Hank Smith: 00:01 Welcome to followHIM. A weekly podcast dedicated to helping individuals and families with their Come Follow Me study. I’m Hank Smith.

John Bytheway: 00:09 And I’m John Bytheway.

Hank Smith: 00:10 We love to learn.

John Bytheway: 00:11 We love to laugh.

Hank Smith: 00:13 We want to learn and laugh with you.

John Bytheway: 00:15 As together, we follow him.

Hank Smith: 00:19 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name is Hank Smith, and I am here with my unperishable cohost John Bytheway.

John Bytheway: 00:30 I beg to differ. I have a freshness date, which is long expired. My kids check those all the time.

Hank Smith: 00:36 Use by dates. You are unperishable. We talk about, if I perish, I perish in the book of Esther. So, I looked up what is unperishable? And this is you John, not subject to significant deterioration or loss of quality over time. That is true about you. You have not suffered any sort of deterioration or loss of quality over time, John, you’re pretty incredible that way.

John Bytheway: 01:02 My doctor is shaking his head right now. But I’ll take it.

Hank Smith: 01:06 John, we are studying the book of Esther today, a famous book, a famous story. And so, we needed to bring in a mind in the church who could help us understand this book like never before, who is joining us?

John Bytheway: 01:18 Yes, and we did. We are so happy to welcome Ariel Clark Silver. She is a scholar of 19th century, American literature and culture. She has written and published on writers such as Angela Grimke, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lydia Maria Child, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Sojourner Truth, Julia Ward Howe, Louisa May Alcott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Caroline Healy Dall, Mark Twain, Henry Adams and Willa Cather. She has a particular interest in the female protagonist, female education, female rhetorics and female agency. And Ariel has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Dana Foundation, the Parsons Memorial Foundation, Smith College, the University of Chicago, Claremont Graduate University, and the Maxwell Institute. I love that we found her. I love that you’re here. Thank you, Ariel, for joining us today.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 02:20 My pleasure.

Hank Smith: 02:21 Dr. Silver, I think this is just a wonderful crossroads for us. You have been so delightful in preparing for our episode today, so I’m really glad this happened.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 02:33 Very happy to be here. I guess I would want to add just a little bit to that biography so that people understand that I do have a background in scriptural study as well. I did my undergraduate work at Smith College where I studied religion and biblical literature and my master’s degree at the University of Chicago, which was also in biblical literature before going and getting a PhD in English at Claremont Graduate University. The subject of my dissertation and my first book was a reception history of the Book of Esther, which essentially means how the book of Esther was received and written about by American writers, particularly in the 19th century.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 03:14 So my work really bridges both fields. Next week, I’ll be going to upstate New York where I’ll be in residence with a fellowship at the Center for Mark Twain Studies, because I’ll be writing on Mark Twain’s treatment of the figure of Eve. And then I go to a conference in Paris where I’ll be looking at the ways that Herman Melville writes on the figure of Hagar also from the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. So, my work is really seeped in this intersection between scripture and particularly these female figures from the Hebrew Bible and the way American writers looked at, investigated, and in some ways expanded the understanding about these female figures.

Hank Smith: 03:59 Awesome.

John Bytheway: 03:59 Oh, thank you for adding that. Almost every week, Hank, I’m sure it’s the same for you people, will say, I like your podcast. Where do you find these wonderful people?

Hank Smith: 04:10 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 04:11 And I’m usually Hank does it. And so, we’re thrilled to have you and that added to what we know. So, at Claremont and at Smith, also in biblical studies and you’re putting these both together. So, this is great today,

Hank Smith: 04:27 Ariel, we’re in the book of Esther this week, you’ve written on it, you’ve spoken about it, you’ve taught about it. What do you think we need to do before we jump in? How should we come at this book?

