Bible Survey - Esther

We are studying Esther, and kind of unusually, we've just got two sides of one sheet of paper. Usually I'm handing you something a lot more extensive, but there's a reason for that. I'll want to kind of go more through the details. Kind of like we did with Ruth, the book of Ruth, the story is just fascinating.

So here's the book of Esther, and I want to give a little bit of background, and that is, Randy's been going through Nehemiah and Ezra, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Ezra and Nehemiah talk about the return to the land of Israel, right? And Esther is the one Bible book that talks about the Jews that stayed, right?

These are the Jews that stayed once Babylon then was overtaken by the Persian Empire, and so this is the one account of the Jews that stayed. Now, some things that ended up continuing to have an impact on into the New Testament era were, one, is by the New Testament times, two-thirds of the Jews lived outside of the land of Israel. So this is a good portion of those Jews who stayed outside the land of Israel. Another thing is is that those Jews that came back as well as those that stayed all had Aramaic then as their native language.

So you had Aramaic commonly being spoken. That's why in the New Testament, even by New Testament times, you still have a lot of Aramaic coming out. Jesus said on the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? That was in Aramaic. Maranatha, Lord come quickly, that's Aramaic. So there's still a lot of Aramaic left over from that.

And one other thing, If you were one of the disciples and you spoke Aramaic, where could you go outside of Israel where you could find a lot of Jews who spoke Aramaic? In the old Persian Empire. So a natural place to go would be to go here to the old Persian Empire and to then be able to tell them the Gospel. and say, I saw Christ resurrected with my own eyes, I touched Him with my own hands. You could easily imagine them going from Israel over to the old Persian Empire and speaking Aramaic, and that's why a number of the apostles went there first. A number of them went there first. Now we have the Book of Esther. Let me go through some slides here. Here's some cool things to show you.

Here is the Persian Empire, pretty extensive, going into Macedonia, the edge of Greece there, on the northwestern part, down into Egypt, and actually including a part of Ethiopia. there and that the Nile River continues down and actually comes out of Uganda. We'd cross over where the Lake Victoria dumps into the Nile. Every time I'd go land in Tebbe and then go over to Mbale, we'd cross over where the Nile comes out. And then you see it goes up north into even what's Afghanistan. And you see that, and then all the way over to India on the east. So a pretty large area. So that was the Persian Empire, pretty extensive.

Imagine, how do you manage that big an area? I mean, you can't just call somebody on the cell phone and say, hey, you know, you need to up the tax rate a little bit out there, you know. If you have to send a message, I mean, even putting somebody on a horse is going to take a while to get word out, right? So it's quite a task. So there's the Persian Empire.

Susa or Shushan, and by the way, why do you have differences of pronunciation like that? And we'll see it here in the book of Esther. Yeah, you have language differences, right? Language differences. And so going from one language to another, because of the sounds that are included in the language, you'll have, things will change. And we'll see here as we go into Esther that that's the case. So Susah is one of the language pronunciations, but also Shushan, is another pronunciation and that's the way it's spelled here in the Book of Esther.

So you have Susa and actually Persepolis and Pasargadae were two other capitals. So the capital of the Persian Empire moved at different times. At this time it was at Susa. So that's when we got boxed there. Here is an aerial of ancient Susa or Shusha. So that's the aerial photo, and right off to there, see that? That little structure looks like this.

This is one of the places that's claimed to be Daniel's tomb. The tomb of the prophet Daniel. Now, before you get too excited, it's one of the places that's claimed to be Daniel's tomb, so a few different places. But what's interesting is that even the people that live there, and this is a Muslim area, have a high regard for Daniel. Isn't that interesting? A high regard for Daniel.

So here is another shot looking at the ancient Susa. Now, the other thing that came out of Esther was the Feast of Purim, and it is most Halloween-ish of the various festivals. So it wasn't one of the seven feasts that Moses instituted. And the last one to be instituted was Hanukkah, between the Old and New Testament times. So here is one after the Feast of Moses. So Moses instituted seven, and with Purim you have eight, and with Hanukkah you have nine festivals that they observe. And Jesus, John 10, 22, and 23, Jesus observed Hanukkah. But here is Pyram and they'll typically have very Halloween-ish kinds of observances and celebrations. And they will have parades and noisemakers and things to eat and all that sort of thing.

