There was in Shushan the fortress a certain Jew, whose name was Mordecai, the son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, a Benjaminite,
The book of Esther opens in the Persian palace, and here we meet an unknown exile — a Jew named Mordecai, from a family carried off from Jerusalem. That short family record raises the questions the whole book turns on: why is he still far from home, and who placed him in the capital?
The name of God never appears in Esther. One writer reads that silence as the key to the whole story.
Here we have the grand development of secret providence, when God's name cannot be named. God can work where He cannot proclaim Himself.
The next verse traces this family back to the deportation under Jeconiah, king of Judah. Some readers assume Mordecai himself made that journey. The numbers then make no sense, as one commentator explains.
They claim that Mordecai belonged to the captives carried away by Nebuchadnezzar. Then they say that, if that were so, Mordecai must have been over 130 years old and Esther at least 70. But does it say that Mordecai was carried away in the time of King Jeconiah? It was not Mordecai who was carried away but his great-grandfather Kish.
So Mordecai was born into exile. He had never seen the city his family came from.
Mordecai's grandfather had been carried captive by the Babylonians. Since that was over 70 years earlier, Mordecai was no doubt born in Persia. So were the great majority of Jews who lived during that captivity.
The name Kish points back to Israel's first royal family.
This Kish was no doubt of Saul's family, as his name shows... The name of Kish was famous for its link with the kingship God once set up in Israel. He rejected that kingship because it was unfaithful. We may well think that Mordecai's great-grandfather belonged to this dethroned royal family. When Cyrus gave his decree, Zerubbabel, the last of David's family, returned to Jerusalem with the faithful part of Judah. A representative of Saul's family stayed with the ruined, rejected people.
That old family line has unfinished business. Saul, the son of Kish, was Israel's first king.
Saul, the son of Kish, spared Agag, King of the Amalekites, and was rejected by God for his disobedience (1 Sam. 15). Mordecai, who was also a son of Kish (Esther 2:5), arranged the execution of Haman, the Agagite (Esther 3:1). By this he carried out the judgment of God and gained great honour.
Cyrus had allowed the Jews to go home. Mordecai stayed, and commentators differ over how to read that. Some see a real failure, measured against other captives:
How different Mordecai is from Ezra or Nehemiah! They were captives like him. But they were not content to spend their lives at the gate of a pagan king's palace when they had the chance to return to Jerusalem.
Others read his staying as duty rather than indifference:
He had not used the decree of Cyrus to return to Jerusalem. This was not out of indifference. Like Daniel and Nehemiah, he had a duty to carry out at the king's court. He could not leave without special permission, and his position probably forbade him to ask for it.
Whatever we make of his choice, the people in danger later in the book are the exiles who stayed.
The people in danger were from the captivity of Judah (Esther 2:5-6). They were among those who had not returned to the land of Canaan. If this shows a lack of faith and energy on their part, and little love for the house and city of God, then it proves all the more the absolute and sovereign goodness and faithfulness of that God Himself.
Older translations introduce him as "a certain Jew"; the ESV has simply "a Jew." That plain phrase becomes the hinge of everything that follows.
Of all the officers, ministers and attendants around the palace, only one was to discover the plot against the king's life: "a certain Jew whose name was Mordecai." ... In the royal records there was an entry about "a certain Jew," and it had to come at once before the eyes of the restless king. Mordecai must come into notice.
- Hidden. God's name is absent from Esther, but His hand is not: He works where He cannot announce Himself.
- Descended. Mordecai was not the exile himself. His great-grandfather Kish was carried away, and Mordecai was born in Persia.
- Marked. He comes from the line of Kish, the family of Israel's first king. Saul spared Agag; Mordecai brings Agag's descendant to justice.
- Disputed. Commentators differ on why he never returned to Jerusalem. Some see slackness beside Ezra and Nehemiah. Others see a post at court he was not free to leave.
- Positioned. The exiles who stayed were the ones later in danger. Their rescue rested on the sovereign goodness of God, who worked through one "certain Jew" in the palace.
who had been carried away from Jerusalem with the captives who had been carried away with Jeconiah king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon had carried away.
