An Atheist Explores the Apocrypha Part 13: Why A Queen’s Regalia Are Like A Used Sanitary Towel (Esther 10-16)
Additions
to Esther 10-16
Why A Queen’s Regalia Are Like A Used Sanitary Towel.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Apocrypha version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Old Testament Apocrypha, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/3aEJ6Q5
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
And now:
Esther 10
“A little fountain became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water: this river is Esther, whom the king married, and made queen”
To briefly summarise Esther so far, King Ahasueris (Ataxerxes) of “Persia” becomes annoyed by his wife Vashti and ships her off elsewhere, turning to a contest to find the finest maiden in all the land.
Within Ahasueris’ employment is a Jew called Mordecai, who puts forward his “uncle’s daughter” Esther for consideration.
Of course, Esther wins over Ahasueris and he marries her, during the course of which Mordecai overhears a plot against the king and, via Esther, manages to pass it on to the king and foil it.
Later, Ahasueris appoints Haman to be a “prince”, and Haman persuades him to persecute the Jews, as a result of which Mordecai puts on mourning sackcloth and hangs around the palace doors. Mordecai asks Esther to exert her influence, and meanwhile Haman plots to get rid of Mordecai, building a gallows for him, whilst Ahasueris discovers Mordecai’s role in foiling the plot against him.
As an upshot, Haman is tricked into giving Mordecai loads of honours and rewards, and ends up hanged on his own gallows. Esther than asks Ahasueris to stop persecuting the Jews, which he does and in return the Jews kill loads of people, from which comes the festival of Purim.
Esther ends with a simple three verse chapter where Mordecai ends up a powerful advisor to Ahasueris. And this was the Book of Esther as published in the KJV.
But wait, there was more, apparently:
This is evidently a alternative “Chapter 10”, and even Mordecai is called “Mardecheus”; I’m going to keep calling him Mordecai for continuity.
Mordecai has a dream about a stream, two dragons (representing himself and Haman (called “Aman” here) and some nations representing Israel and everyone else, and something about a day of judgement. It’s not very clear, because the dream is explained but never described.
Esther 11
“In the second year of the reign of Artexerxes the great, in the first day of the month Nisan, Mardocheus the son of Jairus, the son of Semei, the son of Cisai, of the tribe of Benjamin, had a dream”
Here, Ahasueris is now Aratxerxes, and the city of Shushar is “Susa”. This chapter is also very specific about the dating – “In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemeus and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and Levite, and Ptolemeus his son, brought this epistle of Phurim, which they said was the same, and that Lysimachus the son of Ptolemeus, that was in Jerusalem, had interpreted it.”
And now we get a description of Mordecai’s dream. I can’t help but think that the two chapters belonged the other way around.
Two dragons rise up to fight nations, and there is “a day of darkness and obscurity, tribulation and anguish, affliction and great uproar”. The “righteous nation” (i.e. Israel) cry out to God and “upon their cry, as it were from a little fountain, was made a great flood, even much water”. Which is Esther, apparently.
Finally “The light and the sun rose up, and the lowly were exalted, and devoured the glorious.” This is kind of Messianic, but the concept of trying to apply this to Jesus is a bit spoiled by the text explicitly stating that it meant Esther in the previous chapter.
Esther 12
“And Mardocheus took his rest in the court with Gabatha and Tharra, the two eunuchs of the king, and keepers of the palace.”
This is a step back in time, to where Mordecai foils the plot against the king, and so the two eunuchs are strangled, and a record is made of Mordecai’s help. “Aman” is definitely “Haman”, I feel stupid for not recognising that before, but here we are told “Aman the son of Amadathus the Agagite, who was in great honour with the king, sought to molest Mardocheus and his people because of the two eunuchs of the king”. One wonders why, what were these eunuchs to him? It makes more sense that Haman is jealous of Mordecai’s rise in power.
Esther 13
“The copy of the letters was this: The great king Artexerxes writeth these things to the princes and governours that are under him from India unto Ethiopia in an hundred and seven and twenty provinces.”
The first half of this chapter is the letter sent by Arexerxes to the rulers of his provinces, the second a prayer offered by Mordecai.
