Esther’s Rise to Royalty: The first chapter/scene closes with a sense of comedy, as well as an alarming revelation of fragile emotions at the highest levels of decision making. The Persian court is not a safe place. It is a place of power and intrigue (as is clear also in 2:19–23); a place with unstable relationships and fragile egos; a place with unresolved crisis. Vashti must be replaced by a “better” queen—one who must prove herself as beautiful, but more diplomatic, in this vortex of circumstances and emotions. The two Jewish heroes of the story enter into a world rich with power and pomp, obsessive about physical beauty, and bound by written law.

Historically, the time between the Vashti affair and the choice of a new queen is the four years Xerxes was fighting a series of ultimately d…