40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Esther 7:1-8:17 (Episode 380)

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Haman's plot against Mordecai is revealed at Esther's dinner. The king is enraged and Haman's pleading to Esther backfires resulting in him suffering the fate he had planned for his enemy. The decree cannot be reversed but a new decree can be issued. And everyone loves Mordecai. Have a listen! Show Notes: Support 1517 1517 Podcasts The 1517 Podcast Network on Apple Podcasts 1517 on Youtube What's New from 1517: ·      HWSS Regional Conference 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 and check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. While you're over there, make sure you go to the events page and sign up for the regional event in northwest Arkansas. That's the first weekend in May. You want to come hang out with Chad and myself and a whole bunch of other people. We're going to be talking about grace and peace in Christ. In other words, you've got to be in Christ to get that grace and peace.

No grace and peace outside of Christ. It's going to be a good time. Hey, you know what's going to be at this conference? a panel. There's going to be a panel. Don't worry, Chad and I aren't going to be on this panel. But one of the greatest panels of all time called Millennials Against Gnosticism is going to be happening at this

event. So that'll be good. Now, Chad and myself not being millennials, we can't participate in this particular panel. You got me intrigued by this. I can't wait for this panel. Yeah, the 15th, 17th Millennials still opposed to Gnosticism. One of the original heresies, still around,

but the Millennials, there are some that are against it, and we're going to hear them talk about the way that it's served up in our modern context. So that'll be fun. Yeah, sign up. You don't want to miss that. Also, Chad will be speaking. I'll be speaking to a whole bunch of other people. You can go get all the information over on the website. There's a link in the show notes. Sign up. It will sell out. It's sold out every year. So make sure you get that ticket. Chad, we are in Esther chapter 7. You know, we started last episode where Haman couldn't have been feeling better about stuff.

And we ended with him realizing that things have gone rapidly downhill. And so he just got done marching Mordecai through the streets, dressed up as the king, essentially, on his horse, in his clothes, talking about, I'm sure he was supposed to be yelling this. I'm sure it was more of a mumble, but he was having to tell people that this is what happens to someone who the king delights to honor. This is how it works for you. He goes home.

He's got to cover his head. Maybe that just means he's put a hood on. He doesn't want anyone else to see him anymore. He's very embarrassed. And his wife and his advisors and friends are like, dude, it's not good. I'll tell you that. It's not a good thing that you've got going on right now. Whatever plans you had, you need to reverse those immediately.

And so Heyman is officially on the defense, and we ended with some Unix being like, hey, you're late to dinner. You know, that dinner that you were super excited about with the queen? Yeah, well, you need to get over there. And that is where we picked up this episode. Yeah. I have a feeling that when he went to the feast, he was a bit distracted. Yeah.

Things are not looking good right now for Haman. So, yeah, the king's eunuchs, they show up. They're knocking, hey, you know, you're late, so let's go. So, chapter starts out with the king and Haman. They go to this feast with Queen Esther. And remember, this is the second of these feasts. We've had one before. So, Esther has still kind of been dragging this out.

The king keeps saying, hey, what can I do for you? You want half my kingdom? I'll give it to you. Let me know. And she's like, well, let me tell you later. You know what is actually true? Let me tell you later. You know what's true about this is that if you're looking for God in the midst of Esther,

which of course his name does not appear as we've mentioned several times the truth is that esther's plan is actually a little too slow because if god doesn't intervene mordecai is probably dead right now yeah this is true this is true i hadn't thought about that but yeah her her plan was a little bit too stretched out would have been a little slow i mean let's the first feast okay that would have been a the time to kind of drop it uh but yeah god intervened he kept the king awake so he could listen to the chronicles and find out that mordecai who saved his life in the past had not been honored so yeah thankfully mordecai is not strung up on the gallows that hayman spent all night constructing this just shows you that like god may use you but he also has got to make up for

you know he's like you're gonna need me to be involved in this big time yeah he's he's got to fill in all of our deficiencies along the way. So here we are. We've got Esther, and she's got this feast for the king and for Haman. And on the second day, they're all together, and they're drinking wine after the feast. And so the king says, hey, you know that wish that you've been telling me about? What is it? It's going to be granted to you. What's your request? And we have this proverbial phrase we've talked about before even to half of my kingdom it should be fulfilled so finally the queen doesn't say we'll come back tomorrow to my third feast and i'll tell you then she's actually going to give him the answer now and she kind of strings it out here too she doesn't

come out out and say well uh you signed a decree which is going to lead to the eradication of my people so i need you to stop that she's she's not only been kind of planning this but she's even got her rhetorical strategy down she starts with if so if i have found favor in your sight well obviously she has and another if and if it please the king which of course she's hoping it's going to let and listen this is loaded language it's not what he expected let my life be granted for my wish and my people for my request now if you're sitting there and you're haman as soon as you start saying these words you're probably getting extremely nervous because these she's not saying yeah i was hoping that you would help out a friend of mine or something that you would

do this or do that you know how minor or major it might be that this is something which is bigger and more personal than the king expected and certainly than Haman ever dreamed of. Yeah, I don't think the king was expecting her to say, well, here's what I'd like to ask you. If you like me, don't kill me. That's the essence of what she's requesting. Yeah, I mean, so if I found favor...

Don't kill me or my people. Yeah, if I found favor in your sight, don't have me killed and don't have my people killed. yeah he did i i this is i'm sure the last thing in the world he was just like what like who like wait a minute who's threatening to kill you yeah his mind was immediately full of questions and so she goes on to say for we here including of course the the my life and my people so for we we've been sold i and my people now the uh the soul part is connected back to all the money that rich hayman paid to the king to kind of you know grease the wheels to make sure that

everything was okay with this outrageous request and decree that he had the king to sign we have been sold i and my people so again she's including herself as well as her people she hasn't said yet you know who her people are but i and my people now the next three next three verbs are important she says we've been sold on my people to be destroyed to be killed and to be annihilated now the reason those are important are those the exact same words that were in the decree that was issued so i yeah you start you start he's starting to he's got to start picking up what she's putting down at this point right the king has to certainly picking up on this and uh and hayman too if he wasn't sweating before he is definitely sweating now she says if we had then she kind of pauses

for a second before she really uh lets the hammer fall she says if we had been sold merely as slaves men and women i would have been silent i would not have said a word even if something as terrible as that had happened and the last part of this says at least the esv says there's translational differences here for our affliction is not to be compared with the loss to the king that can be rendered several several different ways the the basic message seems to be that uh any any material losses you would you would you would suffer from or nothing to be compared with the losses of people that you would lose as a result of this something like that it seems to be what is being suggested so she finishes her speech at that point and of course the king has a question she just said

if you like me spare my life spare my people's life because we've been sold to be annihilated destroyed killed and uh the king says well who's behind all this who is he and where is he who dared to do this literally who who has his heart filled to do this who's so whose heart is intent upon this great evil that you've just described i mean i don't know if this king is super busy uh maybe so but or if he's just like not that bright uh i don't know how many of these six month bingers he's been throwing uh or whatever but like do you not know who's behind this plan uh probably the guy that told you this plan dude comes across as pretty slow in the uptake here yeah yeah do you just have too much happening in your life right now you

you've forgotten this decree you've signed about the eradication of the whole people and who brought it up your provinces and who brought it up uh but either or maybe he's had too much wine at this at this feast whatever it is after he says who is he and where is he who dared to do this finally esther says a foe and enemy and then you could just see her pausing and pointing her finger and saying this wicked hayman you see the whole thing acted out before your eyes and hayman was terrified before the king and the queen i would say so yeah i would say so probably an appropriate place to be filled with with terror so we finally got to the point where esther who put her life on the line

by going to the king without being summoned and then who twice delayed telling him the exact request has now set everything up rhetorically with this long explanation leading to this final you know finger pointing moment of saying well that foe and that enemy that you that you just asked me about that guy hayman that wicked hayman who's sitting right there beside you so i mean even this you've got to you've got to admire esther because she ends up in the in all these scenarios coming out as the the real brave the courageous one and the one who really knows what's going on because the king obviously seems pretty dense that's the way he's portrayed anyway i mean you can't figure out who this is yeah i mean and then hayman who's so full

of himself he can't see straight maybe this maybe this uh you know i don't maybe the hayman doesn't think the king is that smart maybe that's why he thinks he can pull like get away with all this kind of stuff he's like dude i got this i'm playing this king like a fiddle like this guy is not that bright uh i don't know but uh well what you do have is that you do you do have this this line i I mean, in verse 7, it says, and the king arose in his wrath from the wine drinking. So he's been drinking that wine, and now he's just enraged, and he went into the palace garden, right? So he doesn't actually say anything. He's so furious that he has to go, like, he storms into the garden, and Haman determines that, like, you know what?