Dr. Ariel Silver: 04:39 There are a number of things that I would like to offer as an orientation to the book before we begin looking at the 10 chapters that compose this incredibly interesting and valuable text. What I’d like to do is start with you at the destruction of the temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, because that is really where the story begins. The book of Esther is set in exile, once any number of Jews have been taken away to Persia. But the background of that exile is that their home, their temporal and spiritual home has been decimated. And deconsecrated, if you will, they find themselves now in a situation of exile and there is a Jewish mystic scholar, Friedrich Weinreb, who speaks about the book of Esther as the amazing scroll of Esther. And I hope that by the time we are done together today, that many of you will also come away feeling that it is unique and incredibly valuable to you in your larger study of scripture, because this book is not just a story written in exile about the experience of the Jews in exile.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 06:04 It’s really the story of exile in an existential sense, even in the sense of our mortal lives as being an experience in exile, where we are separated from our spiritual home, and we are left to find our way. In the process of that exile, we have been pulled apart from the things that most deeply identify us as divine beings. We’re now living in an experience of duality of opposition in all things, think of second Nephi chapter two, where Nephi describes our mortal probation as an experience of opposition, and an opposition in everything. And the only way for that exile to end is for a return to the presence of God, and a reconciliation with God, a unity, this experience that in the mortal realm feels dualistic, complex, multifaceted, that eventually it should result in a reunification. And this book is so important because it lays out that entire movement from separation and life in exile to a story of redemption.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 07:39 That is what this book charts, because the Jews living in exile, live in a very precarious position. One scholar described it as whether they are powerless or whether they are in power, their situation is terribly fraught. If they have no power, then they are left open to oppression. If they have power, people are jealous of their power and are seeking to repress it. It’s sort of an existentially difficult situation that they find themselves in. But what we see here is not just the experience of a group of Jews living in the Persian empire, faced with the threat of genocide. And we’ll talk about that more as we get into the story, but also the plan of salvation writ large in this one book, where these Jews go from their land of promise, their Garden of Eden to a position where they are completely apart from God so much so that God is hidden in the text of Esther.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 08:41 This is a real issue in the book of Esther because it has its own experience, in the cannon is one of exile. The book of Esther was not always included, in Jewish cannons, in Catholic cannons, in Orthodox cannons, in Protestant cannons, in great measure because they couldn’t figure out if this was a book of scripture, whether or not it was a sacred book because it doesn’t mention the name of God, but God is hidden in this book in the same way that God is veiled from us during our mortal experience, my position is that it’s a tremendously spiritual book, and it offers us incredible lessons. And I’m grateful that it is included in the LDS cannon. And I think one of the things that’s really so interesting about this book is that there are other records of the exilic experience. Jeremiah writes about it.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 09:35 Isaiah writes about it. Others write about it as well. They mostly perceive exile as something to be endured, something to be survived, something for which we hope for a resolution. We don’t really want this to endure longer than it has to. In the book of Esther, she sees it as an opportunity, even in the face of a really severe life-threatening situation where a decree against their lives has been placed, but she sees exile as an opportunity to develop capacities, to grow. And this is the other really interesting, one of the many other interesting things about this text is that the female character of Esther across the span of these 10 chapters changes, she evolves, she develops, she progresses. It’s a heroine story. What they call a Bildungsroman, coming of age story. She comes into her own and as her purpose becomes more clear, her power and her knowledge and her understanding also grows, her capacity to act and to do things that are going to work toward her salvation personally, and toward the salvation of her people.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 10:51 All of those things increase as the book goes along, the male characters are a little more static. They’re a little bit more typological. They fit a type and they remain that way throughout the text. It’s an exile story, that’s a little different than the other exile stories that we get. Even the book of Daniel, where it’s really about surviving the challenges of exile. In the book of Esther, those challenges are transformed into a story of redemption and salvation at both a personal and a political level.

Hank Smith: 11:22 What a great setup. I’d never thought of that idea of the book being about the exile, but the book itself has been exiled at times, saying, oh, we don’t know if this is actually part of this. What an interesting way to look at that, here they are in exile and the book itself gets sometimes pushed aside. And then the second thing you mentioned, I want to talk a little bit more about, and that is God isn’t mentioned in the book, but he’s all throughout. And that’s so much like our lives that sometimes we don’t see him, but he’s there.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 11:54 It’s true. It’s very interesting because the name of Esther in Hebrew means, I hide myself. So embedded in the very name of the book is the place in which God resides in this text. In Deuteronomy chapter 31, verse 18, God declares, “I shall hide my face.” There are times when he will be hidden from us, times where he will be revealed. A parallel is set up. We’re going to see the ways in which Esther functions as a type of God, and also as a type of Christ. And their tropes have veiled in this and unveiling that go on throughout the entire text. So there’s really a play between whether God is present, whether he’s absent, whether he’s asking us to act of our own accord, to be anxiously engaged in good causes and not waiting for God’s prompt for every worthy thing we are to do, or whether we are at times two, in a position of advent to wait for his direction.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 13:03 One of the reasons in my own research and writing that I found myself gravitating toward the Old Testament, toward the Hebrew Bible and toward the female figures there, is because it’s about the only place where you find significant female figures. In some ways, most significant of all is a figure like Esther, who has her own book, and who, as I mentioned earlier, evolves over the course of the text, really comes into her own, really comes to understand her own purpose and mission. And it’s not a small mission. Her work is a work that parallels the work of God as he declares it in the book of Moses, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. That she’s working on those terms, she’s working as an agent of salvation. There’s just one other book that bears a female name, Ruth, there’s a little bit of a shift.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 14:02 We see her loyalty and devotion demonstrated to a meaningful degree. She’s important in the larger history of salvation because she is an ancestor of Jesus Christ, but we don’t see a tremendous amount of development in her. Whereas in Esther almost entirely unique, in the whole cannon of scripture, we see a woman who changes. We see a woman who progresses spiritually and who takes upon herself a pretty serious mantle and is willing to risk her life.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 14:38 And this is a place where she does become a type of Christ because like the way the prophet Isaiah describes Christ as descending below all things and bearing the stripes of others and the scorn of others. Esther also has to play a very submissive role, which we will see from the very beginning. And I’m going to outline how that happens in the first couple of chapters, but she has to follow her people into a symbolic humiliation and even violation in order to then rise again in the same way that the savior descends below all things so that he can overcome both physical and spiritual death and make immortality and eternal life possible for us.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 15:25 So she’s really unique and she’s worth becoming deeply acquainted with, but I’m thinking about something that a Jewish scholar said in the Middle Ages, Maimonides is his name. He was a Torah scholar in the medieval period, and he said, “All of the books of the prophets and all of the writings will no longer be valid in the days of the Messiah, except for the scroll of Esther.” It will remain together with the Pentateuch, which are the first five books of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible. The books ascribed to Moses, it will remain together with the Pentateuch, which will never lose their validity. Even though all memory of troubles will be forgotten, the days of Purim, which is the celebration of the story Esther, which is reenacted on an annual basis, that will remain. And it is for Jews, a very living text.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 16:20 They have a holiday that is specifically set aside to commemorate the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the threat of genocide. They reread the book of Esther every single time, and they act out, they cheer for the heroes and they boo for the villains and they dress up and they wear costumes. They celebrate and they give alms and they do all manner of charitable acts. And they say, we will drop everything to go and recite the scroll of Esther. It has a living remembrance for them of the power of salvation, even though in this case, that salvation comes about because of this female character, it has that power for them. It’s a book of tremendous hope against impossible odds. These Jews succeed, and they overcome the oppression that they face, and they become victorious. I mean, it’s almost an exaggerated text, right?

