The Girl Queen, the Captive Conqueror: A Devotional Commentary on the Book of Esther (6:11-14)

Esther 6:13 doesn't stand out as especially significant to modern readers like us, but it is, I think, or would have been, one of the key verses to the whole entire story, if you were one of the Jews in exile that this book was originally written for. Like a snowball at the top of a snow-laden peak, Haman has started to tumble, and his wisest friends tell him: “If this Mordecai before whom your downfall has started, is of Jewish descent (literally, of the “seed of the Jews”), you will not be able to stand against him—you will surely come to ruin.”

I call this the key to the whole entire book, because this reference to the “seed of the Jews” ties Esther’s story right back to the story of Abraham, and the founding promise that God made to his people back in Genesis. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham, the Father of the Jewish people, “I will make you into a great nation ... you will be a blessing ... and I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you ... and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” This is the Magna Carta, in a sense, for the people of God, and a bit later (Genesis 15:5, 17:7), God expands the promise to include the language of “Abraham’s seed” (i.e. his descendants) specifically. Haman’s friends are speaking truer than they know: if Mordecai is in fact of Abraham’s “seed,” he stands under God’s sure promise: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” The whole ironic drama of the Book of Esther, in fact--all the unexpected coincidences and miraculous near-misses that, looking back on it we can call almost comical--is actually just the logic of this ancient promise playing out. Inasmuch as Haman has “cursed” Abraham’s seed (see above on his genocidal plot), he stands self-condemned, and his destruction is sure and inescapable (and all without Mordecai even lifting a finger). For an ancient Jew in exile, torn from his homeland and surrounded by those who would gladly curse him, this assurance of God’s faithfulness would be a bright beacon of hope in an otherwise dark night.

We’re not ancient Jews in exile, of course, but through Christ, who is the true “Seed of Abraham,” we are included in the Abrahamic covenant, so let me suggest a way to take this all to heart, today, some 2500 years later. Because the promise was actually twofold—God will defend the cause of his people, on the one hand, and he will make his people a blessing to the nations, on the other. And as Christians, we are scattered among the nations in a way not entirely unlike the exiled Jews in Esther’s day. Like them, can we find solace and challenge in God’s promise to Abraham? Solace, to know that he will take up our cause against all the Hamanesque Powers ranged against us, but challenge, too, to know that God has scattered us among the nations for the express purpose of blessing all the peoples of earth through “Abraham’s Seed.” Can we let him take up our cause against Haman, even as we take up the cause of being a blessing to the nations?