begging that guy for my life is not the play here I don't have to beg this woman for my life there's only one way that I don't end up dead at the end of this I was wondering how you were going to take all that exactly the way that I took it too

that's the vision I have is that the king is I think he's probably enraged for more than one reason he's enraged because Haman has constructed this plan that's going to logically lead to the death of his queen and i think he's probably enraged too because now he's beginning to realize how stupid he's been yeah because so he's he's mad at himself too but he's

got it he's he's not going to take it out on himself he's going to take it out on hayman instead yeah and then hayman he realizes well certainly can't beg this guy for mercy because he's not going to give it to me he's been drinking and he's mad not a good person to be begging for mercy so uh he decides that he's going to instead beg the queen well that's going to backfire big time because the king we don't we don't know how long he was out there i'm assuming he just walked stormed out there to cool off uh for a second or maybe just to think what he was going to do but he comes back from the palace garden to the place where they were drinking wine and what does he see haman was falling on the couch where esther was now what seemed to be

happening is this you know just like in the gospels you have jesus going to these banquets and what do they do they don't you know pull up here pull up a chair at the table and sit down and you sit there and you eat that's not the way that they ate they were still eating the first century the same way the persians ate you recline at table you have these when you think couch don't think of the kind of couches that we sit or slouch on to watch tv you think of these cushions on the floor right so these are cushions and you're reclining on your elbow and you have the food in front of you a little space between you and the food so the servants can walk around and fill your plates that's just the way they the persians feasted that's the way that the peoples continued

to feast all the way into the first century so picture the queen she is reclining there and hayman has as it were kind of fallen her feet maybe he's not like he's not assaulting her he is he is probably got a hold of her and he's begging and pleading for his life yeah i mean you can imagine a scenario where he's like on his hands and knees and he's like he's grasping at her you know trying to grab her hands or whatever or whatever and just like begging but you know king might be a little drunk i don't know yeah i think hayman is at this point lost all control i mean he is he knows this is it and so he is he's he's just kind of lost all sense of protocol here all sense of decorum and he's just grasping not at straws here but grasping at the queen and

begging her for for some kind of mercy well the king sees this yeah he's been drinking he's angry He walks in, and he sees Haman doing this to his queen, and his response is, will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house? I mean, the truth is that even if you're someone of Haman's position, which is a very high position, probably no one's supposed to put their hand on the queen under any circumstances. No, definitely not, yeah. Maybe if she stretches out her hand and she invites you to kiss her ring or something, that's as close as you're ever going to get to touching the king. Yeah, you're not going to grab at her. You're certainly not going to grab at her feet or whatever and touching her uninvited, especially in these kind of circumstances. So the king says, will you assault even the queen in my presence?

and no sooner did the words leave the mouth of the king than the servants, it wasn't like they were in the room alone, just the three of them, there were the servants all around. So as soon as the king says the words, we read that they covered Haman's face. Now we don't have any documentation

from Persian sources that also echo this, but we do from later Greek and Roman sources where they would cover the head of the condemned. you know, putting a bag or a sack or whatever it is over their head to cover up the face of the one who is condemned. So the same thing is going on here. They covered his face, put something over it, wrapped it up, and that was going to be, that was it for Amon. I mean, he's not dead yet, of course, but that no hope was left for him at that point. So as all of this goes down, A guy by the name of Harbona, who was one of the eunuchs who was attending to the king, sees this whole situation and says, hey, king, you probably don't know this, but Haman just built some gallows for Mordecai.

You know, the guy, the Jew who saved the king's life. So Mordecai was up all night. i mean hayman was up all night and he built these gallows from mordecai and in fact they're they're standing over there at hayman's house these gallows this wooden beam 50 cubits high you can't miss them 75 feet it's kind of everest he doesn't say anything more than that it's a pretty pretty wise way of putting it hey uh just to let you know there are some gallows over there yeah and they were intended for the guy whose word saved your life yeah so uh he didn't need to make any suggestions the king the king put two and two together and he

said hang him on that so they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai and then the wrath of the king was abated now to uh I mentioned this at the uh the end of the last episode but uh this is this is the way that this is the way that evil is finally destroyed by its own evil so the the proverbs and the psalms are are full of phrases such as this is from psalm 10 verse 2 uh in arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor let them be caught in the schemes that they had devised or this from uh proverbs 11 verse 6 the righteousness of the upright delivers them but the unfaithful are trapped by evil evil desires so i think all of those kind of situations uh are an outworking of genesis 3 15 i don't i don't know that i never put this quite together

until uh i was i was looking at this chapter but of course genesis 3 15 is where god says to the serpent there will be enmity between you and the woman between your seed and her seed uh and then he shall crush your head and you shall bruise his heel so in other words as the serpent sinks his fangs into the heel of the messianic messianic seed at the same time he's going to be destroyed in that very act so evil is destroyed by its own plotted evil and that is exemplified in all kinds of stories like this and then finally comes to its head in the cross where death is destroyed by death and the very the very victory that it thought it had actually ends up being its own defeat and same thing's happening here in the case of haman yeah and