Dr. Ariel Silver: 17:23 Where the villains are really bad and the heroes are really good. Some people think of comedy and some people think it’s tragedy, but finally, it’s really a story of tremendous joy and of tremendous hope because this period was not the last period where the Jews faced threats of exile, or threats of extinction. It’s something that they face to this day. And so in part, they need to read this story to remind themselves of the condition of exile in which they live, again, applicable to us all in that larger sense of, we are all in spiritual exile from our heavenly home, we are all searching to achieve that reunification, even though it may apply with an extra measure of force to Jews and to the Jewish condition, it’s also applicable to us. We also live in the face of challenges, of threats, of difficulties, and we all need to know, God can deliver us.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 18:29 We can be redeemed. We can overcome the difficulties that we face. And so I think that they read the story every year and they celebrate it with a tremendous joy to remind themselves of that real spiritual promise in their lives that God won’t go away, whether or not he appears to be there or appears to be hidden. And so, as we look for that in the book, we are going to see God revealed, and we’re also going to see women and their interactions with the divine revealed. I think quite a bit more acutely. It certainly has transformed my understanding of scripture and my recognition of where to find female influence, female agency, female power in the scriptures.

Hank Smith: 19:24 Awesome. I wanted to ask you something really quick before we jumped into chapter one, you said, try to understand the precariousness of their position. We might come in and say, well, this is what they should have done. This is what Esther should have done. I’ve heard that before, this pretty harsh judgment of Esther in what I would do if I was in that position. And I liked how you said, be delicate. I got that sense from you at least of be delicate the way you look at their position in exile, they don’t have power, they could be annihilated. If they do have power, they’re going to face fierce position. So is that something you intended?

Dr. Ariel Silver: 20:00 Oh yes. I have a lot more to say on a meta level, but let me give you an example from the very beginning of the text, how does it start? We haven’t yet heard about Esther. In the beginning of her book, we hear about another queen. Her name is Vashti and the king is feeling pretty happy with himself, pretty content with the range of his extensive empire and a little bit like we may have seen in England with a great jubilee celebration. He wants to throw a huge party, drinks and food and costumes and parades. And on top of it all, he thinks it would be really lovely for his queen Vashti to come and parade herself in all of her glory before his court.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 20:46 And she refuses to do so because this would be an immodest display, that is being asked of her. And so she says, no. Well, you don’t say no to a Persian king without severe consequence. He draws his advisors together and he says, well, what should we do given that my queen Vashti has said, no? One of his counselors Malukan suggests that this is not just a threat to the king. This is not just insubordination on the part of his wife. This is a threat to all men in Persia, because if word gets out that the queen refused the request of her husband and king, then-