One sentence of family history reaches back more than a century. It ties the man at the Persian palace gate to the day Babylon took Jerusalem's king away. Who exactly did Nebuchadnezzar carry off? And why date a Jew in Susa by a deportation so long before?
Jeconiah is the king also called Jehoiachin. His removal was one stage in a longer collapse. One reference work sets the deportations side by side:
The captivity of Judah followed in four stages. In 606 BC, Nebuchadnezzar carried away the sacred vessels and captives, including Daniel and his companions. This began the "times of the Gentiles." The second captivity came in 599 BC, after Jehoiachin had reigned three months. This one is called the great captivity.
The same work lists the king's names across the Bible:
Scripture calls him JECONIAH in 1 Chronicles 3:16, 17; Esther 2:6; Jeremiah 24:1... It also calls him CONIAH in Jeremiah 22:24, 28, and JECHONIAS in Matthew 1:11-12.
Does "who had been carried away" describe Mordecai, or Kish, four names back in the list? The grammar leaves it open. Commentators differ. One answers critics who claim Mordecai himself came with Jeconiah:
They claim that Mordecai belonged to the captives carried away by Nebuchadnezzar. Then they say, that being the case, Mordecai must have been over 130 years old and Esther at least 70. But does it say that Nebuchadnezzar carried Mordecai away in the time of King Jeconiah? He carried away not Mordecai but his great-grandfather Kish... By listing the four generations from Kish to Mordecai, he shows how much time had passed since the banishment of Jeconiah. That banishment happened before the destruction of the temple. The four generations are an exact measure of the 120 or more years from then to the sixth year of Xerxes.
Another writer counts one generation fewer and still places Mordecai's birth long after the deportation:
The Babylonians had carried Mordecai's grandfather away captive. That was over 70 years earlier, so Mordecai was no doubt born in Persia. So were the great majority of Jews who lived during that captivity.
The name Kish is not neutral. It belonged to the father of Israel's first king. One writer traces the family to a royal line that lost its throne:
This Kish was no doubt of Saul's line, as his name shows... The name of Kish was famous for its link with the royal house God once set up in Israel. He then rejected that house for its unfaithfulness. We may well think that Mordecai's great-grandfather belonged to this dethroned royal family. When Cyrus gave his decree, Zerubbabel, the last representative of David's family, returned to Jerusalem with the faithful part of the tribe of Judah. Meanwhile a representative of Saul's family stayed with the ruined, rejected people.
That ancestry sets up the collision that drives the rest of the book:
Saul, the son of Kish, spared Agag, king of the Amalekites, and God rejected him for his disobedience (1 Samuel 15). Mordecai, who was also a son of Kish (Esther 2:5), arranged the execution of Haman the Agagite (Esther 3:1). By this he carried out the judgment of God and gained great honour.
Cyrus had opened the door home, yet Mordecai stayed. One writer gives the reason:
Mordecai himself was in servitude. He had not used the decree of Cyrus to return to Jerusalem. This was not out of indifference. Like Daniel and Nehemiah, he had a responsibility to fulfil at the king's court. He could not leave without special permission, and his position probably forbade him to ask for it.
The verse introduces a man with no standing — a deportee's descendant in a foreign capital. That is the setting in which this book shows God at work unseen:
Readers have often noticed that the name of God never appears in the book of Esther. This is characteristic. God does not show Himself. The government of the world had fallen to that throne, with all its power and all its mistakes. But behind it God holds the reins by His providence. He watches over the fulfilment of His purposes and over everything needed for them. And He cares for His people, whatever their condition or the power of their enemies.
- Carried — the verse dates Mordecai's family by Jeconiah's deportation, the great captivity of 599 BC.
- Counted — commentators differ over whether the exile refers to Mordecai or to Kish. The four generations most likely cover the 120 years since.
- Kish — the name links the family to Saul's dethroned house. Saul spared Agag; Mordecai had Haman the Agagite executed.
