Esther 4:1–17
4 When Mordecai learned all that had been done, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and he cried out with a loud and bitter cry. 2 He went up to the entrance of the king’s gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king’s gate clothed in sackcloth. 3 And in every province, wherever the king’s command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.
4 When Esther’s young women and her eunuchs came and told her, the queen was deeply distressed. She sent garments to clothe Mordecai, so that he might take off his sackcloth, but he would not accept them. 5 Then Esther called for Hathach, one of the king’s eunuchs, who had been appointed to attend her, and ordered him to go to Mordecai to learn what this was and why it was. 6 Hathach went out to Mordecai in the open square of the city in front of the king’s gate, 7 and Mordecai told him all that had happened to him, and the exact sum of money that Haman had promised to pay into the king’s treasuries for the destruction of the Jews. 8 Mordecai also gave him a copy of the written decree issued in Susa for their destruction,1 that he might show it to Esther and explain it to her and command her to go to the king to beg his favor and plead with him2 on behalf of her people. 9 And Hathach went and told Esther what Mordecai had said. 10 Then Esther spoke to Hathach and commanded him to go to Mordecai and say, 11 “All the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—to be put to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come in to the king these thirty days.”
12 And they told Mordecai what Esther had said. 13 Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 15 Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai, 16 “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.”3 17 Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.
1 Or annihilation 2 Hebrew and seek from before his face 3 Hebrew if I am destroyed, then I will be destroyed
Section Overview
Since Haman is second in authority to the king, Mordecai is not able himself to do anything to stop Haman’s plan. He convinces a hesitant Esther to use her position as queen to act on her people’s behalf.
Section Outline
IV. Mordecai Convinces Esther to Petition the King (4:1–17)
A. Mordecai’s Tears (4:1–3)
B. Esther Learns of the Plot from Mordecai (4:4–8)
C. Esther Resists Helping Mordecai (4:9–12)
D. Mordecai Convinces Esther to Help (4:13–17)
Response
The books of Esther and Daniel were compared in the introduction to this commentary because of their mutual concern with how God’s people can survive and thrive in exile. Within this larger similarity, however, is a contrast in how the books show God at work: Daniel is full of apocalyptic visions of spectacular actions on God’s part, while Esther shows God unobtrusively working through the normal course of events to save his people. Although neither Esther nor Mordecai seems fully to realize it, God has placed her on the throne exactly for this time (4:14). Esther will use the position and power she enjoys to save many Jewish lives. Similarly, it may be that the work and witness of some Christians in this world will be attended by extraordinary and unmistakable power from God. It also may be that he intends us to use our positions outside the church for the sake of the church when Christians are in danger.
But Esther is not an unambiguously positive example. Because we can see God’s providential ordering of Esther’s life to deliver his people, even when she is not aware of it, we can avoid her resistance and fatalistic attitude when asked to risk our jobs or livelihoods—perhaps even our lives—for the sake of persecuted believers. We cannot know ahead of time how God will work in our particular situations, but we know he works all things for our good (Rom. 8:28).
Or annihilation
Hebrew and seek from before his face
Hebrew if I am destroyed, then I will be destroyed
4:1–3 Haman’s edict is now public knowledge, and we have already heard the general reaction to it (3:15). Now we learn of the Jewish reaction. Torn clothes, sackcloth and ashes, and public weeping are common responses in the OT to unimaginable tragedy (Job 1:20; 16:15; Ps. 35:13; Isa. 22:12; 58:5; Jer. 6:26; Joel 1:8) and are sometimes signs of repentance (1 Kings 21:27; Jonah 3:6). If Mordecai has repented of his failure to honor Haman, however, he shows no sign of it in his conversation with Esther. Mordecai is simply in unbearable pain over this turn of events; his people follow suit (Est. 4:3). Elsewhere in the OT, dressing in sackcloth and ashes is a prelude to prayer (cf. esp. Mordecai’s near contemporary Daniel, in Dan. 9:3). But Mordecai says nothing to or about God. His cry is an inarticulate scream of grief and pain.
Mordecai’s location at the gate (Est. 4:2) is an attempt to get as close as possible to the authorities who can do something about the Jews’ looming disaster. The gravity and extreme desperation of the situation prevents Mordecai from dressing normally, even though this would have given him access to the gate.