Hank Smith: 21:28 All women will think…

Dr. Ariel Silver: 21:30 Yeah, that they have a little leverage, that they would not otherwise have. They might not be as obedient as they should be. And so he suggests that a decree go out to all the provinces in the kingdom, explaining that Vashti will be deposed, that her consequence will be swift and severe, that she’ll be released from her reign and that all women should be subordinate to their husbands and obedient in every way. So this happens, Vashti is in fact, let go. And this means that the king now has a chance to choose a new wife, a new queen. He does this methodically. He goes throughout the kingdom, has virgins from across his domain gathered. He’s going to spend time with all of them. Choose one as a queen. In the midst of this, there is a man named Mordecai, who is a Jew, he lives in Shushan.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 22:34 He lives just at the gate of the palace. He sees an opportunity and he has a niece/daughter/cousin named Esther. And he says, Esther, you go and you let the King’s chamberlains take you and prepare you. And you can be one of these women to be brought before the king. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s trying to put Jewish power inside the palace rather than outside of it. But he warns her. He says, do not reveal your identity. Don’t say anything about it. And so she follows his request and his advice, and she in fact becomes one of these virgins. And in the end, she finds favor with the king and is made queen. But if you want to talk about process of submission, a process of violation, in order to come to that place where you might have a small measure of influence that’s Esther, and she does it willingly.

Hank Smith: 23:44 We could come at this with such a judgmental attitude. And I’ve heard people do that before of both Mordecai and Esther. But I like what you’re saying is try to recognize they’re not in the same position you and I are.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 23:57 Not only does she know she’s going to have to submit to all of this. She also knows what happened to the last queen. So that is in the background as well. It’s not just, I’ve got to do everything just right now. I can never make a misstep or else I would be thrown out or killed or something of similarly severe consequence.

Hank Smith: 24:19 He just seems cruel.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 24:21 Well, he’s a king, and he has tremendous wealth and power. He hasn’t had to be anything else. Remember though, that the book of Esther, we haven’t talked about this yet, but one level, it functions as a book of fantasy. We talked about it as a story of great hope, a story that needed to be retold so that Jews could be reminded of the hope that was available to them. So it’s also a story where, this is the ideal ending. You face the threat of genocide, existential extermination, you not just stave off your oppressors and those who are planning to murder you, you murder them and-

Hank Smith: 25:00 Yeah, you conquer.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 25:01 Yes. Esther goes to the king and asks for another day of defending themselves. It’s granted to them as a way of making it known, not only are you not going to get the better of us, but we will ensure to the degree that we can end the oppression that we face. So it’s the bad characters are really bad, the good characters are really good. There’s not a tremendous amount of nuance in the story. I would say, except in the character of Esther where we do see a lot of growth and change over the course of the text.

Hank Smith: 25:34 Awesome.

John Bytheway: 25:34 I love what you’ve said about the idea of seeing the plan of salvation in the story. In the manual, it starts out by saying many events in the book of Esther might seem like luck or coincidence. How else would you explain how an orphan Jewish girl became the queen of Persia at just the right time to save her people from being slaughtered? What are the chances that Esther’s cousin Mordecai would just happen to overhear a plot to assassinate the king? Were these coincidences, or were they part of a divine plan? So I think that’s nice the way we set this up, that this can be seen as a plan of salvation, and we can draw from it seeing an overall plan, and put ourselves in it that way.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 26:16 Yes. I think this text operates both in a larger sense. It speaks to the plan of salvation, also in very personal and detailed ways, as we work through the text as Esther gains the insight that she needs for the next move she’s going to make to realize that plan, to accomplish the reversal of fortune that will lead to the salvation of her people. It’s not just that we see, oh, here is a people that through the set of what seemed like incredible circumstances, God was able to save and deliver through Esther. It’s also like a blueprint or a roadmap about how each of us individually go about working through the things which feel in the words of President Nelson, like mountains in our lives, that seem to be immovable. How do we go about moving our way through those so that we can build a tunnel through the mountain, find a road that goes around the mountain, shift the mountain just enough that we can get by it, find a way to hike up the mountain and down the other side, it’s not often not easy.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 27:38 And it often takes tremendous courage and perseverance and willpower and leaning on the Lord. But Esther provides a pretty interesting outline of how we go about doing that. To me it’s right up there with the brother of Jared in the Book of Ether and how he’s trying to find a way to make this passage. Every piece of it is like the touchstones, I need light. Where do I go to find light? All right, let me think about stones. Could these be illuminated? Could I ask for God’s help in this? All of these small moments come together and culminate in a deliverance for the brother of Jared in the same way that we see Esther having to work very carefully all along the way. And so for me, it’s a book, tremendous book about inspiration and revelation, a book about courage in the face of impossible odds, a book about reliance on God for detailed guidance to make it through the quagmires of our life.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 28:50 A book about, and spiritual creativity in developing very carefully inspired solutions, a book about transforming complex situations into opportunities to exercise greater faith and greater resolve, a book about ways to engage with threats and injustices that we face and ways to turn from anger and bitterness and revenge, and a desire to take the spoils of the other. I mean, this is one of the things that goes back and forth in this text, the king, when he gives the decree through Haman to exterminate the Jews, the decree also says, and you can take their spoils. When Esther finally requests the opportunity to either have that edict reversed or to defend themselves, they make very clear that though they will defend themselves. And that may involve taking the lives of those who are trying to kill them, they will not take the spoils of their enemies. And so there is a measure of restraint, right?