This is why it's dangerous to plot against people, because this is how God usually uses plots. Yeah, they end up boomeranging back, and actually you end up suffering for the very things that you had planned on causing others to suffer from. So that, I mean, in this very dramatic kind of story, you have a portrayal of what the gospel is all about as well. and Haman ends up then suspended from the very gallows that he prepared for Mordecai now it would be easy for the book to kind of end here huh like it kind of

seems like man it could be the end maybe you have a little word about you know Mordecai taking Haman's position or whatever and that's the end but what's weird about Esther is you got three more chapters I know

it seems like the story's over We're like, oh, okay, so it worked out. Everybody lives happily ever after. Yeah. But it didn't work out that way. And one of the reasons it doesn't work out that way, this isn't the only reason, but one of the reasons is because the decree had been issued concerning the destruction of the Jews at such and such a date down the road later in the year.

And that law could not be rescinded. So it was decreed, and it can't be undecreed. This is a faulty system that you're working with. It's a bad legal system. I'm glad that we've advanced beyond that. You can't overturn laws and change them. What are you going to do with that system? It's almost like if you're the king of kings, you're like, well, once I say something, I can't take it back.

Because if I take it back, then the people will think that when I say something, it's not from God, as it were. I mean, God doesn't take things back that he says. I mean, if you're all powerful, you don't change what you said. And so I have to go through with it. Yeah, it's like it's universally binding what you've spoken it. So what he does instead, and this is the reason we have some more chapters, is he passes another decree, has some more letters written, which basically allow the Jews on the day when their enemies have been legally allowed to attack them

this new decree gives the jews permission to attack those who are attacking them so arm them up arm them up yeah so one decree is meant to balance out another decree what what haman intended for evil now god is going to use this next decree to allow his jews to defend themselves for for good so that's why you have more chapters now that's not the only reason because you know there there's more to this story as it unfolds because uh what what ends up happening is more than simply the jews defending themselves they actually are going to go beyond that uh to to do some more damage but we'll get there we're at the beginning of chapter chapter seven was pretty short it's only 10 verses so we're at the beginning of chapter eight now

so on that day king xerxes gave to queen esther the house of haman not just like the edifice itself but the house of haman being everything that he has so all of all of the stuff all the things that haman had his wealth his his possessions his house literally his house everything was then given over to to esther so this is probably i mean we've seen other examples of this in the Bible and there's other examples of this in ancient literature where the property of an executed criminal reverts to the state more or less in this case the state

being the king hands it over to Esther his queen saying basically do with it what you want it's yours so Haman here is defined if you didn't get this already he's once more defined as the enemy of the Jews so mordecai came before the king for esther had told what he was to her now this is the first time that mordecai appears before the king so this is a change for him he may as we talked about earlier a couple episodes ago maybe he worked in the king's service maybe esther himself had kind

of arranged this but there's no evidence that mordecai had ever actually appeared before the king so this is gonna be the first time and you know for sure that whatever whatever position mordecai had uh the king did not know who she was or who he was to esther because we we have that told us explicitly like so esther said hey uh by the way mordecai that god you like so much that's my that's my uncle uh slash father and so makes sense also at this point that the king might be willing to see him yeah yeah so uh having established that connection and knowing who mordecai was to the king and is to the queen he's brought before the king and the king uh if you didn't know the story before maybe you would have guessed what's about to happen here the king takes

off his signet ring which he had taken from haman and gave it to mordecai and esther set mordecai over the house of haman so now you have uh mordecai taking the place of haman and haman taking the place that he had planned for for mordecai so it's a great reversal it's where evil is destroyed and those whom evil sought to destroy are vindicated so you have him serving as what today we might call what the the prime minister maybe something something like that so mordecai is given the the power that haman had he's basically next to the king and not only that but esther who had been given by the king the power over the house of haman now she turns this over to mordecai so all basically all of the possessions that haman had