4:4 Mordecai’s ploy works, but when Esther learns of what Mordecai is doing, her reaction is strange; although Esther is deeply (and appropriately) distressed, she sends only a change of clothes, as if that would solve the problem. Mordecai’s reasons for grieving do not seem to matter to her. Since Esther’s existence in the harem has revolved around shallow considerations, this is not surprising, but it shows a certain superficiality on her part.
4:5–8 We learn that Esther’s existence inside the harem is a virtual imprisonment; she has to be told what the entire empire knows, and she has to communicate with Mordecai through a servant. Mordecai asks Esther to beg the king on behalf of her people (v. 8). She is the only one in the entire empire high enough to overturn Haman’s edict. Mordecai’s public gestures of grief and distress are meant not only to relieve his pain but also to impress upon Esther the desperateness of the situation.
4:9–12 Esther’s first response reveals her immaturity. Everyone knows, she says (perhaps implying she should not have to say this to Mordecai), that I will be executed if I go to the king unbidden, and he has not called me this month. She thinks the risk to her life is a valid reason for her to be excused. One wonders what sort of response Esther expected from Mordecai. Did she think he would say he understood and would try to petition some other higher official, or flee into exile? Mordecai’s request is difficult but not unfair. Note further that Mordecai asked her to petition on behalf of “her people” (v. 8), but Esther is thinking only of herself, not of the Jews who will die if Haman gets his way. We will soon see, in 5:2, that her fears are unfounded.
4:13–14 In some of the book’s best known and most significant verses, Mordecai manages to convince Esther to risk her life for her people. Three comments need to be made.
First, the term appropriately translated “deliverance” is often used elsewhere of God’s great acts of salvation for his people (cf. Ex. 6:6; Judg. 6:9; 1 Sam. 4:8; 2 Kings 17:39; Pss. 7:1; 22:8; Isa. 43:13). This is the closest Mordecai will ever get to making a theological statement—but he does not quite get there. This salvation will come, Mordecai says, “from another place”—not necessarily from God. Mordecai has apparently picked up the language of his tradition without understanding who inspired it. It is tantamount to saying things will work out for the Jews “just because”; Mordecai believes things tend to work out in the Jews’ favor but he does not give a reason for this belief. It shows no more faith than the statement of Haman’s advisers and wife in Esther 6:13. Nevertheless, Mordecai’s claim that relief and deliverance are coming is truer than he knows.
Second, it is not entirely clear why Mordecai says Esther will not survive if her people die (4:13). Would the king’s beloved wife not be safe in the palace from the violence outside? Some have seen here a veiled threat from Mordecai, but it is hard to imagine Mordecai attempting or coordinating some kind of assassination attempt on the queen. It may be that Mordecai is thinking of what Haman will do if and when he learns Esther is Jewish. This claim may also be the correlate of his impersonal, emaciated “theology”: just as there is a natural tendency for things to work out for the Jews, so there is danger for those on the other side. That the house of Esther’s father will perish probably merely means that, since Esther is an orphan and apparently has no brothers or sisters, she is her father’s last remaining offspring. If she dies, his name will be wiped out.
Third, Mordecai’s question of whether Esther has been placed here for exactly this crisis cannot help but bring to the reader’s mind the extraordinary string of coincidences guiding the story so far (and continuing past this point). Mordecai means this as a genuine question; he is not sure. But the narrator wants the reader to see that it is no impersonal, general tendency that has brought Esther to the throne.
4:15–16 Esther is convinced. She calls for a nationwide fast but makes no mention of prayer, which always accompanied fasting elsewhere in the OT. Esther seems to have picked up Mordecai’s thin “theology.” She apparently expects the fasting somehow to affect the outcome of events on its own, without prayer. Her final statement, too, is one more of resignation than of faith. She does not know if she will survive the encounter, but she is willing to try.
4:17 As Mordecai does everything Esther commands him, a role reversal begins to take place. This is Esther’s first step away from the complete pliability she showed in chapter 2. Mordecai and Esther are beginning to act as equals. By the end of the book, Mordecai will be following Esther’s lead entirely.