There have been several different movies since 1999, several different movies made, built around the story here that we'll be looking at this morning with Esther. And this is One Night with the King was one of them. This is Tiffany DuPont played Esther.

And also some good background resources. There's some very good background resources. One is Dr. Yamauchi, who just retired as a history professor, but he wrote Persia and the Bible, a thick book, but he's got Esther all referenced in there as to the places that it applies. Zondervan-Ulstray Bible Backgrounds Commentary, Volume 3. also really good on background in the Archaeological Study Bible.

So there's a few, you know, really good references that give a lot of background in history there. Okay, so let's step our way through this here. On the first page of your handout, what you see there is the events described in Esther occurred between 483 and 473 BC.

You basically know how to nail it. and they fit between chapters six and seven of Ezra, between the first return led by Zerubbabel and the second led by Ezra. So at any rate, the location right between chapters six and seven and the dates, those are pretty well nailed there.

You have the first, the chronology is first Ahasuerus, and by the way, there's another one of those pronunciation things. What is Ahasuerus' other name? Xerxes, right? So again, we go between one language and another, you end up getting different pronunciations. So Xerxes is the other name that you'll hear that's Ahasuerus. Here's an example. We say Jesus, right? And actually in the Greek, it's Yesus, right? Or sometimes even Yesu. So different languages will have a different pronunciation.

So we have that. In chapter 2, verse 16, Esther goes to Ahasuerus. And by the way, in the book of Esther, there's ten banquets. And one of them is a half a year long. Probably what was happening is that it was a military strategy meeting that was extensive in time, and so the banquets would accompany these military strategy meetings.

And then Heman, who's the bad guy, he's the villain in the account, casts his lots, and the word lots Hebrew Pirim. So that's where the word Pirim comes from. Pirim means lots. The I am ending is how you show plurals in Hebrew. So Pirim is lots, plural. And then Haman issues a decree and then the date plan for the annihilation of the Jews. This is another satanic plot to wipe out the Jews. Why would Satan want to wipe out the Jews? Jesus is a Jew. That's one thing. Yes. And why else? God's chosen people. These are the people through whom the Savior will come. These are the people through whom the Messiah, who will reign, will come.

These are the people who, with very few exceptions, wrote all the books of the Bible. In the New Testament, Dr. Luke is the only exception. In the Old Testament, probably the only exception might be Job. All the other books of the Bible are written by Jews. So you have revelation from God over about 40 authors over about 1,500 years.

But with a couple exceptions, they're Jewish. So if you wipe out the Jews, you get rid of a lot of spiritual influence. And you shake your fist at God, but guess what? Even though horrible things have happened to the Jews over the centuries, are they an identifiable people?

Yes, they certainly are. As a matter of fact, it would be one of the proofs that the Bible is God's Word, and that the Jews are God's chosen people, is their continued survival. We don't know of any of the descendants of Esau, Jacob's brother. But of Jacob, there are millions. Even after all the persecutions and holocausts that have taken place. Some of them at the hand of the church.

Okay. So here was this date plan for the annihilation of the Jews. Then Mordecai, who is Esther's uncle, issues his decree, and then you have following that in chapters 8 and 9, the day upon which the Jews would defend themselves from attack, and then the 10 sons of Haman executed, the Feast of Piram celebrated, that's in chapter 9, and then 10 is a very brief one to finish it off. So this is over about a decade of time. from 483 to 473 BC. So this all takes place over about a decade of time, this story.

