Join God Honest Truth as we explore the incredible story of Esther, one of the most inspiring figures in the Bible. From her humble beginnings to her rise as queen of Persia, Esther’s courage and faith saved an entire people from destruction.
In this in-depth study, we will uncover Esther’s background, how she became queen, and powerful lessons of faith and bravery. This teaching dives into historical context, key biblical passages, and the deeper meaning behind Esther’s story.
Whether you are new to the Bible or looking to deepen your understanding, this video will provide valuable insights into Esther’s role in biblical history. So join us as we learn the God Honest Truth about Esther.
#BibleStudy #Esther #Faith #GodHonestTruth #BiblicalHistory
Transcript
You’ve probably heard about Esther from the story of Purim, but how much do you really know about this wonderful and great woman of scripture? Stay tuned for this teaching on Esther to find out more about her life and what we can learn from her life and her example that is given to us in scripture. So tonight’s episode is gonna be on Esther, the Judean who lived in Shushan during the time of the exile, but we’ll get into that in just a little bit. If you would like some more notes on this subject, go down below and click on that link for tonight’s article post. That’ll take you directly to our website, or you can go to the website yourself at godhonesttruth.com.
Click on the post for tonight’s episode, and there you’ll be able to see the video, the on demand video, as well as the draw slides that you see here on your screen. You’ll also have the notes that we took for this particular episode, which contains a lot more information than what we will present during this teaching. And you’ll also see the transcript as soon as we have it available if that’s something that is of use to you. All that’s available on our website or you can go right down below in the description and there’s a convenient link located for you right there. And that should be present whether you are watching on a video platform or an audio podcasting platform.
So this episode on Esther is gonna be rather to the point and kinda quick because we don’t have a mountain of information on Esther. Most of the information that we do get surrounds the story of Oireem, which is coming up in our next episode. So to scale it down, there’s gonna be very little presented tonight that you probably don’t already know about, but hopefully there’s gonna be something in here that will be of use to you and education to you. But the first time that we get the name Esther or see Esther in scripture comes from the book of Esther in chapter two and verse seven. And it came to be that he, meaning Mordecai, was raising Hadassah, that is Esther, his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother.
The young woman was beautiful and of good appearance. And when her father and mother died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter. So at some point in Esther’s life, her mother and her father died. I’m assuming probably kind of at a young age, but we’re not told exactly when that happened. But once she became an orphan, her cousin Mordechai took control of raising her, which was very good.
And we see this taking care of widows and orphans and fatherless all throughout scripture. So Mordecai is doing exactly what he should, but he’s been doing it out of the kindness of his heart or family. I’m sure a lot of you know those family ties do run deep a lot of times. But Hadassah or Esther was being raised by her cousin Mordechai. Now, Esther goes by two names here mostly Esther, but her Hebrew name is Hadassah.
And Hadassah comes from Strong’s number h one nine one nine. Hadassah. Hadassah. And Hadassah means Myrtle in Hebrew. We went over during the Godhead series that a lot of the names that you see within scripture have a meaning to them.
Even though it doesn’t mean that Esther was literally a Myrtle branch or something like that. No. It’s just the meaning of the name. But Hadassah, her Hebrew name, means myrtle. Now a lot of people when they’re living in other cultures and other regions have two different names.
Here we see Hadassah and Esther, but we also get other examples from the Brit Chadashah like Paul, who is also called Saul. We get Simon, who is also called Peter, etcetera, etcetera. So this is a common practice. Some people’s names get changed like Abram was changed to Abraham, Jacob was changed to Israel, and things like that. But there’s also the practice you can see here and from many other examples where people just went by two different names.
Usually, their Hebrew name and then a name which was more common in the society in which they lived. But her Persian name that she went by, which most people know her by, is the name of Esther or Esther. And that is Strong’s h six three five, Esther, Esther. And Ester is, like I said, a Persian name and it means star. And most likely this name Ester comes from the name Ishtar, which is another name for Venus or other names throughout history, Easter, Eostre, things like that.
But Esther, the Persian name that she went by, means star. Here you can see the Strong’s definition in the Brown Driver Briggs entry for Esther. And here’s your Decenius’ Hebrew lexicon and Jastrow’s dictionary of the Targums for Esther. Now just some points of facts and statistics about Esther’s life. Number one, she was a Judean from the tribe of Benjamin or Binyamin, however you wanna pronounce it.