are transferred over to mordecai by the queen and all the authority that haman had is transferred over to mordecai by the king and then esther spoke again to the king because we still have this issue of these letters in this decree and this coming destruction she spoke to the king again she uh she goes all out she doesn't just speak she fell at his feet and wept and pleaded with him to avert the evil plan of haman the agagite and the plot that he had devised against the jews so she's not done with her request from the king she'd done a lot but there's still more that needs to be done so the king held out the golden scepter to esther that's the same expression that we've seen more than once now she stands up stand she rises up stand toward the king

and she has this request she's if it pleased we have more ifs if it pleased the king and if i found favor in your in his sight and if the if the thing seems right before the king and i am pleasing in his eyes so a lot of ifs so if all this is true then let an order be written to revoke the letters devised by haman the agagite the son of hamadatha which he wrote to destroy the jews who were in all the provinces of the king so how are you going to revoke No, she doesn't say revoke the law. She says revoke the letters. So she's pretty sly about the way that she is even phrasing this.

Because you can't legally revoke a law. So she's wanting to revoke these letters that Haman sent. Four, she says, how can I bear to see the calamity that is coming to my people? Or how can I bear to see the destruction of my kindred? So once more, she's identifying herself with the broader people of which she is a part. so that's a request and then the king says to to her and to mordecai so now he's speaking to both of them behold i have given esther the house of haman and they have hanged him on the gallows because he intended to lay hands on the jews but you may write as you please with regard to the

jews in the name of the king seal it with the king's ring for an edict written in the name of king and sealed with the king's ring cannot be revoked so basically he gives mordecai as well as esther from the same kind of permission that he gave to hayman earlier basically said to hayman do whatever you want sign it with my signet ring and it's going to be a done deal same thing he now says to mordecai and esther except it's going to be the reversal of the earlier request yeah man you got you you can uh you can't unsign it things but you can like signet new things this is the whole thing here that's the that's the summation of the legal process that's happening here so uh we got to get this done so verse you got to get the if you're going to have the decrees

and and and sealed sealed documents and all this other stuff you better call in the professionals and so we'll get the scribes coming in at this point so the the king's scribed were summoned at that time in the third month which is the month of Sivan on the 23rd day so some time has gone by so just just to kind of give you uh an idea of how the narrative itself can often compress things so it feels like less time has gone by a month two months rather in 10 days have passed since Haman first sent the letters out about the coming destruction of the Jews. Now, when you're reading the story, it seems like a lot less time has passed. But we're told that Haman sent out the letters on the 13th day of the first month.

And now we're at the 23rd day of the third month. So between the sending of the original letters about the coming destruction of the Jews and now the sending of these other letters, you've got a little over two months that have passed. So it feels like a short amount of time has passed, but some more days have passed than the narrative would lead us to initially believe. Edict was written according to all that Mordecai commanded concerning the Jews to the satraps and the governors and the officials of the provinces from India to Ethiopia, 127 provinces to each province in its own script and to each people in its own language. and this is a new addition also to the jews in their script and their language so we had all these decrees sent out earlier in all these various languages but now we're also going to make sure that they're in hebrew and here we have the uh the persian pony express mentioned once

more he sent the letters by mounted couriers riding on swift horses that were used in the king service bred from the royal stud so yeah yeah so a personal note here as as someone who was raised by a uh a lover of horses my dad carson uh was uh he was a cowboy but he was more of a horseman than he was anything anything else and so in in my dad's uh in my dad's den all on his bookshelves so behind my me or theology books but in my dad's in my dad's den were stud books so these are the pedigrees of all he was into into quarter horses especially so he had no telling how many of these official stud books which trace the pedigrees of these various studs because that's what you do it in the in the horse industry you want to make sure that you're

ideally your your mare is going to be bred to the the highest quality stud that way you have colts that are going to inherit those same those same qualities same things happening here with the persians so they've got the royal stud which i'm assuming is the very best stud that is owned and of course you're going to breed as many mares to him as you can because they will then inherit these properties which i assume would include also being able to run fast and long distances so you have this whole group of horses that are used by the couriers to take the message to all parts of the empire saying verse 11 saying that the king allowed the jews who were in every city to gather and defend themselves to destroy and to kill and to annihilate those are the same

three verbs we've seen before any armed force of any people or province that might attack them children and women included i'm going to come back to that children women children women included and to plunder their goods on one day throughout the provinces of king ahasuerus king xerxes on the 13th day of the 12th month which is the month of adar so you got uh back to what they're allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do what seems to be happening here is basically the jews are given permission divine not about regal authority to defend themselves from anyone who's going to attack them and the women and children's at least the way i would take the hebrew here is in reference to those who would be attacked by by their enemies

