Esther 9: justification for Israeli ‘defence’?
not entirely me
Shipmate
in Kerygmania
I’m not sure if this is the right spot for this & please move if not.
I’ve recently been rereading Esther as it’s an engaging story of female empowerment & also darkly humourous. I had also recommended it to some agnostic/atheists to read as a good new story into the old testament.
Then I hit chapter 9 & recoiled (& messaged friends to say as much for transparency). Each verse seemed to endorse how Israel are currently ‘defending’ Gaza (& not in a way I liked). Am I mis-reading this? How can we put this in a post-Jesus context? To what extent was their response self-defence?
I’ve recently been rereading Esther as it’s an engaging story of female empowerment & also darkly humourous. I had also recommended it to some agnostic/atheists to read as a good new story into the old testament.
Then I hit chapter 9 & recoiled (& messaged friends to say as much for transparency). Each verse seemed to endorse how Israel are currently ‘defending’ Gaza (& not in a way I liked). Am I mis-reading this? How can we put this in a post-Jesus context? To what extent was their response self-defence?
Comments
So, serious question...
How invested are you in the bible being the Word Of God? Because, as a non-Word Of Godder, I can easily think that the book contains some good storytelling, some reprehensible jingoism, and no neccessary contradiction between the two.
Again, that's speaking as someone who doesn't think the bible is divinely inspired.
(ETA spoilers, DT Admin)
We have placed discussion of the current conflict in Epiphanies because it is such a sensitive issue. I appreciate this is very much framed as a discussion of biblical text, and it can stay here for the moment - but if it starts to develop into a discussion of the war, it will have to close or move.
Doublethink, Admin
Given this, the book can be interpreted more metaphorically, or at least symbolically. The 75,000 can be taken as symbolising a massive and complete victory over evil. From a Christian viewpoint it points to Christus Victor - Satan appoints a day for his victory - Good Friday - which is turned into complete victory over him instead.
Using it as a justification for taking little heed of how many you kill if you can claim self-defence is a bit of a stretch. It would be a dangerous line to take - it could be used to justify murderous atrocities by either side.
The idea of it symbolising an overwhelming counter victory by Christ is intriguing. @KarlLB can you give any indication as to where you’ve read about this?
I'd see it as a sort of historic fiction - set in a real place in a real period with some real people - although Xerxes almost certainly never had a wife from outside the Persian nobility, and there's no outside record of a Jewish one called anything like Esther.
That was my musing on it. It's a back reading of course; it couldn't have meant that originally but you can say the same about many of the OT prophecy claims made by the Gospel writers.
Secondly, the Hebrew of ch.9 is not entirely straightforward, and it is clearly a very summary account. The fact that the Jews were given permission by the edict to kill women and children shouldn’t be taken as saying that they did so. There’s a fairly strong indication that there are two competing edicts. Esther 8.8 states that So the edict granted to Haman for the destruction of the Jews can’t be revoked. Instead the king issues a competing edict which allows the Jews to defend themselves, and, because of Mordecai’s ascendancy, officials across the kingdom co-operate with the Jews rather than facilitating the shaman edict. IMO we should envisage more or less pitched battles taking place between those who seek to destroy the Jews acting on the Haman edict, and the Jews defending themselves according to the Mordecai edict. Although no numbers are reported, I think it is right to assume that there must have been Jewish casualties as well which the writer chooses not to report.
When we studied this book, one allegorical focus was the ousting of a pagan cult signified by the Elamite goddess Vashti by Ishtar as Esther. We also looked at the problematic issue of assimilation, that someone with a hidden Jewish identity would marry a Gentile and be ready to sacrifice herself as a typology for a female Christ figure. While there are historical realities dating back across Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian contexts, this is a text that flaunts inventiveness and heightened drama: Haman as super-villain, Esther as heroic if duplicitous queen-in-waiting, Mordechai standing in syndoche for a family who have lost their royal status and want to reclaim it through subterfuge. Not historical realism, not to be read as such.
I suppose that’s why it’s such an engaging story. It has that fairy tale kind of narrative with ‘goodies’ a baddie and comeuppance.
Of course! Because that's essentially what it is.
BTW, my costume for Halloween was a grumpy old man.
I do not see it as a justification for what is happening now. It does explain the foundation of Purim.
It's the whole of chapter 9.
Okay. So it's 1936, and you're enjoying some poetry from the ancient Romans, and it's got a bit of warmongering rhetoric in it, and someone points out that this is the same sort of thing that Mussolini is now using to justify invading Ethiopia.
I don't think there is any good Biblical parallel for recent events.
You still made me open another tab, go to Bible Gateway, enter Esther 9, select the version I wanted to read it in, and hit the enter button. Then wait a couple of seconds for it to appear on my computer.
Talk about making this old man even crankier.
Not an implausible lacuna. I do alot of my ship-posting at coffee shops, and don't usually trudge a bible along with me. Just for one example.
In any event, @Gramps49 is, I think, referring to Guideline 3 in the Kerygmania Guidelines.
Depending on the date of composition there may be political undertones to the work. The book is most commonly dated to the period of Greek rule under the Seleucids. This was not a good time for the Jews but it was also not really safe to say so. An easy way for an author to avoid this problem is to set his work in an earlier period and complain about how bad things were living under those . . . Persians.
I'd need to go back and do much more checking up on dates and refresh my memory -- we did some kind of comparison between 3 Maccabees and the Book of Esther, but I'm not sure about 'anticipating'.
Though one of the linking themes has to do with the stories behind Jewish festivals celebrating divine deliverance: the feast of Purim in Esther; Hanukkah and Nicanor's Day in 2 Maccabees and a nameless Egyptian festival in 3 Maccabees.
Very much depending on the dating - the Persians lost Judaea to the Greeks in 332BCE. This is the same general area as the date of composition of the Hebrew version of Esther. However, it is a viable hypothesis - people would remember - have been told about by their parents/grandparents - the period of Persian rule.