Hoist by his own petard

Friendship United Methodist and Marble Hill United Methodist churches, Sept. 29, 2024

A man lighting up a petard to blow open a door (Pearson Scott Foresman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

The book of Esther is one of the most fascinating and unusual stories in the Old Testament. Usually, when I preach, I start by reading the Lectionary passage, but in this case I wanted to set things up a little bit first, since this passage is the climax of the story, and if you haven’t read the whole story, or haven’t read it in a while, the passage will make more sense if you know what happened earlier.

The story of Esther takes place in Persia, during a period when Judaea had been conquered and most of the Jewish people were living in exile. They were immigrants, and not of their own doing. They were scorned.

The king of Persia at the time is identified here as Ahasuerus, which is a Hebrew translation of the name that would be Xerxes in Greek. Historians have argued about whether this was Xerxes I, Artaxerxes II, Artaxerxes III, or someone else.

Ahasuerus has a wife, Queen Vashti, but she displeases him, and so he banishes her and decides to take a harem. The plan is that he will find all the most beautiful women in the kingdom, give them beauty treatments and put them on a special healthy diet. Then Ahasuerus will choose the most beautiful woman from the harem to be his new queen.