40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Esther 1:13-2:14 (Episode 373)

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

The king's wise men are very concerned that the queen's defiance will spread to the women of the kingdom. An order goes out that wives must all honor their husbands. A new queen is needed so young women from the kingdom are rounded up for a terrible competition. And we meet Esther. Have a listen! Show Notes: 1517 Podcast Network Survey Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: Faith and Reason Exchange @ Apple Podcasts Faith and Reason Exchange @ 1517.org Join the 1517 Academy  More from the hosts: Daniel Emery Price Chad Bird  

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. while you're over there. You can check out everything else that 1517 is doing, which is a lot of things, academies, daily articles, videos, events.

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It's how all this stuff is free. So thank you so much to those of you who do that. Chad, we are continuing in Esther. Now, we didn't get very far because we did a lot of preamble last episode, so we're going to get into it this week. We haven't even met Esther yet. We got through the first 12 verses, and all we really got was, hey, Xerxes is a dude who will throw a very long party. And once you've been drinking for like six months, you might want to show your wife off. You know what?

She wasn't real into that. yeah she uh she gave him a big fat no there's no let me think about it there's no maybe uh perhaps tomorrow it's just uh just no which of course makes this section really funny because as i think we pointed out last in the last episode here is this all-powerful ruler who's got this vast international kingdom and yet his wife has her way it's like no sorry not not gonna happen by the way uh i don't know if we pointed this out last time or not but there's no reason given i mean we can speculate of course there's no reason given why she uh refused to come out when the king wanted her to kind of promenade before before all his guests uh but that that that hasn't stopped

uh interpreters even from ancient times as to speculating as to you know what was what was going on maybe she just was tired of the king but i was looking this just this morning on uh in josephus's writings and uh he says this she talking about queen vashti she out of regard to the laws of the persians which forbid the wives to be seen by strangers did not go to the king isn't that fascinating so it's one of the ways that queen vashti is kind of she's elevated in these interpretations to be uh that much superior ethically than than xerxes is i mean which of course you don't have to be elevated that much higher to be higher than than he is but it's one more way in which queen vashti is kind of uh she's she's portrayed as uh kind of a paragon of

a virtue she's uh you know she's subservient to the to the persian laws and then here's this king you know drunken wanting to show her off so she comes out looking even better than she did without any any reason being stated it could be that it could also be the thing that we just know about uh i mean i have a wife you have a wife i'm trying to imagine if i had like a really long party where i had like all my guy friends over and i mean it was it was it was going on for days and then i wanted to like parade her out i think she would say no to that not because of any sort of a law that she'd be breaking but just out of uh yeah i'm not doing that yeah yeah yes and and uh and rightly so so uh the king's response to this is of course he's mad he's enraged he's enraged

his anger is burning within him yeah in case you didn't know what enrage meant it goes on to say his anger burned within him how dare this is a guy that's embarrassed that's all this is yeah this is public shame

public shame because of course he was ready to show her off and now not only does she say no but everybody's gonna know that she says no yeah and I think it's been probably a minute since someone told him no probably so probably so now that all having happened if you if he is if he is publicly

embarrassed what follows in verses 13 and following uh is makes this even more comical because okay let let's say dan that uh you or i have been shamed okay so we're mad it hurts all that now now wouldn't we want wouldn't it be ideal if the fewer people the fewer the people who knew about this wouldn't it be better i mean we don't want this spread abroad right it's not like we're gonna make sure everybody knows about the shame that we're we've just experienced so let's just keep it on the down low yeah yeah well that's not what happened as we're about to hear uh everybody in the kingdom is going to find out about this because they're going to pass this ridiculous law after the king consults with his wise men as to how they should respond to this

it seems as though that uh these wise men what they're really concerned about is what if women start emulating the queen here in general yes right and then they think that passing a law is going to take care of take care of the situation so here's what happens the king said to the wise men who knew the times for this was the king's procedure toward all who were versed in law and judgment now in hebrew that's a that's a nice uh kind of rhyme to those two words in dot and dean that's law and judgment so in dot and dean nice play on words there so these guys who know dot and dean he he's going to consult them and then we have a list of their names and no surprise there are seven of them the world mentioned seven princes of persia and and media

