"beauty pageant"

Good morning friends,
The Book of Esther is another great story about God's people in exile. Interestingly enough God is never mentioned in the book, but God's presence and protection is evident just the same. The book begins with a royal feast. Drunk and eager to impress his guests, King Ahasuerus (AKA King Xerxes) calls in his beautiful wife, Vashti, to dance for the crowd. She refuses, so after consulting with his advisers she loses her position as queen. To fill the gap, Ahasuerus holds a beauty pageant (which seems from our passage to have a sexual component as well). The winner of the contest will become queen. We aren't going to follow the whole story, so suffice it to say that the plot thickens after our passage.

God bless,
Sam

Esther 2:5-17

⁵Now there was a Jew in the citadel of Susa whose name was Mordecai son of Jair son of Shimei son of Kish, a Benjaminite. ⁶Kish had been carried away from Jerusalem among the captives carried away with King Jeconiah of Judah, whom King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had carried away. ⁷Mordecai had brought up Hadassah, that is Esther, his cousin, for she had neither father nor mother; the girl was fair and beautiful, and when her father and her mother died, Mordecai adopted her as his own daughter. 

⁸So when the king’s order and his edict were proclaimed, and when many young women were gathered in the citadel of Susa in custody of Hegai, Esther also was taken into the king’s palace and put in custody of Hegai, who had charge of the women. ⁹The girl pleased him and won his favor, and he quickly provided her with her cosmetic treatments and her portion of food, and with seven chosen maids from the king’s palace, and advanced her and her maids to the best place in the harem. ¹⁰Esther did not reveal her people or kindred, for Mordecai had charged her not to tell. 

¹¹Every day Mordecai would walk around in front of the court of the harem, to learn how Esther was and how she fared. ¹²The turn came for each girl to go in to King Ahasuerus, after being twelve months under the regulations for the women, since this was the regular period of their cosmetic treatment, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with perfumes and cosmetics for women. ¹³When the girl went in to the king she was given whatever she asked for to take with her from the harem to the king’s palace. ¹⁴In the evening she went in; then in the morning she came back to the second harem in custody of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch, who was in charge of the concubines; she did not go in to the king again, unless the king delighted in her and she was summoned by name. 

¹⁵When the turn came for Esther daughter of Abihail the uncle of Mordecai, who had adopted her as his own daughter, to go in to the king, she asked for nothing except what Hegai the king’s eunuch, who had charge of the women, advised. Now Esther was admired by all who saw her. ¹⁶When Esther was taken to King Ahasuerus in his royal palace in the tenth month, which is the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign, ¹⁷the king loved Esther more than all the other women; of all the virgins she won his favor and devotion, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti.