40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Esther 4:1-5:8 (Episode 377)

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Mordecai learns about Haman's plot and covers himself in sackcloth and ashes. Esther wants to know what is wrong and Mordecai tells her she has been placed in her position for such a time. Esther risks everything to save her people and it starts with a banquet for the king and Haman. Have a listen! Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: 2023 Advent Resources Faith and Reason Exchange @ 1517.org 2023 HWSS Conference Livestream Signup Join the 1517 Academy Faith in the Face of Tyranny 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. and while you're over there make sure you check out everything else that 1517 is doing you can go to the events page and check out where all the speaking events are chad is out and about i mean i'm like out and about a little bit chad's like out and about all the time because he doesn't have a you know like a six month old baby at home so he's just roaming the the nation uh bringing that

good news so check that all out chad we are in esther chapter four and uh hey some stuff went down last episode i mean the plot has thickened pretty thick yeah that's murder in the air yeah i don't know if it's like the best you know it just makes me wonder like how did you guys take over the known world with this kind of strategies uh i don't know how dumb these people were that you were taking over but this strategy i feel like it's just been maybe it's been a while since you had to implement a military strategic thing but i feel like sending out mass notification of a certain day and time that you're going to kill a bunch of people is like not the way don't you get the impression i mean we're so we had three chapters so far

that uh there's certain parts of the story that are i mean there are exaggerated to the point to where it becomes kind of darkly comic as a way of pointing fun at what what the leaders are doing yeah i mean like that that's that's a that's a great uh great example and we saw early on i mean like the however long was it a six-month party that they had so i think a part of this is kind of a literary technique to where uh the persians are being portrayed as just as the leadership especially i just ridiculously laughably extravagant about everything i mean like they party to the extreme they plan these these pogroms to the extreme you know the the whole preparation for who's going to be the chosen queen goes to an extreme everything is like stretched uh to to

such proportions you look at it you're like it's it's ridiculous yeah you're saying i think it's kind of a way of fun i'm surprised it doesn't say like and then they took a thousand parchments and uh and they got out the gold ink and wrote this down and sent it off yeah yeah with with with beautiful tapestries all around the scribes yeah yeah yeah so um but anyway that yeah we We're in a bad place at the end of chapter three, because Haman has been offended by a single Jew, Mordecai. And so he's like, you know what I should do? Kill all the Jews. Yeah.

And to do that, he convinces the king to sign this decree that on such and such a day, in the month, the 12th month, then this is going to go down. And you know this is done by the opening line of chapter four, when Mordecai learned all that had been done. Well, gee, I wonder how he figured this out. could have been that you wrote it down and then, like, sent it all over the place? Yeah. Yeah, this was not, like, a private decree. This was...

This would have been known. It was published everywhere. Yeah, it doesn't say how he learned because it's obvious, where it's like, well, you sent this out everywhere and then someone talked. Yeah.

Yeah, try keeping something like this quiet. Not gonna happen. So, yeah, Mordecai, uh who's cousin of course to to queen esther he finds out what's what's happened and uh he has the the appropriate biblical reaction let's put it like that this is a reaction we have seen multiple times first of all there's a tearing of clothes the rending of garments and we have i don't know how many times we've seen that over the course of the podcast and then having torn his clothes he takes them off basically and switches his wardrobe to the the wardrobe of penitence

and mourning and grief and lamentation and that is sackcloth and ashes so sackcloth uh was you know just kind of coarse cloth this might have been like a loincloth something like that made out of uh probably goat hair camel hair something rough anyway so he takes off his his his regular comfortable clothing and strips down to wear this sackcloth. Whenever I hear sackcloth, I don't know why I think of this.

Probably because of the word sack. Yeah, I feel like it's like the old school burlap sack that you would put a ton of potatoes in or something like that. It's like you took one of those and you cut two arm holes and a head hole and you just stuck that thing

on your body. uh and that's that must have been what we were told in sunday school back in the day because that is the exact same image that i have maybe we grew up we both grew up in the south and so that's why we think that but every time i think sackcloth i picture a burlap bag with three holes cutting it yeah yeah in high school i worked at a feed store and that's exactly the kind of bag yes yeah these are like burlap bags and uh the worst were so we had uh it's called cake uh It's a lot of little, the shape of shotgun shells, it's protein cubes, basically, all right?