uh seven is a big is a big number not only just in the bible but we'll see seven crop up over and over in uh in esther as well we've already seen seven eunuchs who served in the presence of the king but anyway he consults these guys and these are the ones who were told saw the king's face and sat first in his kingdom uh this is similar to the language we see elsewhere about for instance in reference to worship you seek the face of god that just means that you are given privileged status or gracious status in the case of worship to appear in the presence of a superior that's generally what this means the the typical hebrew expression for being in someone's presence is being in their face without any kind of negative connotations that just means that you're right

before them same way as as when two people are are talking you're face to face you're in each other's face so if you're before someone you are lifne in hebrew that is to their face so these guys who see the king's face are those who are right around him his closest advisors we might say his cabinet perhaps uh to use a modern term and uh here's what uh here's what we read verse 15 according to the law what is to be done to queen bashti because she has not performed the command of king ahasuerus that is xerxes delivered by the eunuchs so uh you know how we can deal with this situation i mean we're just gonna forget about it we're gonna punish her in some way we're gonna we're gonna pass a law what what should we do well one of the guys by the name of

mumukan he stands up and he says well i have an idea first of all not only has the has the king not only against the king has queen vashti done wrong but also against all the officials and all the peoples who are in all the provinces of kings of king ahasuerus but the queen's behavior will be made known to all women there's all all of these alls in here the queen's behavior will be made known to all women causing them to look at their husbands with contempt since they will say king ahasuerus commanded queen bastia to be brought to him and she did not come this very day the noble women of persia and media who have heard of the queen's behavior will say the same to all the king's officials and there will be contempt and wrath and plenty

so let's just kind of pause there no this seems this seems a bit overwrought you know oh yeah because the queen did it pretty soon every single woman in the kingdom is going to be in rebellion against her husband this is it this is it this is a this is part of the thing that's funny about esther is that like in this part of it like there it does seem to be this sort of um this thing going on where these men are like terrified of like any sort of personal ownership of their lives that a woman might possibly take yeah it's uh it's i think the whole thing i think it's the whole first chapter in many ways is written in such an extravagant and hyperbolic manner that it's supposed to be read almost as a as a comedy

against the persians if that makes sense it's like uh every single thing here is is blown out of blown out of proportion so much so that it becomes kind of funny i mean we can laugh at these guys we can laugh at the king we can laugh at all this kind of extravagance it's uh that's going on and this i mean this is a pretty comical fear who here too because the one woman does this all these guys are now uh afraid that their egos might be bruised they might uh lose some control that all this this international revolt of the wives is going to erupt the international of a wife telling her husband no yeah i i can only imagine all of our uh uh all of our listeners out there who are female are probably shaking their heads about right now at the uh

the idiocy of all of these guys who've got together this bro council and they're going to come up with this this plan so anyway that was uh the supposed fear so what are they going to do about it well verse 19 says if it please the king let a royal order go out from him and let it be written among the laws of the persians and the medes we've before heard about the laws of the medes and the persians here you have it reversed the laws of the persians and the medes so that it may not be repealed that vashti notice doesn't say queen vashti now every other time she's called queen vashti now she's just called by her first name she's going to be unqueened however that works that vashti is never again to come before king ahasuerus i'm sure she was sorely disappointed

disappointed about that yeah this is a kind of a backhanded blessing you don't get to see the king anymore oh well that's gonna be rough to deal with yeah really threatening her with a good time aren't you so first of all she doesn't get to come again the king has worse and let the king give her royal position to another who is better than she okay um so when the decree was made so the decree made by the king is proclaimed throughout all his kingdom for it is vast all women will give honor to their husbands high and low alike i'm sure that as soon as this law is broadcast throughout the throughout the kingdom all of the wives will just be falling all over themselves to give extra honor to their husbands as a result of this hey look listen look

i know i know there's some people listening and they're like well i mean you know wives are supposed to submit to their husbands and all this kind of stuff and that's all fine but i don't know how you read this without this making these men look extremely like afraid and weak oh well yeah they are i think i really think that's the point this is like this whole thing is recorded to poke fun at them yeah it's cooking fun at xerxes it's poking fun at these these guys the the only people so well so far the only person who comes out looking good and everything we've covered so far is the queen yeah everybody else appears like yeah you look ridiculous yeah all the men look like fools so far so uh that's the end of the the quotation which began up in uh verse 13

so uh what they do well verse 21 says that this advice pleased the king and his princes and the king did as mimicon proposed he sent letters to all the royal provinces to every province in its own script and to every people in its own language that every man be master in his own household and speak according to the language of his people that last little bit speak according to languages people you can check the commentaries on that There's a lot of different ways that that's interpreted. It's a bit strange. There are some people who make a slight imitation to the Hebrew to where it reads,

say whatever suited him, which that makes sense. I think the basic gist is obvious that every household, a guy is supposed to be the one in charge. This is probably where you got the saying, man is king of his castle. So he's like, all right, guys, every one of you guys has got a house. like you can kind of you got to look at it like you're me and you're like you're like your own little king in there yeah that uh that certainly is what what seems to be implied here so uh i i did want to point one thing out here that's of historical interest so uh they're going to send letters to all the royal provinces you know each in its own script everybody in their in their own

language now this might seem to you know just on the surface well how are you going to do that i mean you got a vast kingdom here well turns out that the uh there was like a uh a persian pony express basically they had uh you can if you check out the the history written by herodotus the the greek greek historian uh which i did this morning he talks about how at one point xerxes he's talking so he's talking about the same guy herodotus is writing about xerxes the same xerxes that's being described here in in the book of esther how he wanted to uh to get a message back to to persia and herodotus says that um as many days as there are in that whole journey so many are the men and the horses that stand along the road each horse and man at the interval of a day's journey these

are not stopped neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness sounds like the post office from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed so herodotus describes this this persian pony express so you got you know get stations about a day apart and the guy rides in and he's able to change horses and then go on so you can get messages spread rather rapidly through the persian road system and through this uh this pony express that they use so presumably then that is how the royal letters were spread throughout throughout the kingdom that's a funny letter to get to i mean imagine like hey uh babe just say no straight from the king put that on the fridge you gotta do what I say

yeah I'm sure there's plenty of plenty of laughter happening all over the kingdom at the king's expense so that's chapter one we got Esther one under our belts and that just got setting the stage really I mean it's all of this is sort of a preamble a humorous

preamble that has spoken in front of the Persians as to what is about to transpire this is kind of setting the stage because of course what do you need now you gotta have a queen right this is all uh preparing for the person that we are going to be meeting in in chapter two which of course is the one after whom our book is named esther so chapter two verse one

you can't just like you know say who's up and who's next in line to be queen you know uh you know maybe some kind of a good political alliance you know this happens all the time right you gotta go find a somebody's somebody's got a daughter somewhere and you know be good if you could you know unite the households that kind of thing no no we're gonna have like a beauty pageant oh yeah yeah big big beauty pageant yeah so uh back to herodotus that greek historian that i just quoted he claims that the persian king only received wives from certain royal persian households seven or eight persian households uh maybe that was a standard but uh judging by the book of esther it was not limited just to those those households yeah and and i'm also assuming

uh based upon a lot of evidence that this is not going to be the only wife i mean we already were going to find out in chapter two he's got a bunch of concubines so it would not be surprising whatsoever as if there were uh maybe they weren't all called queens but you know maybe they were the uh the one that he preferred from his harem and this palace or in that or in that palace we know that there were i think three or four different uh big kind of capital cities of the the persian empire this is just one of them so anyway uh some time goes by and uh we're gonna find out what happened to the king king ahasuerus so uh after these things when the anger of king ahasuerus had abated he remembered vashti and what she had done and what had been accreed against her

But you kind of get the idea that maybe he regrets his rash decision, possibly. He remembers her, remembers what had happened. But he might be the all-powerful head of the Persian Empire, but he's also basically bound by his own laws. Right. Yeah. So he's already passed the law. What are you going to do? He can't very well overturn that.

But he remembers. It does sound like maybe there's a little bit of regret here. yeah yeah well i mean number one he was probably drunk and uh many many many people have experienced regret over decisions made while they were intoxicated uh usually not the wisest decisions that people make when number one you're drunk and number two you're angry uh not a good time to make any kind of uh serious decisions but anyway he's cooled off he remembers so verse 2 says the king's young men who attended him came up with an idea i notice it's the young guys who came up with this idea yeah so here's what they said king we've got this we've listen

we got an idea let beautiful young virgins be sought out for the king and that the king appoint officers in all the provinces of his kingdom to gather all the beautiful young virgins to the harem in susa the citadel under custody of hegai who is the king's eunuch who is in charge of the women let their cosmetics be given them and let the young woman who pleases the king be queen instead of vashti so what do you think of that idea well evidently he liked it it says please the king i'm about to say this this idea sounded good to him yeah best idea he had heard in in quite a while so i mean this is going to be quite the uh quite the undertaking number one you got to find these beautiful young young virgins which are scattered throughout the uh the