So what we have here, Esther is the one account about the Jews who stayed in Persia while a smaller minority went to Jerusalem in waves. And that the author speaks of King Ahasuerus or Xerxes in the past tense suggests that the book may have been written during the reign of Artaxerxes, next king after, next ruler after. Though Esther does not state who wrote it, possible authors include Ezra, Nehemiah, or Mordecai, or another Jew who knew Mordecai and Esther. Rather amazingly, God is not mentioned in this book. Do you think that's bad? Does that make it bad? There have been people who have questioned it because it doesn't even mention God.

Why would it or should it still be a Bible book if it doesn't mention God? I think that was one of the requirements at the determination of which books were going to be in the Bible, is that it had to have God listed, right? Yes, in the New Testament, there was a different criteria for canon in the Old Testament than the New, right? So you're right, in the New Testament they had different criteria, because you also had a different group had apostles, so it either needed to be written by an apostle or by an associate of the apostles, whereas the Old Testament, the criteria was at the end of the line of prophets, the last one being Malachi, the end of the line of prophets, the books ended. But let's get back to the question, why should Esther be included if God's not in it? I don't know how many other accounts were written about this time.

But specifically, she was definitely a big part, and historically, a big part in saving the Jews, I guess. I mean, her post as an intervention to the king really saved the people that were taking the island. Yeah, otherwise they'd be executed, right? Yeah.

One of the things that shows up, the name of God does not show up in the book, but one of the things that shows up is God's sovereignty. Isn't it interesting how God did critical things over time in what would otherwise be seen as precarious circumstances? You know, Jesus was not, for example, born into some very safe, secure, sure environment, was He? No, instead, here's this guy, and he has to take his wife, who's pregnant, into Bethlehem, and there, in Bethlehem, the baby would be born, and they'd have a tough time finding a place, And then once the baby is born, Herod's going to come in and kill all the babies. So he gets Jesus and his mother out just in time, just in the nick of time to get away from the soldiers.

And they head off to Egypt. It's a precarious situation, right? And this is another precarious time here with the book of Esther. And here is Esther just being kind of the sole instrument for turning things around so that the Jews aren't annihilated. That's just rather extraordinary. So God works in precarious situations and shows his sovereignty in this book. Yeah?

Do you know what tribe she was from? I don't. I don't. Let me see here. She's not in any of the genealogies, right? Yeah, I'm thinking Mordecai, who was her uncle, is identified as of the tribe of Benjamin. Yeah. So because of that, I'd logic it through. If she was her uncle, then she would likely be. One of the things that started to happen is that the Jews, by this time, were starting to lose track of their tribal identity. once they got moved over so that there is a possibility that somehow she was not, but implying from Mordecai that would have made her of the tribe of Benjamin.

Were women listed in the genealogies? It was very interesting. It was not customary to list women in the genealogies until later. But initially, it generally kept them out. Key women are mentioned in some of the genealogies in the New Testament. You have Rahab and Ruth being examples, Bathsheba. But generally, they would follow the line of the man. Okay, so let's take a look here. We have Esther at a glance, and I think that kind of graphically gives us the idea.

What first has to happen, how did kings and emperors in those days do relations with wives and women and all that? What was the standard practice? Certainly beauty was a big thing, okay? Pardon? Yeah, in other words, what they would typically have is a harem. Among the ancient cultures, they'd have a harem that they would keep. So here is a kind of a pool of women. And sometimes that group of ladies would be very large.

David and Solomon were not supposed to do so. But do you remember how many wives and concubines Solomon had? A thousand. I don't know how you keep track of all those. It's like, what's your name again? Where do all these kids keep coming from? This would be a little hard to keep track of.

So they had this harem that they would work with and then from that they would select a wife. Was it for political reasons as well, like with Solomon? Yes, in other words, one of the reasons for having so many, and sometimes they'd go ahead and do plurality of marriage as well. That was not continued, by the way, into the Roman culture, but in the Persian culture, yes. One of the reasons for doing so is for political purposes. In order to make sure that I don't fight with you, I'm going to take one of your ladies and have her in my harem and that kind of thing and that'll keep the peace between us. So sometimes it was done for political purposes. And Solomon, of course, cautioned not to do that because the foreign wives would also bring in foreign religion.

