Finishing Esther Part 2
Ok so I know I said we were gonna finish up Esther yesterday but the post ended up longer than I thought, so let’s pick it up with our last three influencers from the book of Esther!
Haman
DUN DUN DUUUUN! the villain in our account. Haman had a few problems that caused him to be such a negative influence.
- anger
- pride
- hate
First Haman let anger rule his life. It defined him. Mordecai didn’t do as he wanted. He didn’t bow as Haman rode by. HOW DARE HE! Does he not know who I am ? Look what the King has given me!
Pride: when the king asked human what should be done for someone who has done noble deeds, Haman immediately thinks “OH BOY HE”S TALKING ABOUT ME”. So he rattles off all the things he would like. Oh to be a fly on the wall when the king said OK go do all that you have said….to MORDECAI! WOW!
AND LASTLY HATE- Hate is when you decide to destroy a whole nation because one man will not bow to you! I mean really? No in all seriousness many think that the roots of hate run deeper than that with speculation of ties to a battle where Humans family was killed by the Jews. I am not given those details with in the passage so I cannot tell. BUT for whatever the reason, the reality was Haman was controlled by hate.
Vashti
We don’t know if what Vashti did was a positive or negative influence but she had a choice. She made it. There were consequences because there was fear of the. influence she had!
All we know was that Xerxes in the middle of his drunken feast requested the presence of his Queen So he AND ALL HIS DRUNK BUDDIES could look at his beautiful wife. She said no!
Now there is much speculation as to what all this means. Many scholars believe that she was to parade around all his buddies with no clothses on. Enough said. We don’t really know other than she said NO. and for that choice she was disbarred as queen and sent to live in the concubine residence no longer to be called to the king again.
The King’s advisors
I’m gonna call these guys a bad influence because of two things
- they were selfish
- they didn’t man up to Xerxes and say you crossed a line.
When Xerxes asked this men what to do there response was- PUNISH her because if you don’t all the women will think they too can rebel against their husbands. they weren’t worried about what was right but instead what was easiest.
I know I said that I don’t know what exactly was requested BUT I do know he wanted Vashti to be gawked at by a bunch of drunk men. She wasn’t a show pony. How humiliating.
These dudes could have said ” ya know what we blew it, things got out of hand a. We had too much to drink and we lost control of our senses.” But instead the took the east=y non confrontational road so as not to make king Xerxes mad.
doing what we think is the easy way out is almost NEVER the Easy way out!
Let’s Chat : have you ever considered any of these as influencers? Who was the most surprising?