And by saying she is a Judean, that means that she was one of those tribes from the Southern Kingdom Of Judea. Now most of the people at this point, when Esther comes on the scene, most of the people had already returned to Israel, but a small select few had stayed behind back in Persia, and Esther and Mordecai were in a place called Shushan. Like I said, she’s a member of the southern tribe of Judea, and she was one of the only two women with a book in the Bible named after her. The other one, of course, being the book of Ruth. She had a first cousin called Mordechai, which you may remember from the story of Purim, And she was one of the population of the Judeans who remained behind in Persia even though some of those other Judeans had returned back to Israel.
She was the first Judean queen of Persia, or at least the first that we can determine. She was the wife of King Ahasueros or Ahasueros, however how you want to say it, who is also known by the name Xerxes, which in secular history, that’s the name most people will use, but one and the same, Ahasueros or Xerxes. She was orphaned early in life. We don’t know exactly when, but she was being raised by her first cousin. There is no record that we can find anyways of Esther having any siblings.
No brothers or sisters like that. There’s also no mention of her mother’s name in scripture or from what I can find in extended research through things like the Talmud, Jewish resources, stuff like that. But we do get the mention of her father, and her father’s name in scripture is Aviha’il. Now an interesting tidbit, or at least I found this interesting, and hopefully you do too. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Panach or the a k a old testament, in the Septuagint, it has her father’s name as Aminadab.
Why why is this? Well, we didn’t have time to figure that out, but there is a small change in the name there from Abihail to Aminadab. And we find this in Esther chapter two verse 15. And when the turn came for Esther, the daughter of Abihail, the uncle of Mordechai, who had taken her as his daughter to come into the sovereign, she sought no matter but what Haggai, the sovereign’s eunuch, guardian of the women advised, and Esther found favor in the eyes of all who saw her. Now here in most translations that come from the Hebrew text has the name Avi HaEl.
But you can see in the Septuagint, if you can read Greek, for example, that the name is Aminadab. Now the story we get about Esther, like we said, she was orphaned at an early age. She was being raised by Mordechai, her first cousin. And then at a certain point in her life, things get really shaken up within Persia, especially with King Ahasueros, and he sends for the young women, the virgins of the countryside, to pretty much put on a show and to select a new queen because he had just deposed the previous queen. In Esther chapter two verse eight, and it came to be when the Sovereign’s command and decree were heard, and when many young women were gathered at the Citadel of Shushan into the hand of Haggai, that Esther too was taken to the Sovereign’s Palace into the hand of Haggai, guardian of the women.
Now, you can see here that Esther is being collected along with many of the other young women to pretty much be presented to the king so that he may select a new queen. And when she’s taken, this is not by her own choosing. We pretty much get the impression that they were just selected and required to go to this harem of the king. A guy, an interesting bit on the harems here, a guy was most likely a eunuch. And a eunuch would take care of the royal women because, not to get into too many details, but eunuchs most likely would not have any drive to the women of the king.
So Esther was taken most likely against her decision to be one of the women to be looked over and possibly be the next queen of Persia. We read in Esther chapter two verse nine. And the young woman pleased him, and she received loving commitment from him. So he hastened to give her preparations and her portions and gave her seven choice female servants from the Sovereign’s Palace, and he moved her and her female servants to the best place in the House of the Women. So Astaire found favor with the king, and she was selected to be the next queen of Persia.
Not entirely sure what happened to the rest of the women. Maybe they returned to the harem. Maybe they went back to their lives. Not really sure. But Esther became favored by the king.
She was selected to be queen, the first Judean queen of Persia. She was given servants. She was given the best place in the house, and she had it made at that point other than being taken as queen against her choice. Then we go on to Esther chapter two verse 17. And the sovereign loved Esther more than all the women, and she found favor and loving commitment in his eyes more than all the maidens.
And he set the royal crown upon her head and made her sovereignness instead of Vashti. Now during this whole life of Esther, during the whole selection process and her finding favor and she selected to become queen, We’re not told that the king had many wives. We’re told definitely that Esther was now the wife of the king, but once again, we don’t know exactly what it is that happened with the rest of the women. If they were well, we still know. Now another thing about Esther is that she was a team player.
During the whole story of Purim, we see her definitely as a pivotal character in the story and extremely important. And one of the things that really sticks out in my mind about Ester is that she was not a feminist that you would think of today. She listened to other people instead of just putting her own opinion out there all the time. She listened to the wisdom and advice of other people, And we get the sense of that from various verses, but one here early on is Esther chapter two verse 20. Esther had not made known her relatives and her people yet as Mordechai commanded her For Esther obeyed the command of Mordechai as when she was being raised by him.