And that was a problem. Since I don't understand too much about the Professor, why was she there? Okay, let's take a look at it. We'll start stepping our way through it and we'll see what's happening. How did the Jews get there in the first place? How did the Jews get over to this... Let's go back here. So here's Jerusalem way over on the west end and then here she is in Susa.

And what had happened is under the Babylonians, the Babylonian approach was take the people you capture and start with the leadership, but basically get everybody living in Babylon. Keep them under our view and keep them under our thumb. Keep them close. And so that was the Babylonian strategy. The Babylonians fell to the Persians.

And this is something very interesting. The Persians had a religion of Zoroastrianism. And one of the key doctrinal points in Zoroastrianism is you don't take people from their homeland. Isn't that amazing? So as soon as the Persians came in, the Persians issue an edict you can go back home. And matter of fact, it made them furious that the Babylonians had relocated people. Isn't that interesting?

So that was a part of their religion. So that's why Esther and all these Jews were located there in the area of Babylon and Susa and all that. That's how the Jews got there in the first place. And so Esther was simply, because of her beauty, was one who was brought into the harem.

But the wife, and that's where the story comes up here, the wife that was there present was Queen Vashti. Queen Vashti. So Vashti is now the queen, and where's the opportunity for Esther? Yeah, Vashti gets herself in trouble with the king, and she gets booted out of her position as queen, and there's the opportunity for Esther. And so here is Xerxes, or Ahasuerus, and he's having this gathering, this royal gathering that shows up in the first chapter, and then he gave the order then, I want Queen Vashti here, right? And what does Queen Vashti do?

She refuses. You refuse the order of the king, right? Well, that's very shaming to the king, so he responds by She's out, right? And here is the opportunity for Esther. So in chapter 2 then, Esther becomes the Queen. And it happens how? How does it happen that she becomes the Queen? Anybody know the story here? Yeah, you know, Esther then sees the opportunity and then is the one who is brought in to be Queen. But how does she do that?

How does she happen to come in? an invitation for all the beautiful women? Yes, they're gathering all these women, but think of it, could you, basically at any time, can you just walk into royalty, in the presence of royalty? Can you just walk in? Hi, I'm Vern, can I do that? Right. Let's just take an example. Could I go to the Queen of England and just kind of knock on the front door, say, hey, you know, let's do lunch. Can I do that? In this time, if you came into the room and the king did not hold out his scepter, you're toast. You're toast.

And so that's why Esther's statement, seeing the opportunity, but also knowing that this is a bold and in fact risky move, she says, if I perish, I perish. So she realizes that this is one of those things, I have a great opportunity, but I also might die. So great opportunity, great risk. She might die in the process.

Now, towards the end of chapter two then, with Esther becoming the new queen, Mordecai discovers a plot. Mordecai is her uncle. Mordecai had taken her in because her parents had both died. So here's Mordecai who has the opportunity to come into this royal area. It says, within the king's gate.

Esther had not yet revealed her kindred and her people. Isn't it interesting? She hadn't revealed to the king, hey, I'm a Jew. All the king knew was, hey, this is Esther, and boy, is she gorgeous. But wouldn't he know? I mean, with Mordecai and the fact that the Jews were there, I mean, why didn't he know?

Well, I think one of the things is the acculturation. They bring the girls in, here they are, part of the The harem, you know, they've gathered all these ones in and the criteria is, are they beautiful? And then, of course, there's the adaptation to the culture of the time. And one of the things that would happen is they would train up these girls and dress them and do everything so that they would be attractive to this Persian king. So a lot of the individual culture would be put aside. So you don't know that she's Jewish automatically. She knows. As a matter of fact, what is Esther's Jewish name? Hadassah. So Esther is not her Jewish name. This is her Persian given name and it comes from Ishtar. So that's Esther.

