Esther 8-10 | Redemptive Reversals
Dramatic reversals mark the final few chapters of Esther. The resolution of the whole story comes as people’s futures seem to turn on a dime. The world was turned upside down, and Esther and her people were delivered. These reversals reveal God’s wisdom. They show how he works in the world, and they speak to the way we can by faith walk in his wisdom.
We need God’s wisdom to live in this world. There’s an order to how God made the world, and to work against that order is like trying to swim against the current. “No Bible verse,” Tim and Kathy Keller point out, “will tell you exactly whom to marry, which job to take, whether to move or stay put.” The Kellers go on to explain why this is so, “If God had given us a hundred-volume set of rules for every situation we would have relied on the book and our diligence. But when we see what wisdom truly is, we will be driven to look to Jesus, of whom it is said ‘What’s this wisdom that has been given to him’ (Mark 6:2).” As we search for God’s wisdom, we will find it in Jesus Christ himself.
God overturns human wisdom and reveals his true wisdom through the great reversals at the end of Esther. God’s people were afraid, waiting for their destruction (Esth 8:17), but God took their fear and turned them into a people who were feared (9:2). The edict that was meant to destroy them was overruled by an edict that saved them. While it seemed that God’s people were in the hands of blind fate and the casting of Pur (3:7), the story resolves with the celebration of their survival with the ironically named holiday of Purim (9:26). God orchestrated the great reversal from their sure destruction to their victorious survival.
This dramatic reversal began with the reversal between Haman and Mordecai. As Haman ascended in honor, rank, and power, he was toppled in a dramatic reversal. Haman’s downfall began right as he expected even more prestige to be heaped upon him: “So Haman came in, and the king said to him, ‘What should be done to the man whom the king delights to honor?’ And Haman said to himself, ‘Whom would the king delight to honor more than me?’” (6:6). Haman went on to list a number of privileges that should be given to such a man, but instead of receiving them himself, Haman had to go and honor his personal enemy Mordecai with the reward he was so sure he was about to receive (6:6-10). In the end, Haman was hanged on the very gallows he had built for Mordecai (7:7-10), while Mordecai was entrusted with the king’s signet ring and set over Haman’s house (8:1-3).
Mordecai’s reversal depended upon another great reversal in this story: that of Esther. She, who was an exiled orphan, became the queen of Persia (9:29-32). She began the narrative as an orphan who was beholden to the whims of a king. She had lost her parents and been ripped from her home to be used by a man who had little regard for women. Yet, by the end, she is the queen who mandates edicts and saves her people.
The whole book echoes the wisdom of Jesus: “So the last will be first, and the first last” (Matt 20:16). Indeed, the story is a dramatic portrayal of Christ’s proclamation, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Matt 23:12). Such a reversal is seen supremely in Jesus Christ. God becomes man. The righteous one is punished for our sin. Our king conquers by being crucified. Life comes through his death.
God’s wisdom overturns human wisdom, and so if we are to swim with the current of his wisdom in this world, we would do well to recognize two keys. First, we learn about how we find God. Often, we see God most clearly when he seems most hidden. The cross was the last place we would think to find God, and yet we see our God most clearly revealed on the cross. And so, too, in our lives, when we find ourselves like Esther, feeling as though God is hidden and God could not possibly be in this: that is when we find him.
Second, we learn about how we find our lives. We find our lives by losing them. Jesus calls to us: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:34-35). True life is found by losing it. True life is found in the way of the cross.
