Barry, how long have you been a student of the Old Testament?
I came to Moore Theological College in 1975 as a preacher of sorts; before that, I used to be a high school teacher, and did preaching on the side. So I wouldn’t say I was a student of the Old Testament at that time, but I used to read it. I think it was really from my three years at Moore College as a student that made me a student of the Old Testament. It was Dr William Dumbrell, head of Old Testament at Moore College at the time, who sort of got me hooked. Then when I came on to the faculty here in 1978, I just taught whatever I was asked to teach—a mixture of languages, Old Testament, New Testament, with one or two other things in there. But gradually—and it was really under Bill’s advice—he advised me to do more study in the Old Testament, and recommended that I pursue a Masters degree in Old Testament studies, and suggested a supervisor. So he not only taught me as a student but encouraged me further.
By the time I finished my PhD at Sheffield, Bill Dumbrell had moved on to Singapore, so there was a place for me to come back to Moore College in the Old Testament department. So I ended up actually succeeding my teacher. It took a little while for that to happen because John Woodhouse, who is now principal of the college, was lecturing as head of department, and then went back to parish for a time—at which point, I became head of Old Testament, which is what I’m still doing now.
What’s the book of Esther about?
It’s about the people of God, the Israelites, under threat, and, in one way I suppose, it’s about anti-Semitism. It’s the underbelly—the nasty reality—of anti-Semitism, and how God, who is never really obviously present in the book (there are a lot of suggestions that he is present but he is never directly spoken of as present)—how God moves through ordinary people and through the power plays of palace intrigue and the jealousies that people have for one another, and so on, to thwart an intent by this person called Haman to exterminate the Jewish people.
Now, the Persian empire covered the whole civilized world. So if Haman was successful, it would have meant the end of the family of Abraham, and so the end of the thread of salvation history that goes from Abraham to Christ. So you see the book of Esther is about God keeping his covenant people in existence until the final purpose of that is revealed in Christ, the Messiah.
In some ways, the book of Esther is also about courage in the face of adversity, because Mordecai and Esther both show enormous courage in the face of adversity. Esther in particular, I suppose, could have just ridden it out if she’d wanted to, but she chose to become involved in the fate of her people.
I think the message of anti-Semitism is one that the church needs to hear. The church has become embroiled in this at various periods in history, so there’s a warning here, but there is a lot more to Esther, of course.
Tell us a bit about the flawed heroes of the story, Esther and Mordecai.
Esther and Mordecai are fascinating, they are brave, but they are not spotless. For example, Mordecai refusing to bow to Haman, which is really just (in Persian etiquette) showing respect to someone of higher rank. Mordecai really endangers all his people by his refusal to bow. So it’s questionable whether it was wise to do that, or whether it was perhaps a hatred he’d harboured all his life. Perhaps he felt hatred towards people who were related to the Amalekites, the traditional enemies of Israel, and Haman was a descendant of these people. So we don’t really know why he refused to bow, but he did refuse to, and so really triggered this attack by Haman.
And Esther is brave too, but the way she is able to go about saving the Jews is to take advantage of her beauty: she goes into a beauty contest, apparently without protest, so that she can gain the opportunity to see the king. Banqueting, wining, dining, sleeping with the king—all sorts of questionable behaviour is sketched out. In this way, she is a total contrast to the related story of Daniel, a man who even refused to eat the food the foreign king provided for his court! So she is very impressive, but she is not a lily-white heroine.
The Jewish people during the inter-testamental period even added a bit to the story of Esther, and this has been preserved in the Septuagint [the traditional Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament]. In these additions, whoever wrote them seems to have wanted to exonerate Esther from the charge of having broken the law and behaved immorally.
So one of the exciting and fascinating things for me was when I read the book of Esther, having questions about their behaviour, and then discovered that the Jews of the inter-testamental period had the same thoughts. It was a good example of a modern reader reading the same text, with my questions coming not out of my modernity or my Christianity; it was a real issue that arose for earlier readers too.
As a Christian, I didn’t feel a need to whitewash the story at this point to show the individuals in a better light, or to excuse their flaws; it’s because the story is really about God’s faithfulness to his promises. And it’s not just about God keeping his covenant promises to Israel, it is about him keeping his covenant promises for the good of all of us.