Dr. Ariel Silver: 29:51 We don’t go after retribution. It’s not an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. There is a higher law that is already at work in this text. And we see it in the restraint that is exercised both as she approaches this problem and finds solutions. And even once they’re on the cusp of victory, she makes clear to send forth the very clear direction, not to lay waste to their enemies, not to take their spoils. It really is tremendously interesting in its details. And I’m looking forward to getting into those. I think there’s one point in the text, maybe it’s chapter seven, where Esther says to the king, it’d be just much smarter of you to tax us than to kill us.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 30:37 Even if you take our spoils, you’re going to make a lot more money if you just keep us alive and tax us. And he’s not a man of high thinking, he can’t quite see, he just defaults to I’ve sent forth this decree, I’m the king, I can’t reverse it, it stands, you can defend yourselves, but the decree stands. She’s thinking creatively all along the way, she’s using spiritual arguments, she’s using political arguments, she is using economic arguments. She’s using social arguments. She’s very alive to every possibility and it’s tremendously resourceful in the way that she goes about it.

Hank Smith: 31:14 Okay, let’s do this. How is Vashti received in the text, usually among Jews as a heroine or just someone to show you what happens when someone disobeys the king?

Dr. Ariel Silver: 31:25 It’s a good question. I don’t know if I have a really authoritative answer about it. I know that there’s an increasing interest in scholarship on Vashti. A lot of particularly African American writers in the 19th century wrote about Vashti because they saw themselves in her and in the fate that she suffered.

Hank Smith: 31:48 Let me ask you another question. What happens do you think if Mordecai never puts forth Esther for this? Because sometimes when I read chapter two, I think just don’t get involved. Don’t put your niece or your cousin out there, but maybe he’s seeing on the horizon, we’ve got to have some power inside that palace or everyone’s in trouble.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 32:08 This is a tremendously good question, because some could reasonably argue, looking at the text that Mordecai, he sets up all the problems that are then left to Esther to solve. And I am not joking about that, because he’s at the gate, the moment comes where there’s this opportunity to get someone, not just from his own people inside the court, but also from his own family inside the court, giving him some personal leverage. But he is the one who provokes the decree of genocide against the Jewish people. Because the King’s right-hand man, his most elevated counselor, Haman is full of himself. And he wants Mordecai to bow to him when he walks about the streets. And Mordecai is unwilling to do that because you only bow before God, you worship no other figures, no other idols, no other political forces.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 33:09 And so he won’t bow. And it’s that really gets under Haman’s skin and decides that he’s got a personal vendetta against Mordecai, but why not take that to another level and see if he can get the king to get rid of them all, not just the one who’s causing him some grief. So Mordecai sets up the situation to save the Jews in case they face that threat. And it wouldn’t be the first time and it won’t be the last time, that they face that threat, but he is also the one who provokes the very threat that they do then face.

Hank Smith: 33:49 Interesting.

John Bytheway: 33:50 I love just going through this cast of characters and seeing, and how this is all going to work and how Esther gets put in this place where she can do so much good. Yeah, I just want to keep going.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 34:02 We have four main characters, right? We have Esther, we have Mordecai, those are the two principle Jewish figures in the story. And then we have King Ahasuerus and we have his right hand man, his grand-vizier Haman, or Haman. There are a few other characters that come up that we’ll touch on, including Haman’s wife. Zeresh I think is.

John Bytheway: 34:25 Zeresh.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 34:25 Zeresh.

John Bytheway: 34:28 Z-E-R-E-S-H.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 34:29 Yeah. Who prods Haman along, interestingly enough.

Hank Smith: 34:33 It seems like the king is really taken with Esther.

John Bytheway: 34:36 Oh yeah.

Hank Smith: 34:37 This is chapter two, verse 17. “The king loved Esther above all the women and she obtained grace and favor in his sight more than all the virgins so that he set the royal crown upon her head.” So whatever the kind of contest this is, she wins.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 34:51 She definitely did win, and we’re going to see even clearer evidence of that as we go along, she really has his trust and confidence. And maybe we see that, particularly in chapter four, we’ve talked about chapter one where Vashti is deposed. We’ve talked a bit about chapter two, where, there’s a call out for all the eligible virgins who might fill the role of the next queen, and Mordecai shuffles Esther into the mix. Esther is successful in that contest. There’s something else really important that happens in chapter two that we shouldn’t overlook. And that is Mordecai sitting at the gate hears about a plot against the king. There are two advisors, maybe minor advisors, Bigtan and Teresh are their names.