And sometimes they came in 50-pound bags, but a lot of them are 100-pound burlap bags. And burlap has tiny holes in it, so stuff leaks out. And I remember stacking these things up, and you get all this junk falling all over you, and the burlap is rough. And so, anyway, that's what I think of when I think of sackcloth.

It would not be pleasant to wear, let's put it that way. No, that's a young man's job, too. yeah tell me about it yeah not doing that anymore but hey it was it was it was good when i was young so uh mordecai puts on his uh his sackcloth and ashes ashes probably we have one instance of sack of ashes being put on the head that's probably what this happened the way this was so you put ashes on your head and yeah of course that's going to get face blackened up and and And then you look miserable, you feel miserable, which is kind of the point. I mean, this is to be an outward, very, very visual expression of the fact that your heart is torn up, you're troubled, all of these sorts of things.

So he puts this on and then he says he goes into the midst of the city and he cried with a loud and bitter cry. So you got a lot of stuff going on. I mean, he's not going to sit in silence. he's not going to sit in his regular clothes he's changed clothes got ashes in his head and then he is he's going around with this loud and bitter cry must have been quite the sight and it seems like he was going to try and get as close to esther as he could because we're told he went up to the entrance of the king's gate but they wouldn't let him in because no one was allowed to enter the king's gate clothed in sackcloth i guess what you have to i mean if you're going to

appear anywhere close to the king then you have to be dressed appropriately i suppose is the idea You can't be going around looking like you're in lamentation and mourning anywhere close to the king. So stop right there. You can't go any closer. So verse 3 says, in every province. So, of course, this is in the capital. This is in Susa. But in every province, wherever the king's command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews with the expected fasting and weeping and lamenting.

And many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes. and you of course i mean it you don't have to it doesn't take much imagination to understand why you find this discrete this decree says you're all going to get you're all going to be massacred this you know this seems to be a very appropriate response to that there uh we're not told they were we're not told explicitly they were praying but they were lamenting which of course is what is what uh happens in lament you cry out to god and you have up to 40 of the psalms are lament psalms so maybe that's some of what was going on maybe some of this was just simply kind of the uh uh i don't know what you'd call it but that that uh what's the word for anyway it's it's it's a

kind of a wailing yes is what i'm trying to say yeah so not words per se but uh just this real painful kind of crying out and this was so this is going on all over the place not just mordecai but all the provinces are experiencing this same kind of reaction. So evidently Esther, for whatever reason, didn't know what was going on. So everybody else knows the queen is clueless. So verse 4 says, when Esther's young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed. She didn't know what was going on.

We'll find that out in just a minute. but uh she when she hears about mordecai she knows something bad has happened whatever it is so she is uh deeply distressed that's where the esv translates this they i was checking this morning on the hebrew and the hebrew verb that is translated as distressed um in a lot of its forms has the the connotation of like a uh a woman on the woman who is having birth pains she's writhing in pain so this deeply distressed is you know it take it at face value she really was very very upset about this it does seem maybe i'm wrong here chad but it does seem at this point like just so this young the young women and the eunuchs they're coming and telling her about

mordecai uh because it does seem that she learns about like what is really going on from mordecai later so so i imagine this is more of a uh they come and they're like hey uh and maybe i don't know has she shared this is a relative of hers at this point i don't know who knows but uh somehow she figures out that mordecai's sackcloth and ashes and mourning and all this stuff and uh so she's she's deeply distressed by this because this is not something you would just do for no reason so something's going on and then uh so she says uh let's send some clothes out there we gotta get these sackcloth and ashes but mordecai is committed to the cause here he's very committed yeah yeah she's she's like here take these clothes to mordecai tell me take off the sackcloth and put

