Earlier this year, Jonathan Page of Memorial church in an interview describes pros and cons of following the lectionary during the church calendar year. A benefit of a pre-set path of readings is securing a level of diversity. Rather than returning to readings one is most comfortable with, pastors link in to a pattern which ensures that each week, readings will come from Hebrew Scripture, the New Testament, the Psalms, and the Gospels. This built-in structure creates an element of universality as churches in different geographical areas follow the same readings, and pastors are not faced with the temptation to keep circling around their favorite passages.
However, a drawback of reading the Bible through the lectionary is that so-called minor characters may end up getting short shrift. Instead of reading a book from beginning to end, as readers may well do who follow the daily lectionary, often the passages considered most central, and thus most well-known, form the lectionary text for worship. On this fall schedule, the book of Esther appears once, this upcoming week; later the book of Ruth will be read over the course of two weeks. This has the result that congregations focus on the clearest protagonists, in this case Mordecai and Esther. However, in this case the character Vashti is described as an intriguing counterpart to Esther, and this week I would like to focus on how this character is presented in the text.
The book of Esther stands out in Scripture for having two distinct parts, which a translation into a modern language initially conceals. According to the New Oxford Annotated Bible notes, the Esther manuscript which is written in Hebrew is dated to the Hellenistic period of approximately the fourth-third century BCE, before tension between Jews and Gentiles worsened during the period of the Maccabeans. Because unlike figures such as David and Solomon, the lives of major characters in the text are not confirmed by non-Biblical texts; for example, Persian history does not mention figures such as Vashti and Esther.
For this reason the text is described as a novella, not a text whose original audience would understand it as purporting to record history exactly. Ahasuerus is possibly King Xerxes I, whose wife was Amestris, and no mention of a Vashti or Esther (Hadassah is the Jewish name) is made in Persian royal history. One can conclude that the book of Esther was written to make a point about justice triumphing against all odds, and “. . . paradoxically, the need for the oppressed to act shrewdly and boldly for that justice to prevail” (708 HB). This text reflects the work of a writer familiar with Persian customs and language, yet it does not mention terms central to other Hebrew Scripture: “The Persian king, for instance, is mentioned 190 times, but the God of Israel not once; nor are such basic Jewish themes as the Law, covenant, prayer, dietary regulations, or Jerusalem. Because fate is an acknowledged factor in the story, some readers suggest that God, though hidden, is arranging the events” (708 HB).
Strikingly, when the text was translated into Greek in the Septuagint for Diaspora Jews, 107 verses were added. The added verses are not accepted as canonical by Jews (708 HB). However, a possible motivation for the added verses would be to make the story have a more explicitly religious theme. The Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible lists additions to the Book of Esther here.
Michael Coogan summarizes how these additions change the nature of the original Hebrew text:
“The Greek version of the book of Esther adds repeated references to God guiding events and includes lengthy prayers by Mordecai and Esther, making them both more pious than they are in the Hebrew version. Esther is now an observant Jew, who fears God and keeps his commandments, hates that she sleeps with one who is uncircumsized, and apparently observes the dietary laws” (Coogan, 530, without pg references).
This text plays a major cultural role in modern-day Judaism, serving as the basis for Purim, a holiday that celebrates the deliverance of the Jews from their enemies. Christian communities celebrate Esther as an example of a woman who liberated her people, risking her life by approaching the king without an official invitation. The lectionary passage from this week includes the speech she makes to the king, begging that the lives of her people the Jews be spared:
So the king and Haman went to dine with Queen Esther, and as they were drinking wine on that second day, the king again asked, "Queen Esther, what is your petition? It will be given you. What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be granted."
Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have found favor with you, O king, and if it pleases your majesty, grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request. For I and my people have been sold for destruction and slaughter and annihilation. If we had merely been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept quiet, because no such distress would justify disturbing the king.” (7:1-4).
However the depictions of vengeance against enemies has also been troubling to modern audiences. The letters written as a result of Esther’s speech justify killing of women and children: “By these letters the king allowed the Jews who were in every city to assemble and defend their lives, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, with their children and women, and to plunder their goods . . .” (8:11). According to NOAB, “the bloodthirsty language, however, derives from the story’s symmetric pattern of reversals, not from any historical reality. Furthermore, the Hebrew version of Esther, in contrast to the Greek version, does not view all Gentiles negatively” (HB 708-709).
Finally, an interesting aspect of modern Esther feminist commentary includes a focus on the character of Vashti. The role Vashti plays in the text is ostensibly small: her refusal to appear before the king and his colleagues while they are drinking during a banquet, possibly naked, causes her to lose her position as queen and sets off the chain of events bringing Esther to power. Writers such as Elizabeth Wurtzel see in her refusal to appear as the “entertainment” at a banquet an example of a woman refusing to submit to patriarchal gender norms. In his essay “Purim: Vashti as a Feminist Hero,” Rabbi Arthur Waskow at the Shalom Center writes,
“My own reading of the Megillah is that it is made up of two intertwined jokes -- very powerful, and in one case bloody, but jokes nevertheless. The second one is the one we all have learned -- what Haman wants to do to the Jews is what happens to him, and he brings it on his own head. That's the bloody joke. The FIRST one (it starts earlier in the story) is that Ahasuerus's decision that no woman is going to tell him what to do puts into motion the train of affairs that ends by his doing EXACTLY what Esther tells him to do. Structurally, this is the same joke as the first one.
There is even one Rabbinic midrash (from a solitary forward-looking man) that the Memucan who advises the king to do Vashti in is --- woddayaknow??!! -- really HAMAN!! And indeed the text hints strongly -- see the similarity between the "people scattered throughout the country who obey their own laws" as the Jews and applying this to Memucan's fear of women in the same way -- that anti-Semitism and anti-feminism are deeply intertwined.”
Complete texts for this week’s lectionary include Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22; Psalm 124; James 5:13-20; and Mark 9:38-50.
Sources include The Old Testament: a Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures by Michael Coogan.
Photo credit here.
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