Many years ago, I was listening to a radio program in which two conservative white American Christian women were discussing the book of Esther. They raised a question that both had apparently tiptoed around for a long time and had never heard discussed openly--so kudos to them for even going there, perhaps. It concerned Esther's night with the king and what might or might not have occurred. "Surely, she didn't..." one of them ventured. The other answered with an uncomfortable laugh. "I don't know. I guess I never wanted to think about it too closely."
Good grief.
Let me save you some time.
Yes. Yes, she did. Of course she did. And quite conceivably, consent was irrelevant.
This was a pagan king. When she went to see him and he was so pleased with her, do we think he limited himself to saying, "Gosh, Esther, you sure look nice"? To extrapolate to a broad point, we need to stop assuming the unsaved will or should behave like the saved are called to, in any way and at any point in history. The world is the world, and we need to stop tutting at them for not living by Christian conscience or practice. There's no reason they should, our scolding won't win them to Christ, and how dare we forget that used to be us--and still would be if not for grace? But not to digress too far.
Before Queen Esther even heard of Haman's plot against the Jews, before she was ever admonished by Mordecai not to ignore it, she had risked her entire life as a Jewish maiden against almost impossible odds. Imagine being rounded up with all the other virgins "in all the provinces of his [Xerxes's] kingdom" (Esther 2:3) and being taken to the palace to be given a tryout for the position of queen to a pagan king, a position any one individual had an infinitesimal chance of attaining. This, by our standards, is sex trafficking--and Mordecai either could not fight it or chose not to; he was an attendant in the king's court (2:11, AMP). We aren't sure what Esther knew or didn't know about the deposition of the former queen, who had been asked to appear before her drunken husband and his drunken guests for them to, at best, ogle her. Some believe Vashti was commanded to wear only her royal crown, but there's doubt and debate about whether she was ordered to attend nude. Nevertheless, what if the young women went into this whole audition knowing that, if they were chosen, the same might be demanded of them whenever the king had overindulged his appetites? What is surer, though, is Esther knew, after her night with the king, that all prospects of life as a normal Jewish woman were gone. She would be retired to the king's harem, guarded by eunuchs, where she either would never hear from the king again--or she would.
When life can't get any bleaker, we are still in the palm of God's hand if we're in His will.
Some readers try to romanticize the story of Esther. Though we never see the king treat her less than kindly, she couldn't ever go to her own husband unless he called her, and protested to Mordecai that he hadn't called her in a month. (And do we think her husband spent that month, and probably other months like it, celibate?) Calling their marriage a love affair comes across as a stretch meant to pretty things up for a prim and proper audience. No, Esther was there because He who turns the hearts of kings chose Esther as His instrument to turn the heart of this particular one.
It wasn't about Esther; it was about God's people.
It wasn't about Jesus; it was about the will of the Father.
It's not about us; it's about losing our lives to save them.
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