and put these on i don't know what she was thinking you know was she thinking this would help him uh i don't know i mean we're not told what's her mental mental uh game is at this point but she's distressed is it that she wants him like so he doesn't accept them and then i know we're not reading the text here so i'm getting ahead here but i'm just trying to figure this out so esther calls for someone else one of the eunuchs to go to him and learn what this is she's sending him clothes so that she can potentially like hey get dressed so i can call you in here and talk to you but he's like no i'm not doing that she's like well i can't bring you in here to talk to you about what's going on with you doing this that makes sense yeah that

makes sense so we we we did read that he could not get any farther they stopped him you can't come in here dressed like that so maybe your thought is well okay change your clothes and then you can you can come and we can have a face-to-face but as we're going to see here that's that's not going to happen not only does mordecai refuse but because of his refusal then she's got to we got to have this series of this back and forth hey i'm gonna i'm gonna send this messenger go ask mordecai what's going on and mordecai tells it and then message has to come back and say well mordecai says this and then she goes well well tell mordecai well that's it so it's yeah you have this ensuing back and forth uh because of this so um yeah this eunuch that uh

Esther calls for Hatak, no doubt, you know, one of her, uh, closely trusted servants. Uh, this conversation, these conversations had to be kept private. So she, she sends him, he'd been appointed to her and she said, okay, go to Mordecai and figure out what's going on here. So literally to learn what this was and why it was. In other words, okay. He's not going to take the he's obviously very upset because of what he's wearing and he's obviously more upset than i realized because he's not going to change clothes so go give me the scoop find out what's going on so hatak verse 6 went out to mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king's gate and mordecai told him all that had happened to him and of the exact sum of money

that haman had promised to pay into the king's treasuries for the destruction of the jews so he kind of brings him up to speed on everything that's been going on yeah well you know i wouldn't bow down to hayman he gets really upset then hayman goes to the king and they come up with this whole decree and hayman promises to pay the king that is actually that is actually pretty wild because it'd be one thing to know about the decree because they did a terrible job keeping it a secret but he knows like all the details like somehow mordecai knows exactly how this went down yeah yeah he's either uh an official who is privy to some of these things or he's just a really good listener who he's got people maybe who are his ears that whistleblower yeah well you know people

like to talk right people like to talk so uh i'm sure word got around hey did you hear oh yeah did you hear and so kind of passing person to person so mordecai finds out all this and so uh not only does he relay this verbally to to the eunuch so the eunuch could take it to esther but also he gave him a copy of the written decree that was issued in susa for their destruction so that he could show it to esther and explain it to her and command her this is the part that uh is maybe a little bit unexpected she's queen right i mean she's obviously a powerful powerful figure and And Mordecai is going to come along and say, not only, all right, this is what happened and here's the decree, but you tell the queen what to do. You tell the queen that Mordecai tells her to do this.

And what he tells her is command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him on behalf of her people. so you know it doesn't matter uh how powerful your your child or your foster child i suppose in this case uh gets you do feel as kind of a parent you can still kind of say hey tell them what to do yeah i know you're the president never in all but yeah here's here's what you need to be doing so uh i'm with you of course i mean it's this is this needs to needs to happen okay so that's the kind of the first first part of this this ensuing conversation so the unit hatak he went and told esther what mordecai had said this would have been a lot easier if mordecai had actually come to visit with esther but anyway he goes and tells esther what more god said

so esther spoke to hatak and commanded him to go to mordecai and say quote all the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know so this is common everybody knows this that if a man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called so if you just like show up walk in and the king has not summoned you there is but one law to be put to death except the one so there's one exception here except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live so she says that and then she has one more thing to say she says oh and and by the way so we all know this is the law and by the way as for me i haven't been called to the come i have not been called to come into the king for 30 days

so not the safest situation for me to go into let's just this is her first reaction she says well I understand that you want me to go to the king to beg his favor and I understand that you want me to plead with him on behalf of of our people I mean I get that but here's the situation if I do this then I am putting my own life on the line and I mean I don't even know what the king's thinking of me right now I haven't seen the guy in 30 days which is kind of a weird husband why I mean we're not you got to put yourself in this situation you know we don't summon our spouses I know I haven't seen you in three or four weeks, so I need you to come see me. It just doesn't work that way.