empire and then uh not only find them but you get to bring them and then they undergo as we'll see this long preparation period before they're actually brought into into the king i think this too is uh one more way of of making fun of the just the extravagant hedonism we might say of the persian king i mean this is uh we can kind of laugh about the ridiculous nature of this but when you stop and you put yourself in a situation of not only the young women but their parents and not only the young women of the parents but also any possible young men who wanted to make these these women as their their wives i mean the whole thing is a is a is a sad commentary on xerxes and the way that he is going to basically exert his power to lead a uh an ongoing life of

hedonism and this from what we know from herodotus uh this is perfectly in conformity with what kind of king xerxes was i mean this is the sort of thing you can only do when you have the luxury of having basically absolute power. Yeah, this is something only a tyrant could do. Yeah, because you can't have a bunch of actual threats that you're worried about. I mean, you must not have a lot of important things going on. Yeah.

You've basically conquered everything that there is to conquer. You've got excess upon excess, and this is the sort of thing that you only do if you... most most uh rulers could not afford themselves something like they have actual things to do yeah this isn't something that you do when you have threats to your borders no or you have weighty matters of state to take care of or anything like that this is this is what happens when you have the uh the decline of the empire this this is what this is the kind of leadership that assures that your empire will be soon rotting to the very core yeah because of course this this

is uh this is just a symptom of bigger bigger issues but anyway that's the plan and the king likes it so he uh basically put it in place now back to that in a minute we have to be introduced uh, in verse five to the next two, not one, but next two major players in the story of Esther. Verse five. Now there was a, there was a Jew in Susa, uh, literally in Hebrew, there was a man of Judah. There was, that's one of the ways Hebrew introduces a new character. So there was a man of Judah there was. There was a Jew in Susa, the citadel, and his name was Mordecai. Mordecai is actually a Persian name. It's pretty common. They found this in other records outside of Esther, so this rings true with the time period. Anyway, this guy named Mordecai. Listen to this.

give a little bit of his background. He's the son of Yair, the son of Shammai, son of Kish, a Benjaminite. Now I'm going to just pause there for a second. So we've encountered Shammai and we've encountered Kish before. And of course, we've encountered the Benjaminite before, the most famous member of this tribe, the one who is connected also with a Kish, the one who's also in that same tribe as shemay is our friend from way back in first samuel saul so he was from the tribe he was from the tribe of benjamin now the reason this gets it this gets interesting is because remember so if you're a long-time listener you will recall this when we cover this back in first samuel 15 remember that everything was going great for

saul until he was sent out to he was sent out to destroy the amalekites and even though he did destroy some of them he spared the king and that king was king agog a-g-a-g okay so that's first amul 15 now why am i pointing this out so saul from the tribe of benjamin is connected to this king agog the one that he spared and by sparing him this was actually the beginning of the end for saul because that is when samuel said that kingship is going to be taken away from you and given to one better than you well the reason this is important is because when we read a little bit further in the story of esther we're going to encounter the enemy the the chief antagonist in this story whose name was haman and esther 3 verse 1 says that haman was an agagite a-g-a-g-i-t

so if you know the whole big book story you you realize that now we're being introduced to a mordecai from the tribe of benjamin which was saul's tribe and pretty soon we're going to be introduced to this guy named haman who if you know the story bester is hates mordecai and mordecai does not like him either in fact what starts the problems between them is that mordecai will not bow down to to haman but haman is an agagite connected to that same group that king saul had issues with way back in the day so it all comes kind of kind of full circle except in this case so in saul's case the king was his downfall but in mordecai's case this is actually going to seem like uh haman the agagite is going to be his downfall but actually ends up being that which

promotes him to an even higher higher place so it's kind of cool how all of the biblical history is kind of meshing together here with uh esther and then what we cover back in first samuel but anyway that's who this guy is uh and then verse six we hear a little bit more about him he had been carried away from jerusalem among the captives who had been carried away from jerusalem among the captives carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon had had carried away now the reason this is this little detail is important is because so king Jeconiah was not the final king in Jerusalem when the Babylonians came in and destroyed the city and said he was the king a little bit before then back in 597 when you had

one of the first deportations of the people of judah to to babylon that first deportation would have been people with money and authority and the reason this is important because this this points to mordecai's family maybe his great-grandfather whoever it was points to the fact that mordecai came from a family of of some some wealth or some you know social upward mobility whatever i mean whatever it might have been he's not just in the words just common person he probably has some power he has some authority or he had some wealth at least he was part of those well-to-do families in jerusalem who were among the first deportees to babel so that's mordecai comes from the tribe of benjamin of well-to-do family but he's introduced

in order that we might be introduced to the one that he has adopted and taken in and is caring for as a father figure, even though they are their cousins. Verse 7 says, he was bringing up Hadassah, however you want to say her name. That is, and here we go, we're finally introduced to her, Esther. And she is the daughter of his uncle because she had neither father nor mother. so she's an orphan and esther was then taken in by uh by mordecai and then he would have just uh raised her as her as her father figure so here we are we got mordecai and we've got uh hadassah also known as esther so she got two different names hadassah would be her hebrew name esther

would be her her persian name and uh what does she look like well we know we've heard this many many times before that any that any time that in the narrative that physical characteristics of a person are described then those physical characteristics are somehow going to work their way into the story we've seen this over and over these aren't just added for color but they're always added because they're going to become part of the narrative that follows and we are told in verse uh seven that she had a beautiful figure and she was lovely to look at so she had a pretty face she had a nice looking body in other words she's got every physically appearance wise she has everything everything going for her and when her father and mother

died mordecai took her as his as his own daughter this is this is a funny way to say that say that If you know that an elaborate beauty pageant is coming up, of course, the point of beauty pageants is to gawk at people, right? I mean, you know, do beauty pageants, don't do them. I thought it was all about the intelligence. Yeah, it's whatever it is. Yeah, they basically just described her as like a perfect candidate for that. This person is great to look at. Like, well, that is sort of the criteria for what's about to happen.

Right. Yeah, there's no escape in that. She's a candidate for Miss Universe, let's say, or at least Miss America, or whatever it might be. She's a pretty face, nice, nice figure. And no doubt, of course, knowing just that, that is going to put her pretty high on the list of people who are vying for number one in this competition. so verse 8 says when the king's order and his edict were proclaimed and when many young women we don't know how many estimates are from 500 to 1400 when many young women were gathered in susa the citadel in custody of hegai that's the king's chief eunuch so when all this was happening with

all when they were gathering all these beautiful women from all over the empire esther also was taken into the king's palace and he was and she was put in custody of hegai who had charge of the women okay so we're introduced to another guy so you got this eunuch who is going to be taking care of of these women you know making all the logistical stuff that has to go on and where they're going to be and all those sorts of things now esther pleased him that is pleased this eunuch and won his favor. Now, usually when we encounter a phrase like this in Hebrew, it is more passive, like you receive favor or you find grace

or you find favor in the eyes of someone. We've seen that a lot of different times, all the way back in the days of Noah. Noah finds grace or he finds favor. A little bit different form is used here, which point to the fact that she is maybe more active here than most of those other passive statements. So she's doing things to win his favor. Well, won favor and finding favor are different.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, to win, you got to compete. So she's competing for his favor, and she won. Yeah. So right away, we not only know that she's obviously beautiful. I mean, we told that explicitly. But the fact that she she wins his favor is indication that, well, she's she's smart. She's she's doing whatever is necessary in order to make sure that she gets on the very good side of this guy who's obviously in a very authoritative position.

So how did he respond? Well, he not just provided her, but quickly. See, he hastens to provide her with her cosmetics and her portion of food. and, not only that, but seven chosen young women from the king's palace. She's not even queen yet, and she's got seven chosen servants from the king's palace, and he advanced her and her young women to the best place in the harem. Now, I don't know what that means, but the best place in the harem.

I mean, the best room, who knows, but anyway, it's the best place in the harem to be. so things are i mean so far things are looking pretty good for esther under of course not the best of circumstances we are not told anything about what she thought about this i mean was part of her excited i guess maybe maybe not was part of her scared probably it's part of her uh even you know insulted possibly we don't know we're really not told anything about her emotions with regard to being placed in the situation in which she finds

herself. Yeah, you don't even get it from Mordecai. You don't know initially how he feels about this. No idea. Is this a great honor? I wouldn't think so, but once you're thrust into this situation, are you like, well, I'm here.