Hank Smith: 35:46 Yeah, this is verse 21.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 35:48 Yeah. They’ve got a plot against the king and Mordecai here’s about it and tells Esther to tell the king about this threat.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 35:58 And Esther conveys that information and explains where she got the information and then the king takes it into his own hands. And those two minor advisors are promptly disposed of. That’s really important because it sets up the trajectory of Mordecai’s experience and the rest of the text. So we just need to keep that in mind, that Mordecai already in chapter two has demonstrated his value to the king by exposing this plot against him. And I think I mentioned already, but it’s also important to note that when Mordecai sends Esther to the King’s chamber and sets her to be a part of this beauty pageant, beauty competition, call what you will, that he’s very explicit, don’t tell them you are Jewish, hide your identity. And in some ways in the text Mordecai functions, as the known Jew, the person whose Jewish identity is revealed, and this is part of, sort of allows Haman to take issue with him and to pin his faults on his Jewishness.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 37:04 He is the unveiled Jew, and Esther is the veiled Jew or the hidden Jew in this text. And in some ways, has even more power because of that position that she fills. But already by the second chapter, we’re seeing the ways in which those dynamics are playing themselves out. And the difference between being recognized and identified as being a Jew and not being recognized or identified as a Jew and the positions that can put you in.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 37:36 And when we get to chapter three, we talked a little bit about Mordecai refusing to bow before Hamman and Hamman deciding he’s going to have it out, not just with Mordecai, but with his people. And this is when the decree against all of the Jews goes out and it’s sent throughout all the provinces. And it is said on this one specific day, that it will be decreed, you are to kill every Jew in sight in every province. And he’s basically allowing all the citizens to arm themselves and to have at it with the Jews and go ahead and take their spoils as well. That’s really where we find ourselves when we get to chapter four, which is probably the most well-known of the chapters.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 38:16 It’s the one in our own tradition and experience that is most often referred to and quoted because it speaks to Esther’s growing awareness of her own personal mission. And in many ways, ties to our understanding that we get from the book of Abraham, of people having callings and missions and work, sometimes uniquely for them to fulfill, works that maybe only they can accomplish, missions that the Lord would have them perform. And so, I think we really identify with that experience in the book of Esther. We see ourselves in that, just even this one chapter, we’ve talked already now a little bit about the ways in which Esther grows and evolves and comes into an understanding of who she is and what role she is to fulfill.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 39:12 We really see that in chapter four, because now this decree has gone out and Mordecai must realize he had something to do with it. He doesn’t acknowledge that per se, but he goes and pleads with Esther to ask the king, knowing that she is a Jew and that she is now his queen, please stop this decree of genocide against us. Please do that. And she went through her messenger.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 39:38 She sends a letter right back to Mordecai, and she says, “Do you know the situation that I am in? The king has not called for me in 30 days. And if I go into him without him having called to me, without him having extended the golden scepter to me, I face the consequence of death. If I am not summoned, I am not allowed to present myself before him. What you are asking of me is a suicide mission. You’re asking me to go and have myself hung. How can I possibly do that? And so, I’d really like to pick it up in chapter four. Maybe you want to read those verses for us. I’m particularly looking at versus 13 through 17, which are the heart.

John Bytheway: 40:28 Okay, so I’m in Esther four, starting in verse 13, “Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther. Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the King’s house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall their enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place. But thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

John Bytheway: 40:57 Then Esther bade them return Mordecai this answer, go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. So, Mordecai went his way and did, according to all that, Esther had commanded him.”

Hank Smith: 41:23 This is dramatic.

John Bytheway: 41:24 Yeah. I mean, that is the heart of the story. Maybe you’ve come for such a time as this, who know if, whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this, which is verse 14.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 41:35 It’s a very powerful declaration of those moments when we find ourselves in the right place at the right time. Yeah. To have influence that is righteous to shift the narrative in such a way that it brings blessings to ourselves, to those in our care to those for whom we have a stewardship, it really is very evocative. But if you look at the verses preceding that, they’re almost equally important. Remember that Mordecai has sort of set this situation up and we could say he’s responsible for the very situation in which Esther finds herself. But he says, look, you’re thinking about your own preservation here. You have to think about the larger picture. If you don’t act, you will be destroyed, one way or another. You might die by going into the king now. But if you don’t go into him, you’re going to die anyway, this extermination order will find you.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 42:37 So maybe you don’t die tomorrow, but you’re going to die when this decree is enacted, you choose your poison. Act now, take the risk, or realize there’s no way out of this for you if you wait. In addition to that, he says, this is something we should, I think, really connect to theologically as well. We’re fond of saying, if you don’t follow the promptings of the holy ghost, the Lord will inspire somebody else. The work he needs accomplished will be accomplished by someone else. God would like to give that opportunity to you, but it’s your choice to respond or not respond to it. But whatever decision you make, the work of God will not be thwarted. And this is exactly what Mordecai is saying. Take this opportunity it’s given to you.

John Bytheway: 43:26 To be part of the Lord’s work.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 43:27 Right? It’s yours to have, if you want it, if you’re willing to do it. But if you don’t deliverance will come from another place, the Lord will save us. We will be redeemed. When he says, this is your moment, Esther, this is your mission. This is the thing you’ve come to do. And I implore you to take it up. And I think his words are distilling in her soul. She’s beginning to realize the existential situation in which she finds herself personally, in which her people are now found. And so, then she begins to set some spiritual wheels in motion. And what is the very first thing that she does? She says, I will fast. And I’m going to ask you to fast with me. And I want you to ask all of the Jews Shushan to also fast with me.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 44:24 And I’m going to ask my hand maidens who may or may not be Jewish to also fast with me. So already we can see she is a woman of careful thinking and a woman of purpose. She’s going to prepare for this experience. She’s not going to wing it. She is going to get ready. Fasting is like prayer on steroids. It’s what we do when our prayers feel insufficient or when we plead, and we feel that the face of God is hidden from us. And we don’t have an answer. We can’t see his face. We can’t hear his voice. We don’t know what to do. Sometimes he wants us to act of our own accord on the best inspiration we have. Sometimes he’s willing to give us greater guidance, but in order to receive that, we have to supplicate with a deeper level of sincerity, conviction, maybe sacrifice in order to know just what it is we should do and how we should go about doing it. And so, she proceeds with this fast and it’s not a small, fast, I think they’re going to fast for three days.

Hank Smith: 45:36 Right?

Dr. Ariel Silver: 45:36 It’s maybe not Jesus in the wilderness. It’s not a 40 day fast, but it’s still something.

John Bytheway: 45:41 Three days is a long time.

Hank Smith: 45:44 I’d be like-

John Bytheway: 45:45 Yeah, neither eat nor drink for three days. Wow!

Hank Smith: 45:49 Ariel. So, far I’ve got Vashti, and the king seems so… I don’t know what to think of our king. Haman says, there’s this people who are scattered abroad and dispersed among other people. They don’t keep the laws. They’re totally different than everybody else. Let’s destroy them all. And he somehow, okay. Haman just seems over the top evil. I mean, one guy doesn’t bow down and you’re ready to kill everyone because of this one person. I don’t know, maybe it feels like this wasn’t his first run in with the Jews, perhaps. I don’t know. I mean, how am I supposed to take all of this so far? And then Mordecai is bold, but like you said earlier, he’s causing some of these problems.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 46:34 I think one way to approach it, maybe have it make a greater degree of sense is to realize how is it that Jews experienced the book of Esther. They experience it as a play every year, read aloud. These are characters in a drama. We have a tradition in this country of mellow drama, right long before there were right movies or vaudeville and plays, where there were heroines that swooned and villains that came in with bandages over their eyes and the characters were exaggerated and they were hyperbolic and they were more or less two dimensional. It’s an exercise and frustration if you’re really trying to figure out deeply what motivates Haman or deeply what motivates the king, they’re fairly flat as characters and much like there were passion plays, that retold the life of Christ in the middle ages, morality plays from that same era, or even later, they’re almost like stock characters in a play designed to tell this story of the salvation of the Jews.

Hank Smith: 47:39 And evoke an emotion.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 47:40 Yes. And you’ve got to have a villain. You’ve got to have the opposition. In that experience of exile, you have to have the evil characters. It’s almost like a Disney movie, right? I mean, it could be a Disney movie. And it’s not that everything about it is predictable because actually what’s fun about the story is that there are some surprising reversals. And yet it comes to a very satisfying conclusion where the people who were oppressed come out on top, and the people who were exercising, unrighteous power are laid low. It’s very much the bad guys and the good guys, and the world is turned upside down. For once justice is served, unlike in so much of our lives, where we live through injustice, after injustice, we live through people misunderstanding our intentions, or we make a mistake that’s misunderstood or moments of tripping and falling. For once justice is served and the world is made right.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 48:40 And so the experience of celebrating the book of Esther every year, the experience of this holiday of poem is really, it’s like this utopian moment that arrives every year where, oh yes, against all the oppression we face, we can be reminded that in the end, God will prevail and we will be saved. We will be redeemed. It’s almost like the world of poem is like the millennium in miniature. Finally, that the last are first, and the first are last. All of those who have suffered poverty and death and inadequacies and injustices of all sorts are finally restored and things are made right.