Also, the fact that God was hidden in Esther (he is never mentioned by name) means that the book seemed to be much more the world that I lived in, rather than the world of divine intervention: the parting of seas, feedings with manna, manifest outbreakings of prophecy—these things were rare in the period described by Esther. I don’t live in that world of obvious, divine intervention either. I live in a world that is ruled by pagans (mostly)—people who don’t share my faith—where miracles don’t happen, at least in my bit of it. I found that the book resonated with my world strongly. The way that it encouraged me to see God in the ordinary cut and thrust of life was very encouraging to me.
You’ve said in your ESV Study Bible notes on Esther that it is a humorous book. Can you give some examples of what you mean?
Did I say that? I think it’s a deadly serious book actually! But it’s got some humorous things in it. It’s a dark kind of humour because it’s fun at other people’s humiliation.
Haman is asked, “What should be done to the man whom the king delights to honour? ”, and he answers thinking that he is the one about to be honoured. But it’s actually his enemy Mordecai, so Haman ends up having to parade Mordecai through the streets as the one who the king delights to honour!
Seeing a villain walk into a trap is funny in a slightly edged and cruel sort of way, I suppose. But I think we’re meant to laugh. “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision” (Psa 2:4). The people who oppose God are not the powerful people they think they are. We are invited instead to see the powerful people of the world as God sees them.
You also said in your notes on Esther 6:1–13, “Events now move so tellingly in favor of Esther and Mordecai that a presumption of God’s providential involvement becomes unavoidable”. Can you say more about that? Can we read providence in our own circumstances of life?
Well, it’s the number of times events unfold as they do. Things can happen. They can just fall out in someone’s favour. But when you have a sequence of things that are all headed in the same direction, and when the beneficiaries are not powerful people (some of them can influence people in power, but they’re influencing from the back, rather than the front), then there must be something more to this than just coincidence.
Then there are times when the characters in the story say there is more than just coincidence going on—for example, Haman’s wife says, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, you will not overcome him but will surely fall before him”. She doesn’t actually name God, but she sees that the force that determines what will happen is all powerful.
Esther acknowledges this too. She says, well, I’m going in to see the king, and she calls on her people to fast, which in the Old Testament is a form of prayer. She is admitting that this is now in the hands of God, effectively: “I want us to trust ourselves to God”.
So there are these hints of strange sequences of coincidence, premonition, and then more explicit kinds of activity that are meant to point us in the direction of God’s hidden providence. Are we justified in seeing this? Yes, of course, because “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). God has our welfare at heart.
How can we know that in any particular thing today God is at work? Well, in one sense, I suppose we can’t just by looking at events, but in the context of seeking to honour God and praying to him, when things do happen—things that we’ve prayed for—I think the proper thing is to make the generous assumption that God is indeed at work. It would be quite wrong to do otherwise.
When you’re a believer, your eyes are opened to see God’s hand at work. By faith you are connected to the creator of the world, and so you can see more clearly what he is doing, and thus you live differently as a believer.
What tips would you give for someone who is trying to preach through the book of Esther for the first time?
I’m not sure. I’m not sure I’ve preached from Esther myself, to be honest! I think I’d want people to see it in the context of the Bible story line, so that they’d see that the people of Israel are not just any people, but that there is a special history—a history of God’s choice of Abraham and his descendants though whom God would reveal himself to the world, and through whom he would eventually bring salvation through Christ, the Son of Abraham.
So I’d want people to see that, although people have experienced suffering and, against all odds, they have been delivered, this is not just a general story of deliverance; it’s in a different category. It is not just about rewarding people like Esther and Mordecai for being good or deserving—especially when we realize that, in some ways, they’re not.
Would I try to preach bit by bit? I doubt it. Stories mean what they do as a whole, not as parts. Once you dismantle the story, you dismantle the thing that gives meaning to the events. I might just preach one sermon on the whole of Esther, and it would be about God being present for his people, working all things to their good. This doesn’t just mean we sit back and wait passively, but that God works through our actions.
Maybe I would pick out one or two incidents to preach on separately—for example, the passage about Esther telling people to fast as a kind of symbolic way of placing yourself in God’s hands. Fasting itself is not enormously significant, but it is a way of expressing total reliance on God—even laying down our life, if necessary, since bread is our sustenance. To give it up is to express dependence on God to rescue us. Fasting in Esther reveals a life of faith—a life of complete and utter dependence on God. So I think there’s a sermon there. Then people would want to know about fasting in the Christian life, and then there would be things you could pursue in small group discussions and so on. I suppose if I thought about it more, I could find other little episodes. But essentially you want to preserve the message of the story as a whole in its context of the history of salvation—God honouring his promises to Abraham until, ultimately, they are fulfilled in Christ.
Thank you, Barry!