The letter says how Artaxerxes “purposed to settle my subjects continually in a quiet life, and making my kingdom peaceable”, and that he has been advised by Aman that the best way to do this is to kill the Jews.
My how times have changed.
Aman characterises the Jews as “a certain malicious people, that had laws contrary to all nations, and continually despised the commandments of kings” who are “continually in opposition unto all men” and “working all the mischief they can that our kingdom may not be firmly established”. He may as well have put it in triple brackets. I now picture Aman as some dead-eyed prematurely balding vulture of a man like a cross between Joseph Goebbels and Stephen Miller.
There is a part of the letter that I think I missed in Esther previously, which explains a lot. That the Jews are to be killed (“with their wives and children, be utterly destroyed by the sword of their enemies, without all mercy and pity”) on the “fourteenth day of the twelfth month Adar of this present year”. So it wasn’t an edict immediately put into force, but a death-sentence hanging over the Jews. Which is why Mordecai was able to hang around the palace gates in sackcloth and ashes.
Speaking of Mordecai, he prays to God to “be merciful unto thine inheritance: turn our sorrow into joy, that we may live, O Lord, and praise thy name: and destroy not the mouths of them that praise thee, O Lord”, and rather charmingly apologises for not bowing to Aman in case God thought he was being proud in this; “it was neither in contempt nor pride, nor for any desire of glory, that I did not bow down to proud Aman”. No, says Mordecai, it was because the only one I’d bow down to is God.
Esther 14
“Queen Esther also, being in fear of death, resorted unto the Lord: And laid away her glorious apparel, and put on the garments of anguish and mourning: and instead of precious ointments, she covered her head with ashes and dung, and she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair.”
Esther now offers up her prayer to God. I noted in the commentary to Esther 1-10 that the entire book goes by with no mention of God. The successes of Esther and Mordecai are entirely put down to their own actions, and they don’t, as I recall, offer up much in the way of prayer. So this version of Esther is the version with God inserted. Mordecai and Esther call upon God to help in some impassioned prayers.
Esther has only ever heard of her religious tradition and people’s history through word of mouth, “From my youth up I have heard in the tribe of my family that thou, O Lord, tookest Israel from among all people”, and thinks that their current time of trouble is due to worshipping heathen idols. She calls upon God to “Give me eloquent speech in my mouth before the lion: turn his heart to hate him that fighteth against us, that there may be an end of him, and of all that are likeminded to him”, and, like Mordecai, claims no pride, hating her queen’s regalia as “a menstruous rag”.
Esther 15
“And upon the third day, when she had ended her prayers, she laid away her mourning garments, and put on her glorious apparel.”
Esther finishes her prayers and puts on her queenly regalia, menstruous rag or not. It’s interesting that the text says that she calls upon God, “who is the beholder and saviour of all things”, almost like a call to beauty being in the eye of the beholder. It seems to be twofold, Esther reassuring God that she’s not doing this out of vanity but out of necessity, and God’s “beholding” of Esther sees past the outward “glorious apparel”.
There then follow a nicely detailed scene of Esther going to see the king, taking two maids, one to lean upon “as carrying herself daintily”, the other to hold her train. The court and the king are also given good detail, Esther passing through “all the doors” until she sees the king “who sat upon his royal throne, and was clothed with all his robes of majesty, all glittering with gold and precious stones; and he was very dreadful”.
Upon this Esther falls into a faint (real or feigned we can’t be sure) and the king changes his attitude to concern for Esther (or in this instance, “God changed the spirit of the king into mildness”), and rushes to help her.
“I saw thee, my lord, as an angel of God, and my heart was troubled for fear of thy majesty” says Esther before fainting again.
Esther 16
“The great king Artexerxes unto the princes and governors of an hundred and seven and twenty provinces from India unto Ethiopia, and unto all our faithful subjects, greeting.”
The narrative skips the part where Esther persuades Artaxerxes not to kill all the Jews, but instead leaps immediately to the letter sent by Artaxerxes to all of his plenipotentiaries, telling them “we find that the Jews, whom this wicked wretch [Haman] hath delivered to utter destruction, are no evildoers, but live by most just laws”.
Artaxrexes admits that he was duped by Haman “Having by manifold and cunning deceits sought of us the destruction, as well of Mardocheus, who saved our life, and continually procured our good, as also of blameless Esther, partaker of our kingdom, with their whole nation”, who’s plot was to undermine Artaxerxes and thus “to have translated the kingdom of the Persians to the Macedonians”. I don’t recall this power-play from the non-apocryphal Esther, which leaves Haman’s motives pretty much opaque; but I like it. Haman, we then learn, was killed offscreen and “is hanged at the gates of Susa with all his family”.
There’s a wider moral as well, about the abuse of trust, where Artaxerxes at first writes circumspectly about those who “the more often they are honoured with the great bounty of their gracious princes, the more proud they are waxen”, and who seek to cause mischief for their own ends – “Oftentimes also fair speech of those, that are put in trust to manage their friends' affairs, hath caused many that are in authority to be partakers of innocent blood, and hath enwrapped them in remediless calamities”.
The feast of Purim isn’t mentioned, nor is the retributive slaughter by the Jews, although Artaxerxes’ letter seems to be telling the authorities to aid the Jews in any kind of revenge – “ye shall aid them, that even the same day, being the thirteenth day of the twelfth month Adar, they may be avenged on them, who in the time of their affliction shall set upon them”.
And that’s pretty much where it ends. We don’t learn anything more in these chapters about Mordecai (although it’s hinted that he’s restored), nor Esther. These are some interesting counterpoints to the non-apocryphal Esther (what’s the term for that? “Canonical”, I guess). There are a few more specific bits of speech, such as the prayers of Mordecai and Esther, and the contents of various letters. God is given a more central role as well, altering people’s hearts, whereas in the canonical Esther He is conspicuous in His absence. It’s not even really hinted that the Jewish characters win the day by dint of keeping to the Covenant, it’s much more down to their own actions.
Overall I don’t think the apocryphal sections really add much to the story of Esther; if anything they read more like an earlier draft, or perhaps rejected revisions. To me, as somebody that likes to see the underlying creative process, they are interesting but as far as the story and themes of Esther are concerned they are pretty superfluous.
Why A Queen’s Regalia Are Like A Used Sanitary Towel.
Welcome to the next instalment of An Atheist Explores Sacred Texts (Apocrypha version).
In this series I work my way chapter-by-chapter through the Old Testament Apocrypha, commenting on it from the point of view of the text as literature and mythology.
For more detail, see the introductory post http://bit.ly/3aEJ6Q5
For the online KJV I use, see here http://bit.ly/2m0zVUP
And now:
Esther 10
“A little fountain became a river, and there was light, and the sun, and much water: this river is Esther, whom the king married, and made queen”
To briefly summarise Esther so far, King Ahasueris (Ataxerxes) of “Persia” becomes annoyed by his wife Vashti and ships her off elsewhere, turning to a contest to find the finest maiden in all the land.
Within Ahasueris’ employment is a Jew called Mordecai, who puts forward his “uncle’s daughter” Esther for consideration.
Of course, Esther wins over Ahasueris and he marries her, during the course of which Mordecai overhears a plot against the king and, via Esther, manages to pass it on to the king and foil it.
Later, Ahasueris appoints Haman to be a “prince”, and Haman persuades him to persecute the Jews, as a result of which Mordecai puts on mourning sackcloth and hangs around the palace doors. Mordecai asks Esther to exert her influence, and meanwhile Haman plots to get rid of Mordecai, building a gallows for him, whilst Ahasueris discovers Mordecai’s role in foiling the plot against him.
As an upshot, Haman is tricked into giving Mordecai loads of honours and rewards, and ends up hanged on his own gallows. Esther than asks Ahasueris to stop persecuting the Jews, which he does and in return the Jews kill loads of people, from which comes the festival of Purim.
Esther ends with a simple three verse chapter where Mordecai ends up a powerful advisor to Ahasueris. And this was the Book of Esther as published in the KJV.
But wait, there was more, apparently:
This is evidently a alternative “Chapter 10”, and even Mordecai is called “Mardecheus”; I’m going to keep calling him Mordecai for continuity.
Mordecai has a dream about a stream, two dragons (representing himself and Haman (called “Aman” here) and some nations representing Israel and everyone else, and something about a day of judgement. It’s not very clear, because the dream is explained but never described.
Esther 11
“In the second year of the reign of Artexerxes the great, in the first day of the month Nisan, Mardocheus the son of Jairus, the son of Semei, the son of Cisai, of the tribe of Benjamin, had a dream”
Here, Ahasueris is now Aratxerxes, and the city of Shushar is “Susa”. This chapter is also very specific about the dating – “In the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemeus and Cleopatra, Dositheus, who said he was a priest and Levite, and Ptolemeus his son, brought this epistle of Phurim, which they said was the same, and that Lysimachus the son of Ptolemeus, that was in Jerusalem, had interpreted it.”
And now we get a description of Mordecai’s dream. I can’t help but think that the two chapters belonged the other way around.
Two dragons rise up to fight nations, and there is “a day of darkness and obscurity, tribulation and anguish, affliction and great uproar”. The “righteous nation” (i.e. Israel) cry out to God and “upon their cry, as it were from a little fountain, was made a great flood, even much water”. Which is Esther, apparently.
Finally “The light and the sun rose up, and the lowly were exalted, and devoured the glorious.” This is kind of Messianic, but the concept of trying to apply this to Jesus is a bit spoiled by the text explicitly stating that it meant Esther in the previous chapter.
Esther 12
“And Mardocheus took his rest in the court with Gabatha and Tharra, the two eunuchs of the king, and keepers of the palace.”
This is a step back in time, to where Mordecai foils the plot against the king, and so the two eunuchs are strangled, and a record is made of Mordecai’s help. “Aman” is definitely “Haman”, I feel stupid for not recognising that before, but here we are told “Aman the son of Amadathus the Agagite, who was in great honour with the king, sought to molest Mardocheus and his people because of the two eunuchs of the king”. One wonders why, what were these eunuchs to him? It makes more sense that Haman is jealous of Mordecai’s rise in power.
Esther 13
“The copy of the letters was this: The great king Artexerxes writeth these things to the princes and governours that are under him from India unto Ethiopia in an hundred and seven and twenty provinces.”
The first half of this chapter is the letter sent by Arexerxes to the rulers of his provinces, the second a prayer offered by Mordecai.
The letter says how Artaxerxes “purposed to settle my subjects continually in a quiet life, and making my kingdom peaceable”, and that he has been advised by Aman that the best way to do this is to kill the Jews.
My how times have changed.
Aman characterises the Jews as “a certain malicious people, that had laws contrary to all nations, and continually despised the commandments of kings” who are “continually in opposition unto all men” and “working all the mischief they can that our kingdom may not be firmly established”. He may as well have put it in triple brackets. I now picture Aman as some dead-eyed prematurely balding vulture of a man like a cross between Joseph Goebbels and Stephen Miller.
There is a part of the letter that I think I missed in Esther previously, which explains a lot. That the Jews are to be killed (“with their wives and children, be utterly destroyed by the sword of their enemies, without all mercy and pity”) on the “fourteenth day of the twelfth month Adar of this present year”. So it wasn’t an edict immediately put into force, but a death-sentence hanging over the Jews. Which is why Mordecai was able to hang around the palace gates in sackcloth and ashes.
Speaking of Mordecai, he prays to God to “be merciful unto thine inheritance: turn our sorrow into joy, that we may live, O Lord, and praise thy name: and destroy not the mouths of them that praise thee, O Lord”, and rather charmingly apologises for not bowing to Aman in case God thought he was being proud in this; “it was neither in contempt nor pride, nor for any desire of glory, that I did not bow down to proud Aman”. No, says Mordecai, it was because the only one I’d bow down to is God.
Esther 14
“Queen Esther also, being in fear of death, resorted unto the Lord: And laid away her glorious apparel, and put on the garments of anguish and mourning: and instead of precious ointments, she covered her head with ashes and dung, and she humbled her body greatly, and all the places of her joy she filled with her torn hair.”
Esther now offers up her prayer to God. I noted in the commentary to Esther 1-10 that the entire book goes by with no mention of God. The successes of Esther and Mordecai are entirely put down to their own actions, and they don’t, as I recall, offer up much in the way of prayer. So this version of Esther is the version with God inserted. Mordecai and Esther call upon God to help in some impassioned prayers.
