Original Meaning

KING XERXES CANNOT afford to overlook Queen Vashti’s public defiance and thus turns to his political advisors to see what, according to Persian law, must be done to Vashti. Only seven closest advisors (lit. in Heb. idiom, “the seven who see the face of the king”) were permitted to enter the king’s presence uninvited and unannounced.1 These wise men understood “the times”; that is, they used astrology and other forms of divination to discern the propitious course of action. It “was customary” for Xerxes to consult these “experts in matters of law and justice,” though one might have thought that in reference to a conflict with his own wife he might have taken a more personal approach. Xerxes’ reaction highlights the political ramifications of Vashti’s defiance. It is unlikely that there was a legal precedent on the books stating what must be done in this specific situation. More likely, “according to law” (v. 15) refers to the expedient counsel of the advisors, from which Persian “law” was derived.

Irrevocable royal decree rather than personal reconciliation will determine Vashti’s fate. The decree will formalize permanently what Vashti had chosen in one moment. Because she refused to come to the king, she will be demoted to the status of those who may not enter the king’s presence. In the decree (v. 19) she is stripped of her position, and for the first time in the story is referred to simply as “Vashti” instead of “Queen Vashti.” Memucan suggests that her position as queen be given to another woman who is “better” than she. Presumably “better” means more obedient, though Memucan leaves it to the king to interpret what “better” may mean. This royal decree is to be written into the irrevocable laws of Persia and Media. The finality of Vashti’s fate as determined by the seven is being sealed.

The irrevocability of the king’s decree is also mentioned in a similar situation in Dan. 6:8, 12, 15. There, Xerxes’ father, Darius, is manipulated by his administrators to issue an irrevocable decree forbidding prayer—a ploy intended to trap the godly Daniel. There is, however, no extrabiblical evidence that the Persian laws were actually irrevocable, and as M. Fox points out, it is hard to imagine running an empire on this basis.2 Others comment that this detail, though not historically true, functions to heighten the dramatic tension of the story.3

In the two biblical contexts in which reference to this legal policy occurs, however, it not only heightens the dramatic tension of the story, it also reveals the pretentious arrogance of the Persian king and his counsel, who are thereby portrayed as thinking that they can control circumstances by merely decreeing their wishes to be irrevocably so. In both Daniel and Esther the ultimate impotence of such human reasoning is revealed. The statement that the laws of Persia and Media cannot be repealed satirizes the way the authority of the Persian monarchy was perceived, not necessarily the way Persian law formally operated.

Although Xerxes invites the counsel of his seven advisors concerning what is to be done to Vashti in this one instance, the advice he gets goes beyond this instance. Memucan, for whatever reason, takes Queen Vashti’s disobedience personally. He perceives it to be not only an affront to Xerxes’ authority, but to all the seven nobles and “the peoples of all the provinces” as well (v. 16).4 What began as an issue between two people suddenly is escalated into a crisis of empire-wide proportions. By universalizing the incident Memucan can express his personal anxiety and fears in terms of the good of the empire and thereby manipulate the king to his own ends. Haman later uses the same tactic against the Jews in 3:8.

Vashti is assumed to have such influence on the women of the empire that when they hear of her disobedience, they will similarly respond to their husbands, starting with the wives of the king’s seven advisors. Therefore, the king must make sure that these women also hear that Vashti has been deposed as a result of her insolence. When the women see what harsh consequences follow disobedience, they will be intimidated into “respect[ing] their husbands, from the least to the greatest” (v. 20). Xerxes and the seven nobles find this reasoning to be sound, and so the king issues a decree throughout his empire “to each province in its own script and to each people in its own language.”

