Hadassah (Esther)

When King Ahasuerus decided he needed a new queen he ordered that *every* young beautiful virgin be gathered to Susa the capital and he appointed overseers to identify and gather them up. Young women of every race and language were gathered to become wives of Ahasuerus.

Implicit in this is that the Overseer and the province who supplied the young virgin who was chosen as queen would receive reward. The overseers would leave no stone unturned in their search for the most beautiful virgin in the Empire including consulting with Hegai the Eunuch, who was in charge of the King’s Harem, to see how King Ahasuerus’ tastes in women ran.

Hadassah was “beautiful of form and face”. She might have been as young as fourteen. As a young woman of great beauty she certainly must have commanded the attention of young and old men alike. Attention usually promotes vanity and vanity is not a very appealing characteristic. I suspect Hadassah was not vain. She certainly was not a spoiled head strong girl. She had experienced sorrow in her life when she suffered the loss of her mother and father. The young orphan was taken in and raised by her cousin Mordecai. The scriptures do not reference a wife or other children for Mordecai so Hadassah lacked a maternal influence in her live and no sibling interaction. Her devotion to Mordecai included “obeying Mordecai’s commands… as she had done while under his care”.

King Ahasuerus on the other hand was about 34 years old when he assumed his kingship and probably in his 50s when he married Hadassah. He had countless wives. In his position he was continually being manipulated by his wives and by politicians like Haman. He faced the constant threat of assassination. Certainly paranoia had to be one of his qualities. He compounded his problems by engaging in drinking parties which led to poor decisions in regards to how he treated queen Vashti and his selling of the Jews to Haman for 10,000 talents of silver.

Hadassah was about to be thrust into a situation that she was ill prepared for. Lucky for her she had a parent whom she listened to for advice, she was trained in the scriptures and she had faith in God… and that was enough. That's a pretty good formula to overcome adversity.

Hadassah flourished in her new environment and with the help of Mordecai was able to save her people from annihilation.