The Best Around

Imagine a feast that lasts seven full days. But not only that, it is in the royal garden of the King’s palace. This feast is offered to you after 180 days of the great king displaying all of his riches and glory. Now you get to partake in the king’s bounty. Everything is served and decorated with the best of the best—from the mother of pearl floors to golden goblets filled with the best wine. This king seems to have it all, and he wants everyone to know it. He rules over 127 provinces, has enough riches to be ostentatiously generous, and wait, there’s more… He has what our less prudent contemporaries call a smokin’ hot wife. After this 7 day feast with the guys, the king is feeling pretty “merry” from all that wine. He decides to be a little more ostentatious and command his trophy wife to come show off her beauty to his drinking buddies. I’m paraphrasing a bit here from the 1^st chapter in Esther. But rumor has it from the early Jewish translators that summoning Queen Vashti to appear before them with her royal crown was to be taken literal—wearing only her royal crown. Vashti did what any self-respecting woman would do. She disobeyed. That’s right, the great king and authority over  127 providences couldn’t get his own wife to submit. The satire is screaming off the biblical page. And this so-called competent ruler had to consult the “wise men” for advice on what to do about his woman. Her disobedience was a disgrace to the entire kingdom. What if word got out and other women started taking a stand against their own husbands who wanted to treat them as objects instead of women? This couldn’t happen. Since Queen Vashti refused to see the king under his command, she was forbidden to come into the presence of the king again. She would be replaced by “another who is better than she.” I just started reading Iain M. Duguid’s commentary on Esther & Ruth, from the Reformed Expository Commentary series. I love how engaging he is, and how he brings this Old Testament book into the matters of today. At the end of Chapter One, I was wrestling with this scene, and the fact that I admired Vashti for giving up her prestige and wealth for the dignity of being a human being. But I don’t want to be a rebellious woman. This picture isn’t the design God intended for marriage, and it isn’t the response we are to have to our great King when he invites us to the feast. Thankfully, king Ahasuerus is not the great King, no matter how hard he tries to make his kingdom believe it. And although he may have summoned his wife to appear before them naked, he was the emperor without clothes. I am always comforted by God’s providence when I think of the book of Esther, but I love how Duguid dissects these characters so that we not only can see the satire pouring off the page, but our great King Jesus Christ.

The theme of the messianic banquet provides another point of comparison and contrast between the kingdom of God and the empire of Ahasuerus. The Lord too has prepared a sumptuous banquet for his people on the last day. But when God summons his bride (the church) to his banquet, he does so not to expose her to shame but to lavish his grace and mercy upon her. He doesn’t force sinners to come unwillingly to his feast, but gently woos them and draws them to himself (15).

Duguid acknowledged Queen Vashti’s reluctance to appear before the king as understandable, but noted how it would be the height of folly and ingratitude to refuse the call of our great King, Jesus Christ. To be banished from his presence for eternity would be our greatest detriment. I saw even more irony when I went to my Bible notes. Apparently, the two possible translations given for Vashti’s name are “beloved” or “the best.” Vashti certainly wasn’t beloved to her husband, but the church is to our bridegroom and King. And then there is the whole line about king Ahasuerus banishing Vashti to replace her with “another who is better than she.” She was no longer the best. She was replaceable. In a sense, so are we all, that is, unless we have been called by the great King. He didn’t call us in our beauty to make him look better, but he called us as filthy sinners and covered us in his own righteousness. He is the best, Amen!