Adele Berlin sees the reaction of the seven advisors as out of proportion to the incident itself and suggests the advisors at this point are expressing their own sexual anxiety.5 Noting the sexual innuendo of Vashti’s refusal to be displayed before Xerxes’ men, she speculates that the seven are fearful that the incident between Vashti and Xerxes might trigger a sexual strike by the women of Persia similar to that which was performed several decades later in Aristophanes’ Greek comedy Lysistrata (ca. 450–ca. 388 B.C.). It is possible that such a theme was circulating at the time Esther was written, or even that the author of Esther may have been familiar with Lysistrata, though this is pure speculation. If Berlin is right, then the author of Esther is being extremely subtle here because the decree issued has a much broader concern with power and submission. Conjugal submission may be viewed as a part of the “respect” being demanded by the men, but does not exhaust their concern.

Ironically, by accepting Memucan’s advice, the king ends up publicizing his embarrassing plight by ordering throughout the empire what he himself could not accomplish in his own palace, that every man “should be ruler over his own household” (v. 22). Afraid that all the women of the empire will hear about Vashti, he ends up assuring what he fears by sending a dispatch to every province of the empire! The blindness in Memucan’s advice as this scene unfolds gives it a depth of irony and even humor. However, because the Bible is sacred Scripture, many readers assume that it speaks only in hushed and reverent tones, and they cannot see or appreciate the ironic humor found in biblical stories.

Perhaps it does seem odd and even inappropriate to modern readers that the author of Esther would use parody and even humor to introduce the Persian powers that came treacherously close to extinguishing his own people. It seems improper to tell a funny story about genocide and, therefore, many readers may deny that there is any humor intended in this book. M. Fox is one of several commentators who recognize humor in the Esther story and offers helpful insight into its significance:

The book’s incongruous humor is one of its strange hallmarks. It mixes laughter with fear in telling about a near-tragedy that is tellingly reminiscent of actual tragedies. We laugh at the confused sexual politicians, the quirky emperor, and, above all, the ludicrous, self-glorifying, self-destructive villain. . . .

Humor, especially the humor of ridicule, is a device for defusing fear. The author teaches us to make fun of the very forces that once threatened—and will again threaten—our existence, and thereby makes us recognize their triviality as well as their power. “If I laugh at any mortal thing,” said Byron, “’tis that I may not weep.” Jews have learned that kind of laughter. The book of Esther begins a tradition of Jewish humor.6

Adele Berlin goes so far as to call this story “burlesque,” defined as “an artistic composition . . . that for the sake of laughter, vulgarizes lofty material or treats ordinary material with mock dignity.” She continues: “Understanding the Book of Esther as a burlesque or a farce allows us to understand that while the threat to the Jews is serious, it is not real.”7 If she means that the threat is not real because at the time the author writes the book of Esther he knows that the threat is past and the Jews have been delivered, I would probably agree with her. The fact that the author of Esther can write this story with humor, expecting his readers to appreciate it, suggests that the book was probably written at least a generation or two after the events occurred. By that time, the festivities celebrating Purim may have allowed the author to introduce humorous elements in keeping with the joyful nature of the feast. Time must pass before one can look back on a bad situation and appropriately laugh about it.

One of the repeated elements throughout the story is the emphasis on the multilingual character of Persian society. A threefold repetition in verse 22 emphasizes that the king’s decree was sent “to each province in its own script,” “to each people in its own language,” making its declaration “in each people’s tongue.” The universal dissemination of the decree contrasts with the original fear that women throughout the empire would hear of this episode. It also raises the serious issue of preserving ethnic identity in a multicultural conglomerate society.

Because the Persian empire encompassed such a vast geographical area and had conquered so many different peoples, many languages were spoken within the realm of Xerxes. Most inscriptions from that period are trilingual, written in Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian or Aramaic. The Persian court employed large numbers of scribes who could write in every language of the empire. Written memos, such as those preserved in Daniel, Nehemiah, and Ezra, were prepared and filed for every point of business, making the Persian empire a large bureaucracy. In order to make written communication timely, a system similar to the Pony Express of the American West was used. Dispatches sent from the royal cities were relayed from point to point by messengers on horseback, reaching the farthest points of the empire with surprising speed. Thus, the news that Vashti has been deposed goes out, and with it the irrevocable decree that every man should be ruler in his own home—like the king was in his!

