Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [113]
Probably inspired by a Persian court tale, it is not a “historical” book and it has the feel of a Hebrew Cinderella. Apart from the name of the king in the story, “Ahasuerus,” who is most likely the Persian ruler Xerxes I (486-465 BCE), there is no evidence linking the take to authentic Persian history, and it was probably written sometime after 200 BCE by an anonymous author.
PLOT SUMMARY: ESTHER
The Persian king Ahasuerus gives a grand banquet at his capital, Susa. In his cups, Ahasuerus decides to display his beautiful queen, Vashti. But Vashti, apparently uninterested in being put on display like a prize heifer, refuses to attend. The king issues a decree that all women must obey their husbands (once again, we know a man wrote that!), and Vashti is deposed as queen. Deciding a new wife is in order, the king orders all the beautiful, young virgins of the kingdom—the Persian empire then spread from India to Egypt—collected for what is essentially a massive beauty contest.
Concealing her Jewish identity, the beautiful Esther, a young woman brought up by her cousin Mordecai, is selected to be the new queen of Persia. Esther and Mordecai, then help foil a plot against the king’s life. But Cousin Mordecai refuses to bow in deference to the king’s chancellor, Haman. Infuriated at this show of disrespect, the enraged Haman determines to seek revenge on the Jewish Mordecai by eliminating all the Jews in the empire, the first anti-Semitic pogrom in history. He persuades the king to decree death to a “certain people” who keep their own laws.
Learning of Haman’s plot to destroy the Persian Jews, Mordecai prompts Esther to invite Ahasuerus and Haman to a banquet. There she tells King Ahasuerus that she is under threat of death from the king’s decree, and that it is Haman’s doing. The horrified king rescinds his decree and orders Haman and his ten sons to be hanged on the very gallows that had been set up for the Jews. Mordecai is promoted to chancellor, and the Jews are given license to take revenge on their enemies in the empire. Esther’s triumph is celebrated in the Jewish festival called Purim, a holiday with roots in an ancient agricultural festival celebrating the arrival of spring.
THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT
JOB
Job feels the rod,
Yet blesses God.
—THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER, 1688
Then Satan answered the Lord, “Does Job fear God for nothing? Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 1:9-11)
*Why does God make bets with Satan?
One of eleven books in the third section of the Hebrew Bible collected as Writings, Job is a familiar yet widely misunderstood story that sets out to explain the mystery of why the righteous must suffer. Or in modern terms, why bad things happen to good people. Based on an ancient folktale set in the land of Uz in the desert regions to Israel’s southeast, it is about a saintly man—never identified as a Jew—who suffers unthinkable pain and tragedy after Satan challenges God to a bet. While the precise date of its composition is unknown, Job supposedly dates from the time of the Exile in Babylon or soon after the Return to Jerusalem. As Karen Armstrong points out in A History of God, “After the exile, one of the survivors used this old legend to ask fundamental questions about the nature of God and his responsibility for the sufferings of humanity.” (p. 65)
Written when Jewish society was seen as divided between the pious and the unfaithful, the book does not set out to explain the problem of evil and disease in the world, but specifically addresses why righteous believers must suffer if God is truly just. It is a question that appears elsewhere in Hebrew Scriptures (several Psalms and certain prophets raise it, for instance) and has troubled not only Jewish thinkers but people in many cultures and times, before and since. A Babylonian poem called