Study 3: Esther 2:1-10

The Sunday School readings of the Book of Esther that I grew up with tend to sanitize Esther's story, talking about the search for Queen Vashti's replacement in terms of a "beauty contest" (so, for instance, in the Veggie Tales telling of this story, all Esther has to do is to compete in a talent show). But when you read it in short, 10-verse chunks like this, the very dark, very traumatic thing that's really happening here has time to hit you in the gut. "Let the king appoint commissioners to bring all the young virgins from every province of his realm into the harem in Susa" suggest his advisers, "And let the girl who 'pleases' the king best become the next queen." You don't have to read between the lines too much to get what's really going on here, and it ain't no fairy tale. For just a second this morning I tried to imagine some ruthless government "commissioner" coming to my door, and hauling off a daughter of mine like so much property, to see if she might 'please' the king. It was too disturbing an image to handle for more than just a second, especially because, when you do dwell on it for just that second, you realize that there are places in the world-- in our own neighbourhoods, even-- where this kind of sexual exploitation is not just a vague story from the distant past, but an all-too-present reality. This doesn't make for a nice, neat Sunday School flannel graph, of course, but that, I think, is part of the problem. There's a tendency in Christian circles to treat the whole issue of sexual exploitation the same way we tend to treat the sexual exploitation going on in the story of Esther: to sanitize it, or moralize about it, or just pretend it isn't there. The other day I suggested that Esther is a type of the Messiah, a fore-shadow of the coming Christ; today God was saying to me: "If that's true, then in Christ, I stand with the sexually exploited, the powerless, and the abused. I take the plight of all the Esthers of this world very seriously, and in Christ I call my people to do the same.”

Discussion Questions 
  1. The story of Esther is a very well-known Bible story. What was your impression of the process of picking the new queen? Had you thought about it in terms of the exploitation of the vulnerable before? Do you think rounding up virgins was a one off situation? Or common is that culture ? We know from chapter one Ahasuerus kingdom was huge, and he appoints commissioners in every province to find the young girls. How many girls do you think there were that were taken into the harem? 
  2. Why do you think Esther wins favour with Hegai so easily? 
  3. What are the “beauty contests” in the world today that are exploiting people? And as Christians how do we take the plight of the Esthers seriously?

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