The Hebrew in verse 22 may also be construed to read that every man should be ruler in his own home and speak according to the language of his people (cf. NASB, NKJV, NRSV footnote). Because many languages were spoken by the various people groups that comprised the vast Persian empire, the language one chose to speak had political and sociological implications. Note how the choice of language used in the home of ethnically mixed marriages of this period was a special problem for the Jewish remnant who returned to rebuild Jerusalem (Neh. 13:23–24):

Moreover, in those days I [Nehemiah] saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah.

While this passage has no direct relevance on Xerxes’ decree in Esther 1:22, it does provide insight into the political and sociological implications of the linguistically mixed society of the Persian empire. Nehemiah was deeply concerned that the next generation who would populate the restored Jerusalem and Judah would not know the language of their ancestors. This situation was the result of Jewish marriages to foreign women, those who were not members of the covenant community. By adopting the woman’s language in their homes, the foreign culture of the mother was extended into Judah, instead of incorporating the foreign woman into the culture and religion of Yahweh’s covenant people (cf. Ruth, the Moabitess).

Thus, in the historical context of restoring God’s people to their land, this situation had to be corrected if their national and covenantal identity was to survive. The use of the man’s language in his home was a sign of his leadership, and in the sociological context of postexilic Judah implied that his wife and children were to join the restored covenant community of Yahweh. This emphasis on the husband’s language (word) as an instrument of rule in the home mirrors its correlate that the king’s language (word) in the form of decree was the instrument of rule throughout the empire.

Bridging Contexts

WHAT HAPPENED TO Vashti after her deposition is not developed within the story, and there is no further discussion of whether the king’s decree demanding respect from the wives of the empire was effective or not. Therefore, this scene functions to provide general background for the story of Esther and Mordecai that follows and cannot be construed as a main point of the story. This episode exposes the inner workings of the Persian monarchy and indicates precedents and patterns for the events that will follow.

Why does the author of Esther include this episode about men and women as he sets the stage for his story? Why bring up the “battle of the sexes” in a story that tells about the salvation of the Jewish people from genocide? Surely the author could have chosen some other event to paint life at the Persian court, but he chooses one that involves the relationship between women and men.

The author of Esther is revealing the workings of worldly power and mocking its ultimate inability to determine the destiny of God’s people. At that time and place, worldly power was held by Persian men. The author chooses to include and highlight an incident involving the interaction between men and women because in this story powerful Persian men are outwitted by a Jewish woman.8 Esther has to overcome two levels of conflict, both as a woman and as a Jew, to come into her own as Queen of Persia. We modern readers probably cannot fully appreciate how truly remarkable a feat that was.

It is therefore a bit surprising that instead of applauding Esther, many feminist interpreters are so critical of her and her role in the deliverance of the Jewish people. The South African interpreter Itumeleng J. Mosala finds that

the text’s choice of a female character to achieve what are basically patriarchal ends is objectionable. The fact that the story is woven around Esther does not make her the heroine. The hero of the story is Mordecai who needless to say gives nothing of himself for what he gets. Esther struggles, but Mordecai reaps the fruit of the struggle. African women who work within liberation movements and other groups will be very familiar with these kinds of dynamics. A truly liberative biblical hermeneutics will struggle against this tendency.9

Alice Laffey notes that feminist interpreters see “full compliance with patriarchy” in Esther’s character and describe her as “the stereotypical woman in a man’s world,” who uses her beauty to please men in power.10 Fox critiques such feminist interpretations by pointing out that the book does not teach compliance with patriarchy; rather, “it teaches that even a stereotypical woman in a world of laughably stereotypical males is capable of facing the ultimate national crisis and diverting the royal power to her own ends” (emphasis original).11 Although Esther may start out as a sexual stereotype, she develops into a leader within her religious community, upon whose authority Purim still stands.