- Kept — Mordecai stayed in Persia. One writer calls this duty at the king's court, not indifference.
- Concealed — God's name never appears in Esther. Yet He holds the reins, and He cares for His people.
And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter; for she had neither father nor mother -- and the maiden was fair and beautiful -- and when her father and mother were dead, Mordecai took her for his own daughter.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
And it came to pass when the king's commandment and his decree was heard, and when many maidens were gathered together unto Shushan the fortress, unto the custody of Hegai, that Esther also was brought into the king's house, unto the custody of Hegai, keeper of the women.
A royal order goes out across the empire, and one orphaned Jewish girl is taken with the rest into the king's palace in Susa, into the care of Hegai, the man in charge of the women. God is never named anywhere in this book, so the verse raises a question — is anything here more than palace routine, and who is really moving events?
Commentators read this book as the record of God acting behind a curtain. The command goes out, the girls are gathered, and one of them happens to be a Jew.
God can work where He cannot announce Himself. Here is a striking example. When the command went out for young women to be sought for the king, so that he could take his choice, among the others in Susa the citadel there was a certain Jew named Mordecai.
Her very name carries the theme, and it fits the state of the nation she belonged to.
Esther means "I will be hidden." The book deals with the Jews during their captivity, outside their own land, hidden among the nations. Yet God was caring for them behind the scenes — the same God they had disobeyed. And God's name is not found in the book: He is hidden too. He cannot link His name openly with them, because their scattering is discipline for their disobedience. What is more, they had chosen to stay in Persia, even though God had opened the way for them to return to Israel.
Esther does not volunteer. She is taken. Writers do not soften what that meant for a Jewish girl.
We see the Jewish wife handed over by force to the Gentile king, like a slave whom someone disposes of, without ever being asked! Her will counts for nothing in this union. She is forced into it. Such a position might be highly desirable to all the other young women in the empire, but it could not be desirable for Esther.
Should Mordecai have hidden her? Should Esther have gone? The text does not say, and commentators point to that silence instead of filling the gap.
Whatever we may think of Mordecai or of Esther in this matter — and Scripture is silent here, neither accusing nor excusing — we do not wait long before the vital question is raised. The Jews must either die or be delivered beyond all outward hope, and that without sign, wonder, or miracle.
Once she is inside, something happens that no royal order could arrange.
It was fairly certain that one young woman would win the king's favour. But Esther won more than that. She also won the favour of the king's chamberlain, and indeed of everyone who looked at her. So she was lifted all at once into a position of extraordinary influence.
Hegai's whole job is to make a woman ready to stand before the king. Writers see in that a lesson that reaches past Persia.
Esther goes through a time of preparation before she can meet the king. In the same way, there will be a time of preparation for the remnant. The true Esther will be prepared under the guidance and teaching of the Holy Spirit, pictured here by Hegai, and her beauty will be brought into display. This also applies to Christians today: the Spirit needs to show us the way. We cannot reach beauty by our own thinking.
The long beauty treatment in the palace draws a sharper comment.
So the unbelieving world thinks it can improve on the beauty of those whom God has created, by various artificial means. Very likely the king would have been just as impressed with Esther if there had not been this long delay.
Queen Vashti has been put out, and a Jewish girl takes her place. Commentators read that exchange as a picture of something still ahead.
Esther is a picture of the Jewish remnant. The King of Israel, our Lord, will call that remnant when Gentile Christendom has been disowned and set aside for its unfaithfulness, just as Vashti was set aside. So Vashti and Esther illustrate the parable of the good and the wild olive tree in Romans 11.
- Hidden. Her name means "I will be hidden" — hidden girl, hidden nation, hidden God whose name never appears in the book.
- Taken. She is gathered by decree, disposed of like a slave, her own will counting for nothing in the arrangement.
- Unjudged. On whether she or Mordecai should have complied, Scripture is silent, neither accusing nor excusing.
- Favoured. She wins the king's favour, the chamberlain's, and that of everyone who looks at her — and is lifted at once into extraordinary influence.
