Odds and Ends About Esther

The book of Esther opens with a banquet being given by King Ahasuerus of the Persian Empire that lasted 180 days for all the nobles of the 127 provinces of Persia. Presumably this gathering was to get all the nobles on board for the upcoming Persian invasion of Greece.

After the Greco-Persian War, King Ahasuerus came back home and Haman offered to pay 10,000 talents of silver for the privilege of killing and plundering (for one day) the Jewish population of the Persian Empire. Keep in mind in todays dollars that would be about 450 Billion US dollars.

Now, I really don’t think Haman had 450 Billion dollars. I think he expected to plunder the wealthy Jews of the empire to swell the coffers of King Ahasuerus. It’s surprising that King Ahasuerus would agree to this unless the Greco-Persian war had left him with a cash shortage. Wars are not cheap.

It also brings to the forefront why Mordecai cautioned Esther not to reveal that she was a Jew. The obvious answer was that a significant part of the population hated the Jews. After all Mordecai engineered the deaths of some 75,000 enemies of the Jews across the Persian Empire.

Which begs the question, why were the Jews a hated people? Certainly as in the case of Haman there was ancestral hatred for the Jews. God had ordained the decimation of King Agag and the Amalekites. But in addition, God had caused his people Israel to prosper in the Persian Empire and there can be jealousy and hatred for those who are doing better than you are, especially if a people like Israel carried themselves with a sort of spiritual arrogance as we know that Mordecai did.

Of course we know the end of the story. Mordecai becomes second in command of the great Persian Empire and Esther is Queen.

Like with Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylonia and now Mordecai/Esther in Persia God’s people… like cream… rise to the top.