Esther Argues Her Case
Read: Esther 7 Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me for my wish, and my people for my request. (v. 3) All eyes are on Esther as this chapter opens. Will she do it? we wonder […]
No Rest for the Wicked
Read: Esther 6:4-14 Then the king said to Haman, “Hurry; take the robes and the horse, as you have said, and do so to Mordecai the Jew, who sits at the king’s gate. Leave out nothing that you have mentioned.” (v. 10) Haman can’t sleep either. He is like the people the psalmist describes who […]
Sleepless in Susa
Read: Esther 5:6:1-3 On that night the king could not sleep. And he gave orders to bring the book of memorable deeds, the chronicles, and they were read before the king. (v. 1) Have you ever experienced a coincidence that felt more like an act of Providence? Author Frederick Buechner says that a coincidence is […]
Haman Gets Indigestion
Read: Esther 5:9-14 Yet all this is worth nothing to me, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate. (v. 14) Some people are just impossible to please. Haman has just enjoyed a private dinner party with the royals and he has an invitation to a second. Yet, on his […]
Dinner for Three
Read: Esther 5:1-8 And Esther said, “If it please the king, let the king and Haman come today to a feast that I have prepared for the king.” (v. 4) From this time forward, Esther is every inch a queen. Fortified only by her three-day fast, she dons her “royal robes” and enters the throne […]
God Save the Queen
Read: Esther 4 And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (v. 14) News of the death edict seems to have spread everywhere except inside the palace. Esther is oblivious to it when she sends to see why Mordecai is sitting outside the palace gates in […]
Haman’s Way with Words
Read: Esther 3:7-15 “If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king’s business, that they may put it into the king’s treasuries.” (v. 9) Whoever coined the proverb “Sticks and stones may […]
Unjust Deserts
Read: Esther 2:1-18 So, as they had made known to him the people of Mordecai, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews, the people of Mordecai, throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus. (v. 6) It must have irked Mordecai to be passed over for promotion. After all, he had just saved the king from two […]
The Morning After
Read: Esther 2:1-18 “And let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of Vashti.” This pleased the king, and he did so. (v. 4) When Ahasuerus wakes up after his one-hundred-eighty-seven-day drinking bash, he discovers that he has banished Queen Vashti. His courtiers comfort him by suggesting a contest for a new […]