rather than giving the jews permission to attack the women the wives and the children of these others the women and the children that are referenced here would be those of the jews who are attacked yeah that's how i read that yeah so basically they're allowed to defend themselves that's the the uh the summary of the royal decree and then you have a copy of that which is written to be issued it's a decree in every province publicly displayed to all the peoples and the jews were to be ready on that day to take vengeance on their enemies so the couriers mounted on their swift horses that were used in the king's service rode out hurriedly urged by the king's command and the decree was issued in susa the the citadel

so this is the uh the sending out of decree that basically is not nullifying the earlier decree but it's at least allowing the jews a chance to defend themselves against those who would would attack them in all these various provinces this is a weird thing like if you got this decree and like you weren't a jew and you were you know thinking on this particular day of this particular month you were gonna go and kill all your jewish neighbors or whatever then this other thing comes around you're like oh uh i got a real decision to make now we're gonna have a real this is gonna be a real uh real battle now the element of surprise gone i mean not that it was ever there to begin with but not only uh you know will they probably fight back but they're like authorized to fight

back they're not like as though they're going to be doing something that they're gonna be punished for later or anything like this so uh i don't know this might make you think long and hard about whether or not you're going to go through with this yeah and and as we'll see here at the end of the chapter i think it led to many people not only kind of rethinking whether they were going to do this but also realizing that it would be much more advantageous to them to be on the side of the jews rather than on the side of the of the enemies of the jews so we're almost there we're at verse 15 mordecai first of all we're told about mordecai mordecai goes out from the king's presence and there's no mistaking what has happened to him because he is now dressed in royal

robes of blue and white with a great golden crown and a robe of fine linen and purple so so uh he has ditched his sackcloth and ashes needless to say yeah which is what the last thing was we heard he was clothed in so no more sackcloth and ashes for mordecai now he is dressed in the finest of the finery he's got these blue and white robes on he's dressed in fine linen purple he's got a he got a crown on his head he is looking the part of the the prime minister and everybody in susa seems to be pretty happy about that you know i don't know if they didn't like haman to begin with but they certainly do like mordecai because the city of susa shouted and rejoiced they're happy they have this new guy and the jews in particular had light and gladness

and joy and honor and in every province and in every city wherever the king's command in his edict reached there was gladness and joy among the jews a feast and a holiday now we're going to talk more about that feast and holiday as we get toward the end of the book that's uh that's the festival of purim or purim and many from those this is the part i was talking about just a second ago many from the peoples of the country declared themselves jews for the fear of the jews had fallen on them the verb that's used there in hebrew is they uh i don't know how you translate that like they they they jewed themselves they judaized themselves is is the verb that's used there so they they became yeah like it's translated in the sv they they became jews now was this a uh

was this conversion uh completely from you know pious and righteous motives uh was this partly self-protection uh i think i think mostly sober i think i think this is this is uh just got this new decree uh i don't know if you're taking a good hard look at mordecai look at that dude yeah that got to jew uh you know what i'm also a jew just so you know that i never tell you yeah dude i'm me and my family 100 100 jews that's what we are we just been hiding it very well all these years i thought dude i thought you knew i thought everybody knew that oh yeah yeah hebrew every prayer at home is hebrew of course so uh yeah it's quite the reversal you've got this decree where it seems like the jews are

going to be eradicated the next thing you know you got people who are as gentile as they come saying oh no yeah mordecai we're tight well this is i mean esther is like all about the reversal And so Mordecai, at the beginning of this, telling Esther, don't tell anyone you're a Jew. By this time, you got all kinds of non-Jews telling everyone they are Jews. Yeah. It is the, it's the book of reversals. In fact, we're going to see in the next episode, beginning of chapter nine, it's going to talk about the reverse occurred. And that could be the summary of the entire book.

It's a book of irony. it's a book of dramatic reversals where just the moment it feels like evil is going to win the day god mysteriously and silently sneaks in and arranges events so that the opposite opposite occurs yeah i mean it's it's it's the death and resurrection thing just the minute you think that the enemy has won christ steps forth from the tomb and he's lost yeah so i mean in that way Esther is this, it's proclaiming the gospel, but it's in its own unique sort of way. You have this

great reversal in which victory comes forth when it seems like there's going to be defeat. Yeah. All right. Well, we are out of time, so we will be back next episode. We are not quite done yet, so we have more time

in Esther coming up. I'll see you then, Chad. We'll see you next time.