But that's the way this worked here, and especially with polygamy. I mean, no telling how many wives and concubines this guy had. Well, I mean, it tells you two things. One, like, yeah, I'm not sure how—is he, like, lost interest in me? Like, I don't know. I haven't seen him in a month. The other thing is that you also, because you haven't seen him in 30 days, you can't just be like, all right next time he calls me in i will definitely bring this up because you don't

it could be who knows how long it'd be 30 more days yeah yeah she has she has no idea so uh we we found out what mordecai said now we found out what ester says back to mordecai and now we'll we'll come to well no doubt the uh the most well-known section of the book of ester and rightly so i mean this is this is one of these these moments that uh is is unforgettable so verse 12 they told mordecai what esther had said they told him i guess there's more than one in this group that's going out to talk back and forth so let him know here let let mordecai know what esther had said so uh mordecai told them to reply to to esther so here's what he says do not think to yourself that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the

other jews now i don't know if esther had thought about that or not maybe she thought that she was safe and she's the queen after all but uh this is the way that he's going to deal with her hesitation so first of all i mean he has he goes about this through the truth through different ways but the first point is listen don't forget you're a jew i mean you might be you may be the queen but legally speaking you fall under the same decree that all of us other jews fall under so yes you have kept that hidden you have kept your identity hidden up to this point but don't think that just because you're in the king's palace that you're going to escape more than all the other jews well one of the reasons this this could be true because you might be like

well why i mean they kill all the jews and she has nobody knows she's a jew how is anyone ever gonna find out like i mean this seems like you're you're probably gonna get you're probably never gonna be found out yeah until they start like it's not as though she's the only person in the world that knows she's a jew i'm assuming she knows people i'm assuming that like mordecai knows people uh you think when they're like rounding up all these jews to kill them maybe somebody's gonna be like hey you do know the queen's a jew yeah because other people do like the jews know this at least some of them yeah yeah yeah there's no way that they didn't know i mean people would have known mordecai and esther before esther was called up for the the beauty

pageant so they knew her and uh yeah somebody's gonna somebody's gonna talk somebody somewhere along the way in the midst of the fear, the confusion, the rounding everything up, the murders, somebody's going to say something. Yeah, it would be very natural. If nothing else, maybe they'll try and rescue their own life by saying, hey, well, I got some information. I'm friends with the queen.

I'm cousins to the queen. I don't know, whatever. I grew up with the queen. Sure, sure. She's going to be real upset if she finds out you killed me. I mean, people are going to do this stuff. Yeah, so don't think just because of who you are and where you're at, you're going to be safe.

then verse 14 if you keep silent at this time so if you don't go in and see the king if you don't say something if you don't plead uh for for mercy if you keep silent relief and deliverance will rise from the jews from another place now this is one of the place one of the definite places in the book of esther where people will will say okay you know the name of god is not mentioned explicitly but there are allusions to this and this is a primary place where where this is brought up and some people will even make the argument even though i don't i don't think it holds water that the hebrew word that is used here for place which is makom is actually a an alternate way referring to god the reason they say that is much later in jewish history

they had several different expressions that they would say instead of the name of god like you may have heard hashem which means the name okay another one that jews have sometimes used is hamakom which means the place and these are just surrogates for the name of god because you know as as almost everyone knows people jews and some christians do not want to use the divine name and so they come up with all kinds of surrogate names for for god anyway one of those is hamakom which means the place and so some people made the argument the really what mordecai is saying here is if you keep silent relief and deliverance will rise for the jews from hamakom that is from god we don't have any evidence that uh the place as a surrogate name for god was used at this early

date so i think it's just simply him saying listen if you don't do this well then we'll get we'll get relief and deliverance someplace else god is going to make this happen for us yeah in other words uh but you and your father's house will perish and by that i assume that he means it's going to be too late so we'll get relief and deliverance god's gonna make this happen one way or another but it's probably gonna be too late for us at the very least this seems like mordecai is a guy you know god's not ever mentioned in this book or anything that the only way to say something like this so like hey if you don't help us uh deliverance will come from somewhere the only way to say that with confidence is to be sort of a believer in promises

why else would he say that i mean like there's if you if you don't believe that god has made certain promises that he is obligated to keep because of who he is uh you have no reason to say well if you don't do it trust me it will happen like why yeah on what basis do you make that yeah make that statement right yeah you're appealing to something here yeah if you didn't if you didn't have this kind of confidence you'd simply say well if if you keep silent for this time we're done yeah you are you are our only hope if you don't do this it's all over no you you say relief and deliverance arise from another place if you know israel's history if you know the psalms if you know all these various ways in which god has stepped in and

rescued his people before i mean just so just this morning i the book i'm working on right now is uh is a 365 day the devotional on the psalms about halfway done with it and yesterday uh or this morning actually where this morning i was writing on uh one of the psalms that talks about how you have a coalition of forces enemy forces that are ganged up against israel okay and the way that asaph who's the author of the psalm responds to this is by saying it's in this prayer to god do to them oh god just like you did to like the midianites and the other peoples who attacked us in the past in other words we know that you have prompt we know in the past you have done great things for your people and we know that you have promised to be with us you know that you're

we know you promised to defend us so in other words do now what you've done in the past so the reason the reason asaf can say that is because just like you said with mordecai he knows god's promises he knows that god has a consistent consistent history of dealing with his people in a gracious and compassionate sort of way and he certainly knows that uh israel had to survive i mean israel had to survive because they were the bearers of the capital t the promise of the messiah who was to come so there's no way that anyone could have completely wiped out the nation of israel because these are the sons and daughters of abraham they're passing forward the promise of the seed until the seed is is born a few centuries after after this yeah it almost reads like he's

saying god is going to deliver us it seems that he would like to use you to do this but if you refuse he will do it another way you're not his only option yeah and uh i mean it's a very strong argument it's a very strong so first of all don't think that you're gonna get off scot-free so there's kind of a threat there right and then then he falls this up with a promise so you got the threat you yourself could die ester then he's got the promise listen we've got a god who is always going to provide relief and deliverance for us and then he ends with this perfect sentence and this is probably the sentence from Esther that everybody knows who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this yeah so this is like uh God is the one who placed you

here uh this is this is the plan to save the Jews if you refuse uh his arm is not short as the as the old testament language would say but uh this is his preferred method right now yes yeah i mean this is uh not of course the same story but basically like the story of joseph right yeah this line could have been delivered to joseph when he's in prison uh joseph you're you're put here for such a time as this you know interpret that dream do this do that and god's going to use you to deliver deliver his people and you never know i mean this is a big deal of course this is a threat to the whole nation of israel but i mean we're we're in these situations all the time who knows whether you uh you met this particular person or you had this particular conversation

you offer this word of encouragement or you gave forgiveness to someone because it was in that exact moment that god wanted you to be in order that you could do that yeah yeah i mean we've all uh we've all experienced these situations where i mean there's no way that we could have known that because we did a then b c d all these other things would have happened but we can trace it back to hey god put me right there in that position in that relationship in that conversation whatever it might have been because that's exactly what he was going to use in order to begin a whole string of other things that were for

the good of others or for my good or for the common good, whatever that might have been. That's just the way that Providence works. Yeah. I do like that. This is a pretty good argument. Mordecai drops a great line, probably the most well-known line in Esther.

Esther's going to drop probably the next most well-known line after this to him. So she does do the, alright, this is a pretty good argument. You did for such a time as this. That seems like pretty epic language that you're using there. So I'm going to have to go along with it.

But now let me flip it and remind you that also I'm the queen. So let me give a couple of commands here. We're going to do this. Don't discount the whole, the human part of this, right? It's Mordecai basically trying to sell boss around the queen. You remember when you were a little girl and I told you what to do. You still do what I tell you to do. she so she's like well okay but remember mordecai i'm still queen so i get to tell you and everybody

else wants to do it so esther told them all right well you go back to mordecai here's what i wanted to tell him go gather all the jews to be found in susa and hold a fast on my behalf so this is primarily directed to a fast for me don't eat or drink for three days not a day that's that's serious yeah no no no eating for three days is not that big deal no drinking for three days is dangerous yeah yeah that's uh but this is to my knowledge is the only time this this has happened uh most of the time even if you have like a uh annual fast like on yom kippur day of atonement you fast but you fast from sun up to sundown same i mean same thing that uh the muslims do during the month of ramadan they they don't fast all during the night that is fast

during the day sun up sundown so that's typically the way that fasting works but no she says listen three days no eating no drinking neither day i and my young women will do just as you do we will fast also and then i will go to the king though it is against the law and here's a great line if i perish i perish yeah that's the one i don't think this is yeah i mean this is this is courage um so i i know it's the right thing to do and you told me it's the right thing to do so i'm going to do it but i also want you to do everything connected with fasting in order that that our prayers might be answered that god would grant success to this possible uh death that i'm walking into courageously this is like uh you know back in the back in my my youth uh in a

different tradition of course this would be like all right i'm gonna need uh you to send send a message out to the prayer warriors because i'm gonna need a lot of prayer covering going on for this little endeavor yeah i think if i were in her situation i had that kind of authority i'd be i'd be having everybody fast too all right a three-day fast for chad yeah it's like i don't know if a hedge of protection is a real thing but if it is i'm gonna i could really use one of those we're gonna go that route this time because my life is on the line so mordecai went away we're told and did everything as esther had ordered him so he's gonna do she's gonna do what he suggested and he's gonna do what she commanded so they they

do this then first part of chapter five gonna put us on the day so on the third day which i find interesting because they're supposed to fast three days night day and she said they're going to also shocking that it's on the third day that she's like let me let me go and uh do this thing on the third day on the third day yeah i love these third days in the old testament we've seen we've seen a bunch of them and i as i always remind people god likes to do big things on the third day yeah well he's gonna go to i mean this is cool he's gonna go to war uh with uh the plan of satan to destroy the promises of god she's gonna go do that on the third day she's gonna go fight death in the third day it's pretty good yeah and live yeah yeah she's gonna put her life

out there and and live i mean yeah i love how uh you see these these themes of of crucifixion and resurrection and salvation and divine providence and god put and just the right people in just the right times and places everywhere yeah you know who else didn't eat for three days when they were fighting death jesus so there's not a lot of not a lot of eating and drinking going on in the in the tomb yeah wait till you have that resurrection feast later that's it all right so chapter five third day esther put on her royal robes get dressed up and she uh does what she said she do she stood in the inner court of the king's palace in front of the king's quarters while the king was sitting on his royal throne inside the throne room opposite the entrance to the

palace so a lot of details there as to where everything was located which you know if you live there no doubt you would know where all of these different places were located and the king saw queen esther standing in the court so here's the moment of truth and she told him the law is unless the king says basically you know okay you're good extends the golden scepter, then this could be it for you. So a moment of truth. He sees her standing in the court and we're told she won favor in his sight. And he held out to Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand. I wonder if it was an audible sigh of relief that she released in that moment or she held it together. I cannot imagine being in a situation like that where I'm about to do

something i'm walking into something that's going to go one or two ways either really really bad or really really or possibly really really good that's where she's at yeah and you would assume that this sort of law because you're like man what a what a harsh law i mean like if you make a mistake and walk in the use use the wrong door walk in walk into somewhere like you're gonna you You better hope you're someone the king likes because this could go real bad. You assume that this sort of thing is, like, this is a rule to avoid any sort of assassination attempts, things like that. Like, you can't walk in here, man. And the way it describes it is that, like, he's out here, over here, and you've got to enter from way back here.

Like, this is probably also for this reason. So there's, like, some distance. You got to assume there's a bunch of people with armed that are in there and they're just waiting to know whether they're supposed to strike this person down or let them approach you. Let them walk in. Yeah, that's intense. Yeah. So don't definitely don't picture like the king is alone. He's sitting in the throne and there's this vast empty space between him and whoever the person is that's approaching him.