I got to play the game, so now I just got to do the best I can. Don't know. And it's hard to get in someone's mind from that time period too. I mean, you're talking about a very long time ago. oh yeah right right i mean that is something always to bear in mind i mean we might jump to conclusions and say you know how horrific this was and yeah i mean to us you're like this is this is horrific like why you can't do this yeah well keep in mind and we were talking about this i

think before we started recording i mean these girls these are not like uh on the bachelor right this is not the bachelor so this is not the the persian equivalent of the bachelor where you have these gorgeous young women which I don't watch The Bachelor by the way but you know I know about it so you have these gorgeous young women with these perfect bodies who are probably what I don't know

20 to 30 years old I don't really know how old they're but we'll say mid 20s alright now these are no doubt much younger girls so probably I don't know 14 to 18 years old let's say if they're not married if they're

which so if they're not virgin if they're virgins they're not married then yeah you're probably looking at early teens yeah because people got married very young yeah much much younger than than people do today yeah i mean all of this rubs us the the wrong way but do keep in mind different time different place and different different perspectives so uh she's at the best place in the harem now verse 10 we find out that mordecai had advised her and this is going to be an important part of the story because it's only she's going to keep something secret

and at a major turn in the story is when she's going to reveal this. So Esther had not made known to her people, had not made known to her people or her kindred for Mordecai had commanded her not to make it known. So Mordecai's like,

hey, let's not tell anybody that you're a Jew. That's what's going on here. so he we're not told his motivation no doubt it's because of the history between uh you know the babylonians the jews and then the fact that they were deported and all whatever other things are kind of underneath the surface that we might not even be historically aware of mordecai thinks best if she not let it be known what her what her background is so she didn't and mordecai is

obviously uh he's not her biological father but he is her father and very concerned about her because every day he's pacing every day mordecai walked in front of the court of the harem to learn how esther was and what was what was happening to her so he's obviously wanting to make sure that she's okay and uh everything everything is proceeding well for her so verse 12 uh tells us kind of we kind of come to the uh the day right the turn came for each young woman to go into King Ahasuerus after after being 12 months under the regulations for the women since this was the regular period of their beautifying six months with oil of myrrh and six months with spices and ointments for for women so this is I think this is another more that kind of these kind of poking

fun at the outlandishness of this entire this entire proceeding really 12 months to get them to beautify them to get them ready for this night with night with the king so different by the way four different times of verses 12 through 14 you have this hebrew expression to go into now that is a probably meant as a double entendre not only to go into in the sense of going to see the king but also this is used both of men and women in a sexual sort of way obviously with the guys but it's also used in one context to refer to uh to a woman so probably two things are meant here you go into the king that means that you're not only going to appear before him but you're also going to have sex with him so they they prepare for 12 months each woman and then the young verse 13 when

the young woman woman went into the king in this way she was given whatever she desired to take with her from the harem to the king's palace i assume that's you know whatever whatever she wants to wear whatever she wants to take with her to make sure that she appears as desirable to the king so in the evening she would go in and spend the night with the king in the morning she would return to the second harem in custody of another guy she asked us the king's eunuch who was in charge of the concubines so you passed from virginity now to pass from being a virgin to now you're a concubine of course because you have spent the spent the night with the king and then she would not go into the king again unless the king delighted in her and she was summoned she

was summoned by name so it's kind of the situation i mean you got all these women from all over the empire they're spending six months with this six months with that 12 months getting all beautified in order that when their time came that evening came they would go to the king they spend that with him the next day they would go out they'd move to a different place because now a concubine and i guess they wait and hope i don't know if they hope or not but they wait anyway to see if not only the king delights delighted in them that night whether he was sexually pleased with them that's really what this is talking about and then he's got to remember their name some of them some of that person that woman back by my name i mean this is like the real bummer part of all this

whole thing too because like it's not as though like if he doesn't choose it's not like you line them all up he picks one and then the rest of them get to go home and go get married to someone else and raise family no like you have all these women and like you're just gonna end up in uh in a harem of concubines that's a pretty big bummer yeah yeah talk about ruining a woman's life yeah uh yeah so that's kind of the the situation which we find ourselves now we haven't of course gotten into uh to esther's night with the king uh but that will be coming up next time that'll be verses 15 and and following but that's kind of the whole situation that uh has uh led to what is going to transpire when esther sees the king and then what results from their night together all right well

we will be back next week to to find out how that goes chad i will see you then all right see you I'll see you next time.