believes that there is a Judge and there is a judgment, there is a law which promotes an aristocracy of ethics, because everyone is to walk humbly before the silent God Whose acts speak loudly.
The human aristocracy of the Greek or Persian pagans demanded humility from the masses, expressed literarily by the the passivity that is imposed by the inept human King upon his chaotic, multi-national empire that appeared to be powerful but upon close look was out of control.
When some men [women do not do this] press others to be humble, they are asking the “other” to nullify her or himself, to defer out of self-disrespect to mistaken to be one’s “betters,” to accept the truth of others while being passive and denying one’s self-worth. The ideal Jew is a moral agent who acts out of ethics for good. The ideal Jew’s God created the world, have a Torah, and commissioned the Jew to put God in the world by acting as Divinely commissioned moral agents.
6. Why is it imperative that God not appear in the narrative by name?
Because Esther’s literary setting, ancient Peprsia, and historical setting, the Hellenistic cultural challenge, makes to place for God, so God appears to be absent. The monarchical diction honors protocol and one singular person, Ahashuerus the king. In this amoral world, great men are largely petty and morally small; Mordecai’s and Esther’s acts of faith do not resonate in pagan cultures, so they are described as naked gestures that the engaged reader realizes are profound in fact acts of religious faith. Ezra 1:1-3 reports:
1”Now in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, in order that the word of the Lord given by the mouth of Jeremiah might come true, the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, was moved by the Lord, so that he made a public statement through all his kingdom, and put it in writing, saying,
2These are the words of Cyrus, king of Persia: The Lord God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth; and he has made me responsible for building a house for him in Jerusalem, which is in Judah.
3Whoever there is among you of his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and take in hand the building of the house of the Lord, the God of Israel; he is the God who is in Jerusalem.” [my bold]
The setting of Ezra is filled with the Presence of God, who with Cyrus, replaced Ahashuerus. It in a world that God moves people, people are moved to put God in the world. God appears in the world when humans let God enter the social construction of ethical reality that is humankind’s to make. In the Esther Scroll, paganism does not allow for religious discourse so God’s name is unmentionable. The Esther Scroll is a commission to the Jewish people to allow God-talk to be part of our spiritual conversation.