- Prepared. Hegai gets her ready for the king. That preparation pictures the Spirit's work, which still applies to believers now.
And the maiden pleased him, and obtained favour before him; and he speedily gave her her things for purification, and her portions, and the seven maidens selected to be given her, out of the king's house; and he removed her and her maids to the best [place] of the house of the women.
Esther is an orphan from a people carried off into exile. She is swept into a foreign king's palace with crowds of other young women. At once the official in charge takes to her and moves her to the front. The book of Esther never names God. So this verse raises a question: is such kindness luck, taste, or something else at work behind the scenes?
Commentators read this book as the record of God at work while staying out of sight. That is the setting in which Esther wins Hegai's kindness.
Now I return to explain a little the facts traced in it. They are the grand development of secret providence, at a time when God's name cannot be named. God can work where He cannot proclaim Himself.
The kindness is not an isolated piece of good fortune. It is one move in a sequence that will matter later.
In all this we see the hand of the Lord. Step by step He is preparing the help His people will need to be kept safe and delivered in the coming crisis.
The favour was concrete, not sentimental. It came as supplies, staff, and a better room.
Hegai was pleased with her. So he gave her everything needed to enhance her beauty. He also gave her seven maidens to help her get ready to meet the king. In fact, Hegai was so impressed with her that he gave her the best place in the house of the women.
Everyone who saw her reacted the same way, and it changed her standing.
The corrupt customs of those days brought large numbers of beautiful young women to Shushan for the king. Out of them all, Esther won universal favour. One of them was sure to win the king's favour. But Esther won more than that. She also won the favour of the king's chamberlain, and indeed "of all who saw her." So she rose at once into a position of extraordinary influence.
Commentators link this moment to two earlier exiles who also pleased the men who held them. Daniel, carried off to Babylon, met the same warmth from the official over him.
We now read, as explaining what follows, that "God had brought Daniel into favour and tender love with the prince of the eunuchs" (Daniel 1:9). Again we are reminded of the similar case of Joseph. Sold into Egypt, and becoming a member of Potiphar's household, "he found grace" in his master's sight… He was later thrown into prison, where the Lord also "gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison."
So who is really at work in the man holding the power?
The Lord was not only with Joseph, but He was for Joseph, disposing the heart of the master in favour of his servant.
Why did she, out of all the women there, come out on top?
Did she have advantages that set her apart from all her companions? Certainly her origin would have excluded her from the start, and Mordecai, who knew how low his people had been brought, was well aware of it. So Esther is a hidden wife, but her grace and her beauty attract the sympathy and love of all. She pleased Hegai, the keeper of the women, and finds favour before him. Everyone who sees her feels the same. She pleases the king "above all the women." In her still secret character she is lifted up to the dignity of queen of the nations, in place of Vashti.
One writer treats Hegai as a picture of the Holy Spirit, preparing a people to meet the King.
Esther goes through a time of preparation before she can meet the king… The Holy Spirit, pictured here by Hegai, will guide and teach the true Esther in the same way. He will prepare her and bring her beauty into display. By the way, this still applies to Christians today: the Spirit needs to show us the way. We can't attain beauty based on our own thinking.
Readers ask whether Mordecai and Esther were right to go along with this. The account gives no verdict, and the crisis comes fast.
Whatever may be thought of Mordecai or of Esther in the matter, Scripture is silent here. It neither accuses nor excuses. We do not have long to wait before the vital question is raised. The Jews must perish or be delivered, beyond all outward hope, yet without sign, wonder, or miracle.
- Source. God's name is absent from the book, but His work is not: He can work where He cannot proclaim Himself.
- Gift. The favour arrives as ordinary things — supplies, seven attendants, the best place in the house of the women.
- Reach. The same favour reached everyone who saw her and lifted her into great influence.
- Pattern. Joseph in prison and Daniel in Babylon met the same welcome. The Lord was moving the heart of the man in charge.
- Purpose. Every step prepared the help His people would need in the coming crisis. Scripture stays silent on whether those involved acted rightly.