ESTHER WAS A POWERFUL WOMAN. She rose to the top of her profession. She faced and helped avert the potential genocide of her people. She played “office politics” with the best of them. And she became rich beyond her wildest dreams. Although her beauty was the reason she became part of the king’s harem, she achieved all this without any of the advantages of aristocratic birth, well-placed friends, inherited wealth, or social prestige. In fact, she did it in spite of being born a member of an outcast people whose future rested on the whims of rulers more interested in personal aggrandizement than serving their people well.
So reading the book of Esther should give us clues to becoming powerful, right? We should read Esther for the same reasons we read Katherine Graham’s Personal History (Vintage, 1998) or Katherine Hepburn’s Me: Stories of My Life (Ballantine, 1996). We should put out a popular version of the book of Esther—Esther As CEO—or someone should analyze Esther’s story and create The Five Rules of Business Success According to Esther. In a day and age when women long for an equitable place in a society that values power and wealth, we should turn to this biblical model for guidance.
We could do that, of course. It wouldn’t be the first time a biblical story has been used for secular ends: for example, King David as the prototype CEO. It wouldn’t be the first time that cultural fashion turned to biblical models for inspiration: for example, Jesus Christ as superstar or political revolutionary. Esther’s story seems ready-made for such adaptation.
But as Karen Jobes shows so well throughout the pages of this commentary, to use Esther in this way—Esther as ultra-feminist, Esther as politician par excellence, or even Esther as moral role model—would be to miss badly the real story of the book. Esther was at best an inconsistent feminist; her political skills and judgment have been repeatedly questioned, and her moral behavior simply will not pass muster when stacked against almost any modern moral theory.
Yet Esther was a powerful woman, and her story is without a doubt both an inspiration and one of the great teaching resources of the church. What is the key to unlocking the great lessons of this book? It is this: Read correctly, the lead character of the book of Esther is not even Esther, but God. Esther should definitely get an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress—but the conclusions one draws from the book don’t work unless God plays the lead.
To be sure, this reading is a bit difficult to advocate since God is not mentioned anywhere in the book. Martin Luther, in fact, challenged the book’s proper place in the canon because of this fact. But God is the lead character, no doubt. The great lesson of Esther is that it is the story of God’s keeping promises in spite of the political configuration of the world. It is not an end-justifies-the-means argument. It is not a model of how a powerful woman should work her way up the corporate ladder. It is not a handbook on Christian leadership.
The story of Esther is perfect guidance for us “when we find ourselves in a situation where right and wrong are not so clearly defined and every choice we have seems to be a troubling mixture of good and bad” (p. 114). It is perfect inspiration for us when we find ourselves in situations we never sought, never planned for, and don’t think we have the gifts to succeed at. It tells us what to do: Trust these situations to the Lord and move on.
There are no books, secular or biblical, that give us one, two, three-step procedures for what to do in tough situations. But all sixty-six books of the Bible rest their cases on the fact that God is the lead character of the universe, and that our initial response to that and to all the situations confronting us is prayerful acknowledgment that God rules.
Terry C. Muck