This episode between Vashti and Xerxes suggests that by all human reasoning, Esther should have ended up like her predecessor—banished from the center of power and unable to exert significant influence. That she actually succeeds in outwitting Haman and reversing his decree is almost a miracle. Other women in the Bible are renown because they were the mothers of sons who became great in Israel (e.g., Sarah, Rebecca, Hannah). The only other book of the Bible named for a woman is Ruth, a Gentile, whose role in biblical history was to give birth to an ancestor of King David. In contrast, Esther is renown because her political acumen saved her people and on her authority a religious holiday was proclaimed, which has been celebrated for more than two thousand years. The opportunity for Esther to use royal power to her own ends was possible because of the manipulating way power was wielded in the Persian court. This is precisely what the author is revealing in this episode of the king with his seven advisors making Persian “law” to deal with Vashti’s disobedience.

Rather than affirming patriarchy, Fox sees the author of Esther himself as “something of a protofeminist” because of the book’s sustained interest in the sexual politics of the Persian court.12 He observes that as the author tells it, the story is not aligned to the men’s side in this conflict. The king’s decree that every man should be the ruler in his own home is not an affirmation of patriarchy, but a cynical commentary on the character of leadership in the Persian court. Indeed, the author portrays the demand of the men in power for the respect of the women as self-defeating. Memucan’s view of respect and how to get it reveals the inner workings of Persian power as brute force, fueled by the need to control. He fears female “disrespect” (v. 18) and apparently believes respect can be acquired through the brute force of a royal decree.

However, such a tactic is hollow and self-defeating, for if a man has to command a woman to respect him, then whatever “respect” is so rendered loses its meaning. Those who can gain respect and obedience only by holding enough power to command it live with the constant anxiety of losing it. Far from affirming a brutish patriarchy, the author is cynical about the Persian masculine ego that will use the full power of the empire to alleviate its own personal anxieties. The author is cynical about the powers of this world. Although the Persian king and his officials hold such power, with this episode the author questions if they are really ever in control. Is their word truly irrevocable? In his description of how Vashti’s defiance was handled, the author is mocking the inner weakness of the outwardly most powerful empire of that time.

Moreover, as Fox points out in his critique of feminist interpretations, the parody of male dominance is told from “a Jewish—not a feminist or even specifically female—perspective.”13 This episode should be understood not as an attack on the male gender in general, but as an exposé of the political motivations that characterize the ungodly powers of the Gentile world—in other words, the world in which God’s chosen people must somehow survive. The worldly power of Persia was wielded at the personal whim of the king’s closest advisors, who manipulated him with great skill. The well-ordered machine of the Persian empire, structured ostensibly on “law and justice,” is shown here to be actually driven by the megalomaniac needs of the king for glory and the insecurity of the most powerful men in the empire. In this scene, Persian “law” is made up on the spot and in accordance with the personal interests of the king and his seven close advisors. The irrevocable law of the king that went out to the ends of the empire originated in Memucan’s personal anxiety over Vashti’s disobedience. Is this any way to run an empire?

Contemporary Significance

THE DANGER OF absolute power. This scene in 1:13–22 is an inside look at just what makes the world go round. Law and justice may be the public ideal of every great government, but people in power, compelled by their own fears and anxieties, all too often abuse the power with which they have been entrusted. Absolute power held by flawed leaders is a terrifying scenario.

The stewardship of power is a major theme running throughout the Bible. Esther 1:13–22 exposes what went on under the pretense of law and justice in the inner councils of one of the most powerful of the Persian kings. The tendency to abuse power under the rationale of the good of those governed is certainly not a problem limited to ancient society. Every period of human history has been marked by those who have risen to positions of power and who have exposed their personal flaws, which in turn led to reigns of terror.

One has only to mention names from recent world history, such as Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler, to bring to mind the terrors wrought by unchecked worldly power. Mass graves throughout Siberia filled with skulls riddled with bullet holes attest to Stalin’s Great Purge of the 1930s. The horrific memories of tens of thousands of survivors of the gulags and concentration camps of Europe during Hitler’s regime are evidence that the chilling biblical tale of threatened genocide under Xerxes is all too historically probable. The failure of Stalin’s ideology evidenced by the collapse of the communist government in the Soviet Union has left a new criminal class to oversee this tumultuous time of transition and to determine who will now benefit from the nation’s limited resources.

A quick scan of newspaper headlines in recent years shows political leaders around the globe who have fallen to the depraved temptations of dictatorial power. Marcos in the Philippines, Noriega in Panama, Khomeini in Iran, Hussein in Iraq, Deng Xiaoping in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and Idi Amin in Uganda are but a few of the many names of powerful leaders in our times involved in varying degrees of graft and violence to satisfy a personal lust for power.

Because of the checks and balances structure of our government, the United States has been spared dictatorship, but it has nevertheless seen its share of the corruption of leadership with the resignation of Richard Nixon, discussions of the moral failures of John F. Kennedy, and the continuing blight of ethical and moral allegations against the Clinton White House. American agencies such as the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. have come under suspicion of abusing the power and prerogatives that were put in place to serve the American people.

Big business in corporate America often lacks the checks and balances of government structure that, at least in principle, is intended to limit the power of any one individual. A lack of accountability permits corporations to exploit its employees, to cover up sexual harassment in the workplace, to manipulate stockholders, to engage in price gouging, and to buy political influence in Washington.

Even the Christian church is sadly not immune to the misuse of power by spiritual leaders. The Roman Catholic Church has been plagued by accusations and confessions of the sexual improprieties of priests who misuse their power over parishioners, especially children. Protestant leadership has similar problems with the corrosive effect of power, as the fall of televangelists Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert and as the rise of “Christian” cults such as the Branch Davidians have so sadly demonstrated.

The Bible itself is full of examples of leaders who were not worthy of the power they held. The Lord made Solomon king of Israel to “maintain justice and righteousness” (1 Kings 10:9), but even Solomon had personal flaws that compromised his reign. The authors of Kings and Chronicles wrote to show the Jewish nation that the reason they went into Exile was because even Israel’s kings, starting with Saul, had done the same things as pagan kings, disobeying the covenant with God and bringing its curses on the nation. Even Israel’s greatest king, King David, on whose throne a perfect king would one day reign, used his power for adultery and murder (2 Sam. 11–12). Both Scripture and the newspaper concur that power has always and everywhere had a corrupting effect on those who yield to the temptation to use it for their own ends, no matter how just and reasonable those ends may at first appear. History has shown that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The use of power by Jesus Christ. Only a king with perfect character is worthy of absolute power. Only a perfect king can wield power with true law and justice. God, the eternal king, both omnipotent and holy, is the ultimate author of the book of Esther, who alone can justly expose the fatal flaws of the world’s greatest leaders because only he wields absolute power with moral perfection. The New Testament teaches that Jesus, the Son of God incarnate as the Son of Man, has been crowned King of kings and given dominion over all worldly powers. In the Gospels we read that it is Satan who empowers the kingdoms of the world with their splendor and that he tempted even Jesus to use his power for personal ends (Matt. 4:8–10):

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ ”

The nature of Jesus’ omnipotent rule in submission to God contrasts sharply with the way the world yields its power for the satisfaction of personal lust.

Jesus’ disciples carried within themselves the human flaw of a lust for personal power. They argued which of them was the greatest as they jockeyed for power in what they misunderstood would be a worldly kingdom. Jesus critiqued and corrected their understanding of leadership in Matthew 20:25–28 (cf. Mark 10:35–45; Luke 22:24–30):

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The King of kings condemns the type of leadership exemplified in Xerxes’ court and by the countless kings, presidents, and world leaders since. As a backdrop for the story of the salvation of God’s people in the Persian period, the author of the book of Esther provides an example of the type of worldly leadership Jesus condemned: The rulers of the Gentiles were indeed lording it over the people of their empire and exercising their authority to demand a respect that they feared would not otherwise be forthcoming. In stark contrast, the leadership of Jesus was motivated not by his own personal fears and anxieties, but by the needs of those he governs as King of the universe.

