Esther becomes queen
Before a girl’s turn came to go in to King Xerxes, she had to complete twelve months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women, six months with oil of myrrh and six with perfumes and cosmetics. 13And this is how she would go to the king: Anything she wanted was given her to take with her from the harem to the king’s palace. 14In the evening she would go there and in the morning return to another part of the harem to the care of Shaashgaz, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the concubines. She would not return to the king unless he was pleased with her and summoned her by name.
15When the turn came for Esther (the girl Mordecai had adopted, the daughter of his uncle Abihail) to go to the king, she asked for nothing other than what Hegai, the king’s eunuch who was in charge of the harem, suggested. And Esther won the favor of everyone who saw her. 16She was taken to King Xerxes in the royal residence in the tenth month, the month of Tebeth, in the seventh year of his reign.
17Now the king was attracted to Esther more than to any of the other women, and she won his favor and approval more than any of the other virgins. So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. 18And the king gave a great banquet, Esther’s banquet, for all his nobles and officials. He proclaimed a holiday throughout the provinces and distributed gifts with royal liberality.
This section also introduces us to Esther and Mordecai, the two main characters in the story. At this time Mordecai was apparently a government official of middle rank in the Persian court. His ancestors had been carried into captivity about 120 years earlier. Kish and Shimei are names that were used in the family of King Saul over five hundred years before the time of Mordecai (1 Samuel 9:1,2; 2 Samuel 16:5); but it appears that these men were Mordecai’s immediate ancestors, namesakes of the earlier Kish and Shimei. The phrase “who had been carried into exile” would then describe Kish, who would be Mordecai’s great-grandfather.
Mordecai’s name seems to be a form of the name of the heathen god Marduk. Perhaps the accountant Marduka mentioned in a Persian document is our Mordecai. This practice of having a foreign name was not particularly unusual; even Daniel and his friends had been given second names that incorporated the names of heathen gods (Daniel 1:7). Mordecai’s cousin Hadassah, whom he had adopted, had changed her Hebrew name to the name Esther, which appears to be derived from the Persian word for “star,” or perhaps from the heathen goddess Ishtar.
Mordecai had a sincere concern and affection for his adopted daughter, so he kept close track of her progress. The text does not give any direct information about the motives of Esther and Mordecai. It is not clear how voluntary Esther’s participation was or what role the ambitions of Esther or Mordecai may have played in the matter. Perhaps they had no choice. We are not told. Nevertheless, Esther’s willingness to hide her Jewishness would certainly have involved some compromises in her lifestyle and in her worship. In this regard her conduct contrasts sharply with that of Daniel and his three friends (Daniel 1,3).
Esther quickly advanced on the strength of her natural beauty and charm. She gained favor with Hegai, the eunuch in charge of the harem, and relied on his advice concerning what to wear and what to take with her to best please the king when she appeared before him. Hegai undoubtedly knew the king’s taste in such matters better than anyone else. In the ancient Near East, the supervisors of the kings’ harems were eunuchs, men who had been castrated to remove any possibility that they might engage in sexual relations with one of the king’s wives and produce a son who might become heir to the throne. These men were often shrewd politicians who exerted great influence through the women of the court. Hegai’s favor for Esther
may have been due in part to the fact that he had her picked as a winner and wanted to establish his influence with the future queen. If so, his judgment was sound. She won out and was raised to a position of special prominence among Xerxes’ wives. Her rise was celebrated with a special banquet. It is not clear in what sense Esther was “queen” of the Persian empire. She apparently had no sons who could be considered heirs to the throne. In the following chapters it is quite clear that she did not maintain a close husbandwife relationship with Xerxes, and that she had no real role or influence in the affairs of state, except at the whim of Xerxes (Esther 4:11).
Regardless of what the motives of Xerxes, Mordecai, and Esther may have been, God was silently working and directing affairs. At the critical moment, Esther was in a position to play a decisive role in delivering Israel.