So what you have here is Haman develops this plot which comes to the fore in chapter 3. So Haman develops this conspiracy against the Jews and so he's trying to get this put forward to the king So that the Jews will be wiped out. So that the Jews will be wiped out. And as a matter of fact, it says, chapter 3, verse 8, Then Haman said to King Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of your kingdom. Their laws are different from all the other people's, and they do not keep the king's laws. Therefore, it is not fitting for the king to let them remain.

Yes. Why did he just say Jews? Interesting, huh? Yeah. Why would he not reveal that these are Jews? Because of the hatred towards the Jews? Yeah, in other words, if he just says, there is a people, and they're doing this, and they don't keep your laws, and you don't identify, okay, it's the Jews, it's the ones from here, how is that an advantage to Haman? Yeah, one is if he doesn't identify them except by their behavior, then he can avoid any kind of connections that might work against him.

He's trying to be politically correct. Also, here's Esther, and she's not revealed to him that she's Jewish. But there could be an influence there. So he's being very crafty in how he's carrying this out. You could extend that. If there were people that were sympathetic to the Jews, and not Jewish, but he could improve those people too. He left it pretty broad as to those who are not following him. He had free reign.

Yes, and following the laws of the Persians was very important to the rulers. Boy, you better follow our laws and that's the way it is. So that was very important to them and so to have these people who are chronically following some other laws and not listening to the Persian ruler, that's bad. Isn't that the same principle that they had with Daniel and also Shadrach and Abednego? I mean they were not following the king's edicts even though that was Babylon. And so they were punished for that?

I mean this was a principle back then. Again, it goes back to the king. What the king said, you did, regardless of who you were. That's right. You better do what the king says. And so he's not wanting to identify them by their ethnicity, but only by their rebellious behavior, right? These people don't listen to you, they do their own thing, they've got their own laws, and they don't listen to you. get them irked. Yes, it wasn't an order you must go. It was an order you could go.

And so actually, the number of Jews who went back to Israel was a minority, not a majority. That's one of the reasons why by New Testament times, with a few different exiles and moving around, two-thirds of the Jews lived outside of Israel, in other places, scattered different places.

Oh, more than that. Yeah, more than that. And as a matter of fact, if you stayed, it was a lot longer than that. So, 586 BC, and we're talking here a century later, and these Jews are still there. So, yeah, they've been there a long time. And that 586 was the last deportation They had earlier waves of deportation, like with Daniel and his friends. Yeah. Wasn't that one of the complaints when they were going back to Jerusalem that a lot of the people didn't want to leave their homes and their copper? Yeah. You know, you think about it, you know, it was a big deal.

Okay, now we got all relocated here and we've gotten our life established here. And now I got to go and uproot, you know, myself. A lot of Jews just didn't want to do it. I've gotten relocated here, and we've got a house, and we've got all our stuff, and we've got a business going. This is a real pain to have to pull up stakes and go back and re-establish ourselves. And besides that, what's there in Jerusalem is a mess. I've got a life here that's established, and houses, and possessions, and I know all my neighbors, and I go back to Jerusalem, you've got people opposing us, and the temple's ripped up, and the walls are ripped up, and it's a mess. It's going to be a lot of work, after I travel a long time. So it's, for a lot of the Jews, it's not worth it. I'm staying here. I'm staying here.

So now we have, here's Haman, comes up with this conspiracy, and then chapter 4. Esther, who is now already queen, agrees to help the Jews and to defeat Haman's conspiracy against the Jews. So, who are the players here? We've got Haman as the villain, and he's developed this conspiracy based on behavior not identifying the ethnicity. Based on their supposed rebellious behavior, because they have their own set of laws. He doesn't identify who it is, but just the behavior, and he gets the king to assign to him the duty of taking care of these people with the bad behavior, with their own set of laws.

So then, Esther steps up and she is going to turn the situation around. In chapter 5, she holds another one of these banquets, I say the ten banquets, in this. So she holds this banquet. So she puts on her royal robes and sits in the inner court of the king's palace across from the king's house while the king sat in his royal throne in the royal house facing the entrance of the house. So here Esther then brings this issue Esther then brings this issue to the king. In verse 3, the king said to her, What do you wish, Queen Esther? What is your request?

