Esther Contests for Queenship of Persia

The story of Esther has been framed as a “beauty” contest. It was nothing of the sort it was a “Queen” contest.

In beauty contests everyone gets to go home. With Esther and the other girls, no one was going home. You either won the prize of being queen or you were a concubine of the King. Both honorary positions but obviously the queenship was the best.

When I was applying for Veterinary school there were about 1000 applicants for 130 places. The selection criteria was based on academics, experience with animals and an interview. I applied three times before I got in. I guess I wasn’t the prettiest the first two times. That was better odds (1 in 8) than with Esther (1 in 127).

By the way… Esther was not only a willing participant but actively tried to win the queenship… she didn’t just want to be a concubine.

Every girl had one night with the king to try to impress him and win the kingship. Keep in mind that King Ahasuerus was no sexual novice and had probably experienced every kind of sex that a woman could offer.

Esther had an advantage that the other girls did not have. She had Hegai the overseer on her side. The scriptures state that Esther “found favor” with Hegai and he counseled her.

Imagine if you were Hegai and you had the ability to do a post-interview with all these young ladies. Also if you could talk to King Ahasuerus afterwards… what did you like about this girl? What did you dis-like? Anyway, Hegai was an expert on the tastes of King Ahasuerus relating to what he liked in women and he was careful to use that knowledge to instruct Esther. Like maybe Ahasuerus’ favorite perfume.

Of course all these young women were virgins and therefore sexually naive. So it must have been something other than sex that impressed Ahasuerus with Esther. Perhaps her spirituality, her innocence, her brain… maybe as a child of God his inability to intimidate her.

I guess we’ll never know but what we do know is that Esther won and became queen of the Persian Empire.

Let’s not frame the story as a “beauty” contest and spiritually confuse and handicap our young Bible students. Esther was in a contest to become Queen of Persia and protect God’s people the Jews.