No. Plenty of people with weapons around and ready and capable of using them should the need arise. So he holds out the golden scepter. No doubt Esther breathes a sigh of relief. She approaches, touches the tip of the scepter. All of this was just ceremony, of course. And the king said to her, what is it, Queen Esther? What is your request?

It shall be given to you, even to the half of my kingdom. dude i feel i feel like this half the kingdom business is like some kind of saying that has like no weight to it i mean like oh absolutely like this happens all the time and you're like stereotypical saying yeah like it's ever actually going to be be followed like someone's going to say well i would i do kind of like the eastern half of your kingdom if you would i mean i'll I'll give you up to my half, my kingdom. Well, you know, I was just going to ask if I could take a vacation to the countryside, but you know what?

I'll take it. Now that you offer. Of course, that's the very language that's used by Herod, right? Which leads to the request for the head of John the Baptist. It feels like this must have become some kind of saying. It's like, hey, I like you. I don't know if you just say this kind of thing to women. just some kind of like they know that women can't have half the kingdom so it don't matter if you

say that you give it to them but i'll give you up to half the kingdom i'll take it well you know the law doesn't let me do that i don't know what to do maybe so yeah i think it's just like it it's just yeah it's a stereotypical extravagance yeah i really like it what do you want i give you half my kingdom yeah i mean it sounds to me like something somebody would say when they're when they're rich and drunk these days what do you want i'll do a pretty girl houses yeah i'll i'll give you whatever you whatever you want so um yeah she says uh well she doesn't ask for half the kingdom she she probably surprises him at least it's surprising to me she doesn't say yes uh king if if you don't mind canceling that decree about the jews esther's too smart for that she's going

to set up first of all this is a very public setting yep i mean this is she's not going to say hey i know that you uh you were so stupid as to be tricked by haman into signing a decree that was going to exterminate a whole group of people of course she's not going to assault him uh nor is she going to ask for something like this for him to go back on something that he said she's She's going to work this very, very wisely. She says, well, if it please the king, why don't you come over for dinner and bring Haman with you?

Let the king and Haman come today to a feast that I've prepared for the king. Pretty smart. So the king said, well, let's get ready. Bring Haman quickly so that we may do as Esther has asked. This is a great idea. yeah like you know he's a feast kind of guy we established that right right from the jump so he's like oh yeah like you know what like i like i like this my queen's coming in here like saying

hey i want to i think you need to do some eating and drinking he's like man it's just this i picked the right one yeah i'm all about that i love my dinners love my wine so the king and hayman they they go to the feast esther had everything prepared they're sitting around they're drinking wine and uh the king's like i guess the king is like what what is it you what you want i mean what's your wish it's gonna be granted to you just tell me what you i'll give you half the kingdom he repeats it repeats it again half the kingdom it's gonna be fulfilled and then esther she follows this up she's she's getting everything ready which we'll get to we'll get to later but wrapping up this section what's more she says well my wish my request is just this if if i

found favor in the sight of the king and if it pleased the king to grant my wish and fulfill my request then let the king and haman she includes him the king and haman come to the feast that i will prepare for him for them and tomorrow i will do as the king has said she's building this up she's gonna get everything just right before she actually tells the king what it is that that she wants now the funny thing uh is i think it's kind of hilarious the section that follows which we'll get to in the next episode of course hayman is eating this up oh dude hayman's like man his head's about to burst for man the queen's invited invited me to back-to-back feasts like this i am like only me yeah me and the king we're super tight even the queen wants me around

oh yeah it's uh it's it's great so anyway esther lives uh obviously she's kind of she's she's getting everything ready for the the great disclosure so we'll get to that uh in next episode or one after that awesome yeah all right well that is it we are out of time so we'll leave it right there next week we will uh we'll get to talk about hayman he's just feeling a little too good uh making dumb decisions and so we will get into that next episode i'll see you then chad see you then