Esther has only ever heard of her religious tradition and people’s history through word of mouth, “From my youth up I have heard in the tribe of my family that thou, O Lord, tookest Israel from among all people”, and thinks that their current time of trouble is due to worshipping heathen idols. She calls upon God to “Give me eloquent speech in my mouth before the lion: turn his heart to hate him that fighteth against us, that there may be an end of him, and of all that are likeminded to him”, and, like Mordecai, claims no pride, hating her queen’s regalia as “a menstruous rag”.
Esther 15
“And upon the third day, when she had ended her prayers, she laid away her mourning garments, and put on her glorious apparel.”
Esther finishes her prayers and puts on her queenly regalia, menstruous rag or not. It’s interesting that the text says that she calls upon God, “who is the beholder and saviour of all things”, almost like a call to beauty being in the eye of the beholder. It seems to be twofold, Esther reassuring God that she’s not doing this out of vanity but out of necessity, and God’s “beholding” of Esther sees past the outward “glorious apparel”.
There then follow a nicely detailed scene of Esther going to see the king, taking two maids, one to lean upon “as carrying herself daintily”, the other to hold her train. The court and the king are also given good detail, Esther passing through “all the doors” until she sees the king “who sat upon his royal throne, and was clothed with all his robes of majesty, all glittering with gold and precious stones; and he was very dreadful”.
Upon this Esther falls into a faint (real or feigned we can’t be sure) and the king changes his attitude to concern for Esther (or in this instance, “God changed the spirit of the king into mildness”), and rushes to help her.
“I saw thee, my lord, as an angel of God, and my heart was troubled for fear of thy majesty” says Esther before fainting again.
Esther 16
“The great king Artexerxes unto the princes and governors of an hundred and seven and twenty provinces from India unto Ethiopia, and unto all our faithful subjects, greeting.”
The narrative skips the part where Esther persuades Artaxerxes not to kill all the Jews, but instead leaps immediately to the letter sent by Artaxerxes to all of his plenipotentiaries, telling them “we find that the Jews, whom this wicked wretch [Haman] hath delivered to utter destruction, are no evildoers, but live by most just laws”.
Artaxrexes admits that he was duped by Haman “Having by manifold and cunning deceits sought of us the destruction, as well of Mardocheus, who saved our life, and continually procured our good, as also of blameless Esther, partaker of our kingdom, with their whole nation”, who’s plot was to undermine Artaxerxes and thus “to have translated the kingdom of the Persians to the Macedonians”. I don’t recall this power-play from the non-apocryphal Esther, which leaves Haman’s motives pretty much opaque; but I like it. Haman, we then learn, was killed offscreen and “is hanged at the gates of Susa with all his family”.
There’s a wider moral as well, about the abuse of trust, where Artaxerxes at first writes circumspectly about those who “the more often they are honoured with the great bounty of their gracious princes, the more proud they are waxen”, and who seek to cause mischief for their own ends – “Oftentimes also fair speech of those, that are put in trust to manage their friends' affairs, hath caused many that are in authority to be partakers of innocent blood, and hath enwrapped them in remediless calamities”.
The feast of Purim isn’t mentioned, nor is the retributive slaughter by the Jews, although Artaxerxes’ letter seems to be telling the authorities to aid the Jews in any kind of revenge – “ye shall aid them, that even the same day, being the thirteenth day of the twelfth month Adar, they may be avenged on them, who in the time of their affliction shall set upon them”.
And that’s pretty much where it ends. We don’t learn anything more in these chapters about Mordecai (although it’s hinted that he’s restored), nor Esther. These are some interesting counterpoints to the non-apocryphal Esther (what’s the term for that? “Canonical”, I guess). There are a few more specific bits of speech, such as the prayers of Mordecai and Esther, and the contents of various letters. God is given a more central role as well, altering people’s hearts, whereas in the canonical Esther He is conspicuous in His absence. It’s not even really hinted that the Jewish characters win the day by dint of keeping to the Covenant, it’s much more down to their own actions.
Overall I don’t think the apocryphal sections really add much to the story of Esther; if anything they read more like an earlier draft, or perhaps rejected revisions. To me, as somebody that likes to see the underlying creative process, they are interesting but as far as the story and themes of Esther are concerned they are pretty superfluous.
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