The Girl-Queen, the Captive Conqueror: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Esther (4:11-17)

Most interpreters read Esther 4:13-14 as the key to the whole entire book. In trying to convince her to act to save her people in the face of great personal risk, Mordecai makes two interlocking points: 1) that if Esther doesn't act, salvation will rise up from another place; and 2) it may be (who knows) but that Esther became Queen "for such a time as this." Although the Book of Esther seems to go out of its way to avoid mentioning God directly, Mordecai’s conviction here that there is an unseen hand moving events towards an unavoidable purpose, is about as close as it comes. There is great solace here, I think, in knowing that when God is most hidden in our lives—as hidden, even, as he is in the Book of Esther—that’s when he’s most active; and who knows but perhaps all of “those” events in my story happened “for such a time as this.”

There is, of course, a harder, darker layer to this that isn’t always recognized, but must be, if we really want to get to the pastoral heart of this compelling book. Because for Esther to have become Queen “for such a time as this,” it meant the heartbreak of exile, the terror of abduction, the trauma of sexual assault, and now the risk of execution. Perhaps it’s little wonder that God’s so hidden in this book. Jesus from the cross asked why God had forsaken him; Esther, it seems, can’t even bring itself to breathe the name.

 Mordecai’s word to Esther is true--just as it is true to any who have asked, “Where is God in all this?”--that God is able to bring a beautiful, saving purpose out all the heartache and pain, and that there will come a time when we’ll look back on it all and say, “all that happened for such a time as this.” But the challenge of the Book of Esther is to believe this without turning it into a pat answer, or using it to dismiss, minimize or trivialize the pain itself. This is a real risk, I think, and I’ve seen Christians do it in the past, using “God works all thing together for the good...” as a sort of trivial panacea, rather than the heart-cry of hope it was meant to be. God will work all Esther’s trauma and suffering together in his saving plan; but still, the trauma itself—the abuse and violence and exploitation she endured—was not his heart for her.

 May God give us the grace of Mordecai, whenever we encounter the pain of Esther, to resist the urge of jumping to name him before he’s ready to reveal himself.