Now here, if you’re modern of the liberal mindset, you might read this verse and think that, oh, Esther was just a slave to Mordechai beating down women, keeping them in submission, all this other stuff. No. If you take everything into context later on, it also has Mordechai obeying the command of Esther too because when she gives advice about fasting and praying. So, no, this was just a good advice that he was giving her, and he was advising her not to reveal that she was a Judean because wasn’t really the time yet. And you can see all this play out in the story of Purim and how it really comes to a conclusion at the right time when she reveals exactly who she is.
And during the story during the life of Esther, she had really placed herself well, she didn’t really place herself, but she was placed in dangerous circumstances multiple times and in multiple ways. One of those circumstances was when the Judeans were about to be killed, and Mordecai told her to go in front of the king and plead for their case to be allowed to live, not all be killed. Esther is at first kinda reluctant. She tells him that if anyone goes in front of the king, that they’ll be killed if he doesn’t extend his royal scepter. Mordecai talks to her and then eventually, she comes around.
She finds the strength to go in front of the king. Esther chapter two verse 22. And the matter became to Mordecai, she who informed sovereignist Esther, and Esther spoke to the sovereign in Mordechai’s name. So she went multiple times actually in the story in front of the king on various people’s behalf. This one right here is actually relating to an instance where Mordechai has uncovered a plot by other people to kill the king.
So Mordechai informs Ester and Ester goes in front of the king and it saves the king’s life and that’s a pivotal point in the story of Perem too. But as far as Astera goes, this is one of those times where she had the strength to stand up and do the right thing even in front of the most powerful man in all of Persia. Then we read in Esther chapter four verse 16. Go, gather all the Yehudim who are president in Shushan and fast for me, and do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I too and my young women shall fast in the same way.
Then I shall go to the sovereign, which is against the law, and if I shall perish, I shall perish. This particular example, she’s again finding the strength to go in front of the king even though it may mean her life. And this is on behalf of all the Judeans within Persia because the decree has already went out to kill them all at a certain point. Maybe in her mind, she was thinking that if she didn’t go, that she would be killed anyways. So why not go ahead and just put your life in danger, and maybe something good will come out of this.
So she did go in front of the king, and one point right here is kind of contrasted with the way people do things today is the fasting and probably praying too, but the fasting. A lot of people, both men and women, will not fast. They won’t fast for their own health. They won’t fast for intervention when they have things in their life they need assistance with. They just won’t fast.
But this was a regular thing they did back during these times. And here we see an instance where Esther is telling Mordechai to go fast for three days and that she and her women with her, probably her servants, would also fast and then she would go in front of the king to plead her case and for all the Judean people. Now if you don’t know anything about fasting, you get various feelings during the time of fasting. And usually for me, about day three is when I get really calm, really clear headed, and really a good sense of peace and stability no matter what I’m doing. It’s really I don’t know how to describe it fully and completely.
You just have to experience it. You get through day one and then day two and then day three, at least for me, is where it really kicks in. So maybe there’s something to this whole three days of fasting and praying. But she went after these three days of fasting in front of the king. She had the strength to do that, and she threw a feast for the king in Haman on day one, and then she threw another feast for the king in Haman on day two.
And that’s when she has the strength to reveal the plot and save all the Judeans, including Mordechai and herself. Esther is a very powerful and important woman that we can take a lot of things away from and really learn from in this story. So like I said, this is going to be short and sweet and to the point because we don’t have a lot about Esther directly from the Bible about just her. We get very little about her family life before Mordecai, but we can see a lot of good points that she exhibited during her life to draw from in our own lives. So in a summary, Esther started out from humble beginnings.
She was an orphan. She was being raised by someone that wasn’t her parents even though it was still family, but she was forced into a situation beyond her control. She was taken into a whole pool of women to be selected from as the next queen. She quickly rose to the top position for women in Persia. She became queen of all Persia.
Now when I say she quickly rose, that is relatively speaking because it took probably about a year of preparation before she was actually taken in front of the king for him to select a queen from. But she was placed in danger multiple times in multiple ways, but she eventually found the strength to face each of these challenges and came through each one smelling like the proverbial rose. She was tactful and strategic in her approaches. She was not the modern loud mouth opinionated feminist that we see nowadays because that probably wouldn’t have worked out too well for her, and it probably would have ended up getting a lot of her people killed as well. So that’s something we can take away from this as well.
Be tactful and strategic when you speak with people. Be honest. Be upfront, but don’t be rude and opinionated. Be like Esther. And she ultimately saved not only the king on one particular occasion that we read in the book of Esther, but she also saved the entire Judean population that was within Persia.
And that’s the strength that we can see exhibited from Esther, and that’s just the god honest truth.