It shall be given to you up to half my kingdom. And by the way, in ancient times, that was the way you made kind of an open promise, up to half the kingdom. And that was even done Remember when John the Baptist was beheaded, the offer was up to half my kingdom. So that was kind of a customary maximum offer. Up to half my kingdom.

So Esther answered, if it pleases the king, let the king and Haman come today to the banquet that I prepared for him. We're going to get Haman here, who's been delegated this authority to deal with the Jews, and we're going to bring this thing out in the open. So, in verse 8, If I have found favor in the sight of the king, and if it pleases the king to grant my petition and fulfill my request, then let the king and Haman come to the banquet which I will prepare for them, and tomorrow I will do as the king has said. So she sets up this banquet in which she's going to bring the truth out about Haman and what he's proposed to do.

So it comes out there at the end of chapter 5, and then the tables get turned. In chapter 6, the king honors Mordecai. Haman is set aside. And so now Mordecai, Esther's uncle, gets to have a place of honor in the king's court. And in chapter 7, Haman is hanged instead of Mordecai.

Now, when we say hanged, it's not as we typically think. What do we think of when we think of hanging? We think of a noose or a rope, right? That would be our concept. But what they called hanging was basically they would put up a pole and just impale somebody right on the pole. So that's what it means here by hanging. Not the noose, but just impale them up on a pole. So, yes?

It wasn't really a matter of wiping out all the Jews. It was a matter of wiping out all the Jews in this particular location, right? Because a lot of the Jews were back in Jerusalem. You know, open season on any Jews anywhere. Because remember, what was he looking for? He didn't talk about the ethnicity, he talked about the rebellious behavior. So anybody, anywhere, who showed this rebellious behavior would be a candidate. Anywhere in the whole empire. So he had the right to go back to the Jerusalem area as well?

Yeah. killing back there as well? Yeah, oh yeah. I mean obviously it would have started there around Susa, but yeah, he would have had free reign to go everywhere in the Persian Empire and wipe out the Jews. Yes? So Jerusalem is part of the Persian Empire? Yeah, you see here's Jerusalem, it's part of the Persian Empire, it's on the way down to Egypt and Ethiopia.

And the Haman was Think about it, if Haman comes up with this little account, he's informing the king about this rebellious movement, Haman would have been seen as, hey, I'm kind of an intelligence guy, and I'm giving you a key secret that's going to keep you in power.

Yeah, and the appearance would be that Haman is a very well-informed guy, that he's got his finger on the pulse of what's going on, and he's detected this thing that's threatening the king, and so the king could just turn around and assign to him, well, you know who these people are, take care of them, right? And so the king then hands off the authority for Haman, who obviously knows who these people are and where they are, gives the authority to Haman to just carry this thing out and get rid of these people. Yeah? What did Haman gain by, what was his idea of getting all these people out? Yeah, let's think about that. What would be the advantage to Haman? Why would he be motivated to do this? What would be some of his motivations for doing this? Okay, his own personal advancement. One is doing this would put him in a position of power.

But that's the other thing is if you get rid of the people, who gets their stuff? Right? And so this would make Haman wealthy. He'd have wealth and power. He'd be looked upon as Xerxes or Ahasuerus, a right-hand man, a very trusted fellow, and so there would be some advantages to him. Again, who gets all the stuff? Once you kill the people, there's everything in their houses and you've got all their goods. Yeah, there would be power and wealth for him. in carrying this out.

As a matter of fact, the more he carried it out with, the greater the power and wealth. So how many, do you know how many he got? He actually didn't get to carry it out, right? So his plot, his plan was... His plot failed because through Mordecai and Esther's work... He had to have started. He had to have begun. Yeah, so far as we know, he hadn't carried anything out yet. It was surfaced early enough that he hadn't carried anything out yet, so far as we can tell from the account. Yes?