The Gospel of John replaces the instruction on servant leadership found in the Synoptic Gospels with the example of Jesus’ washing the feet of his disciples (John 13). The recollection of that moment served to explain by example the character of Jesus’ kingship. His servant kingship extended all the way to death on the cross (cf. Phil. 2:5–8)—the lowliest form of execution at that time—in order to set his people free from the tyranny of Satan, who empowers the principalities of this world.

Power and leadership in marital relationships. The author of Esther uses the confrontation between Vashti and Xerxes to illustrate the tyrannical leadership of the Persian king and his closest advisors. Because the author chose an illustration that involved husbands and wives in the Persian empire, it is appropriate to consider the issue of power and leadership in that same social setting today. Both Esther 1:13–22 and Ephesians 5:21–33 discuss wives’ respect for their husbands, but the difference between these passages in how wifely respect is attained is the difference between darkness and light. Ephesians 5 instructs Christians:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church—for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband (emphasis added).

In Esther 1:13–22, respect is demanded from the Persian wives by order of royal decree; in Ephesians 5, respect is to be the response of a woman toward a man who loves her as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. The placement of the NIV section break in Ephesians 5 between verses 21 and 22 is unfortunate because it divides what is one sentence in the Greek and obscures that the instructions for wives and husbands are given within the context of submitting to one another out of reverence to Christ. What is portrayed in worldly idiom as a battle between the sexes in Esther is recast in this New Testament principle of reciprocity to be a mutual submission of the wife and the husband to each other out of reverence for Christ. The wife and the husband are to serve each other, perhaps in gender-differentiated ways, but with both emulating the self-denying servanthood of their Lord Jesus Christ.

This same principle of reciprocity in marriage for the sake of Christ is found in 1 Peter 2:13–14; 3:1–2, 7:

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. . . .

Wives, in the same way [i.e., for the Lord’s sake] be submissive to your husbands so that, if any of them do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behavior of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives. . . .

Husbands, in the same way [i.e., for the Lord’s sake] be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.

In his NIV Application Commentary on this passage Scot McKnight includes an anecdote that well illustrates the contemporary significance of Esther 1:13–22 as viewed in light of the New Testament. In a private conversation on wifely submission, McKnight recounts what a well-known evangelical scholar said:

I believe in a wife submitting to her husband, but I don’t believe the husband ever has the right to demand it. In fact, I know that when I am worthy of submission, my wife submits; and when I am unworthy of it, she does not. My responsibility as a husband is to be worthy. (emphasis added)14

How different is to be the attitude of the Christian man toward his wife compared to that of the men of the Persian court!

According to statements entered in the Congressional Record documenting the need for legislation against domestic violence, every fifteen seconds in the United States a woman is beaten by her husband or boyfriend. Four women die every day from the attack.15 This form of violence costs employers between three and five billion dollars per year, because the abused woman typically is late for work at least five times a month, leaves work early at least as often, and misses at least three full days of work per month.16

In a society where such domestic violence pervades even Christian homes, the church must not allow its biblical teaching on marriage to be misunderstood as a doctrine of male dominance that justifies the abuse of domestic power or that tones down the husband’s responsibility for self-sacrifice for the good of his wife. In teaching wifely submission to counteract what has been perceived as an unbiblical feminist agenda in our society, the church has inadvertently encouraged the dangerous belief in the absolute headship of the husband in the home. For some men with a domineering temperament, this becomes a license to assert themselves and demand obedience, including conjugal submission, even if it means resorting to violence.

The author of Esther suggests that by using a royal decree to demand respect and obedience from their wives, Xerxes and his closest advisors were not worthy of it and that they were not above misusing the tremendous power they held. If they used their power to demand the respect and submission of their own wives, to what further misuse of power would they stoop?

The scene in Esther 1 forms a context in which the salvation of God’s people from the threats of worldly power is to be understood. The contemporary significance of this passage calls Christians to be worthy of the personal power that each of us holds by wielding that power as Jesus wielded his. Whether as a husband or wife in the privacy of our homes, as a spiritual leader in the church, as CEO of a large corporation, or as the head of state of a great nation, we are responsible to resist the temptation of misusing our power for the satisfaction of ungodly lust in any of its forms.