Hank Smith: 49:25 Yeah. I can see then Ariel, how you said earlier that she can serve as a type of Christ because we do that every Easter, we celebrate the resurrection, the flipping around where everything was dark and dreary, and now we’re victorious over death. So, I can see her in that way. That’s awesome. So however, the conflict comes about, I’m not going to concern myself with that, but I am going to concern myself with, we’ve got this conflict, how do you know you weren’t born for this? And you’re going to have to put your life on the line to find out. So, I can feel the drama building and the suspense building.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 50:00 John touched on it earlier. It’s worth really taking a moment to let that sink in and to think a little bit about what are those moments and experiences in our lives, where we really have to put it on the line. All of our faith, all of our spiritual understanding, all of the precious spiritual experiences we’ve had to that point in our life. We have to put them all on the line. There are a lot of experiences that I could share with you. The one that is perhaps most prevalent is a moment about eight and a half years ago when our oldest son was serving as a missionary, he was called to serve in Twin Falls, Idaho Spanish speaking. He had been in the mission field, six days, he was performing a service project. There was a micro storm that came out of nowhere that blew him and his companion off the back of a flatbed truck in the middle of sugar beet and wheat fields in Burley, Idaho, they were thrown very far into the air.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 51:09 His companion flew forward and somehow was able to, even though it was very high up and back down, it was able to roll. His injuries were minor, our son was blown the other direction. I mean, they went the same way, but he took the fall to the base of his skull, the back of his head. And he immediately went into convulsions, gratefully his companion was alert and was able to give him a blessing, which caused the convulsions to cease. And he had enough EMT training to hold his spine and head and neck in a what they call a C spine formation. He was taken to the hospital, the local hospital, which was just a mile away. They immediately life flighted him to a level two trauma center. He had suffered a subdural hematoma, a contusion and counter contusion.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 52:00 He had hemorrhaging throughout every layer of his brain. He was our first child and our only son. And he was in a coma. I was flown out the next day. He remained in a coma for almost a week. And I remember the experience of having to determine what was written in the fleshy parts of my heart. What was it that I already knew spiritually? What had I engraved on myself, in myself spiritually? What had been engraved there because my son’s life was on the line. I didn’t know if I could alter the outcome of that traumatic brain injury. I had no idea, the experience for everyone is going to be different, and I’ve had other experiences. Maybe they don’t sound as dramatic, but they’ve also required a real reexamination of what it is that I know spiritually and what it is that I am willing to commit.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 53:00 How am I going to respond to a situation like this? Where am I going to put my confidence and my faith and my energy? For me it was interesting because it happened. I mean, within an hour of learning, what had occurred, I had a very interesting experience where I basically saw two roads and one ended almost immediately off a cliff. And the other one stretched forth with an increasing abundance, the length of which I could not see. I think even as I was just registering the reality of these two paths, processing what they represented, the one being the path of bitterness, why him, what if, who’s to blame, even as I was just registering what that looked like and what it meant, and then trying to register what this other incredibly joyful, incredibly a loving, abundant path, and feeling myself feeling after that other path, but also recognizing that it meant I had to let go of all of those other options.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 54:10 I felt myself lifted up and just placed on that path. The only way I can really describe it, is as though it was an experience of being translated, unique, I was just taken up. It wasn’t like I was taken up to heaven, but I was taken up and I was set on that other path, even with an experience like that, I spent most of the rest of that time while he was in a coma, literally feeling after what was inside of me spiritually, what did I know? What could I depend on? How was I going to respond if he died? How was I going to respond if he survived? But I was left caring for him the rest of his life. How was I going to respond if by some miracle he was preserved? All of those things I had to do serious spiritual self-examination.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 54:56 I don’t know that Esther’s moment was any less difficult. She had to decide whether she was prepared to die for the sake of a request on behalf of her people. So, we should think about those moments and what it is that Esther has to teach us about how we face them, because we will all face them. I remember being in the hospital and this really kind nurse who himself was a return missionary, he was probably in his late 20s, early 30s. He had a young family and he sat me down late one evening. And he said, I’ve been watching you for the last few days. He said, I have no idea how you are handling this. He said, I could not do this. If this were my child, I could not do this. I had no idea what to say to him, but I turned to him, and the words came out of my mouth.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 55:48 And the words were, you don’t know what you would do because you’re not in that situation right now. But when you are, and you will be, the strength will be given to you to face it. You will be given divine guidance and support and sustaining power to help you through that experience. And it will look different. It won’t be the same. You won’t be lying here in an ICU with your son, tethered to every possible cord and blood draining out of his brain. It will be something different. It will be something different, but you will face it. And I’m confident that both of you and probably everyone who’s listening has faced challenges, if not exactly the same, of some magnitude, where they have had to ask themselves, what am I made of spiritually? What am I willing to do in order to receive the guidance that I need to navigate my way through a situation that feels impossible?

Hank Smith: 56:58 There’s these Esther 4:16 moments that you’re talking about where Esther’s true character comes out. You can see it. It’s how do you know you weren’t born for this. And then as the pressure of that moment hits, where does she go? She goes to fasting. She goes to God, even though he’s not mentioned here, that’s where she’s turning. She turns to the Lord, I’ll admit those are scary, scary moments, but it’s nice to find out that you did turn to God. When your moment is through, or you’ve gone through it. And you said, when it came down to it, my heart was there.

Dr. Ariel Silver: 57:36 Oh God turned to me. The farther I get from the moment of the experience itself, the more I realize it’s less a story of faith and more story of mercy. It’s more story of God’s goodness to me, of his kindness to me, of his recognition that I might not have made it.

John Bytheway: 57:52 Can you tell us what did happen? Please join us for part two of this podcast.