How did Esther convince the king? This was bringing things up at the banquet, and where this comes up, at the end of chapter 5, Chapter 5 verse 9, So Haman went out that day joyful with a glad heart, but when Haman saw Mordecai in the king's gate and did not stand or tremble before him, he was filled with indignation against Mordecai. Nevertheless, Haman restrained himself and went home, and he sent and called for his friends and his wife Zeresh. Then Haman told them of his great riches, the multitude of his children, and all the ways in which the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and servants of the king. Moreover, Haman said, Besides, Queen Esther invited no one but me to come in with the king to the banquet that she prepared, and tomorrow I am again invited by her along with the king. But he would have had to have known that Esther was a Jew, too, if he had the intelligence.

Yeah, what's interesting is, at least at first, she didn't surface that. She first gained the position and gained the trust before bringing this out. So she gained his trust and favor first. So he had begun to gain this position, but not carried out anything yet at this point in time.

So it was at this point a conspiracy and a plot, but it had not been executed or carried out in any way. So the hanging gallows, so is it just a platform or is it just a stick, a 15 foot stick? Yeah, the gallow, in other words, it wasn't the hanging gallows that we think of, but they would suspend people up on a pole and hang them up on top of this platform. So he was preparing, but he hadn't actually executed any of it. But what was set up actually ended up being used for him and his sons.

But the attack went forward though. Pardon? The attack on the Jews went forward. And the Jews defended themselves. Oh, yes. Yeah, the Jews defended themselves. Chapter 8 says, Esther saved the Jews on that day, 8 verse 1, on that day King Ahasuerus gave Queen Esther the house of Haman and the enemy of the Jews and Mordecai came before the king for Esther had told how he was related to her.

So finally she revealed, here's how we're related and here's who I am. And these are the people that Heyman had gone against. And basically if you allow Heyman to continue, then I am one of the ones that are... That's right. So she finally surfaced, you know. Haman's out to kill my people, and I'm one of them, so he's out to kill me.

So then it turns around, Haman and his friends and those who were about to carry this out, because he had set up a network, the Jews turn against them, and then they institute the Feast of Purim, a celebration that they had been preserved and they had actually gotten the upper hand over their enemies. And then finally, in chapter 10, Mordecai's advancement in the kingdom. It says, for Mordecai, last verse, for Mordecai the Jew was second to King Ahasuerus and was great among the Jews and well received by the multitude of his brethren, seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to all his kindred. So here, Mordecai was instrumental along with Esther in preserving the Jews. And one of the things that comes out here, again, God is not mentioned in the whole book, but what you see is God's sovereignty in preserving the Jewish people through the work of Esther and Mordecai.

Had they not had their place at that time, the Jews would have been wiped out by Haman. I already know that things happen as they happen and that other people have tried to wipe out the Jews and have not succeeded. So even if Haman was allowed to continue, he could have just been another Hitler or another... Yeah, it would have been a holocaust, right? Yep, it would have been a holocaust. So what you have here, continuing today, is the observation of the Feast of Purim, Lotz, as it's called. And so the Jews celebrate that today.

It's because Esther is one of their canonical books. It's the one that is added from the Old Testament, as we call it. They don't call it the Old Testament. By the way, does anybody know what they call the Old Testament? That would be the five books. This would be the Torah. They call it the Tanakh. So they don't call it the Old Testament. They don't refer to it as Old Testament and New Testament like we do. So that's the Tanakh. That's their name.

So they have the Feast of Purim commemorating this event where the Jews were preserved. There have been a number of times when the Jews have been at great risk over the centuries, and even in the 20th century with the Holocaust under Germany. But there have been a number of times when the Jews are at risk, and this was one time that was recorded in the scriptures. Were there other times that you can think of where the Jews were threatened? Moses' time was one of them. Remember what happened so that Moses was put in the basket? The pharaoh said kill all the male babies.

Here we have people pressing their noses here, so we better let it go. Lord, we thank you for the study of this book. We thank you for your sovereignty shown in this book, where you used two well-placed Jews to preserve your people. And we just thank you for your love and care shown in all things. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.