How do you feel when you read in the Book of Esther?

Question

I feel sad because it is a case of the many plots in history to annihilate the Jews. Even though in Esther they were saved, I think of the many pogroms that happened years later, and of the Hitler/Nazi regime.

Answer 1

It is sad, but I feel hopeful.

Esther is not your typical heroine. She was just one person, and in those days not even a person who counted for much. Her husband was not exactly prince charming. Her people were oppressed and she was an orphan.

But God used her to save His people. Not chariots or armies or "acts of God." Just one ordinary woman.

She didn't feel up to the task, but look what happened when she took it up! That's very convicting.

I think it's easy for us to say that today, "I'm just one person, what can I do?" But Esther shows us that just one person doing God's will can accomplish great things for Him.

That gives me hope.

I think what we can learn from the Holocaust is that God can bring beauty from ashes. The Holocaust was a terrible thing. But "Man's Search For Meaning" and all of Viktor Frankl's work and countless other works by Holocaust victims came from that experience.

God gives us hope in the most desolate of places.

Answer 2

The Jews have been persecuted throughout history.

God does not want a weak people. He will try them and test them in the furnace of affliction. Any Christian religion that fights against the Jews is adding to the affliction.

Esther was brave to stand up for her people. If she didn't though, God would raise up another. It tells us that our own part in God's plan is insignificant. We can either be part of God's success or we can fight against it and be destroyed.

Answer 3

I feel elated when I read about those that lived in that time period. God isn't even mentioned in the Scroll of Ester, yet you see Him Moving in the lives of all the Jewish people to preserve them in a hostile world. He executes Righteous Judgment on the house of the wicked Haman with Biblical, "Curse for Curse in Kind" as He told Abraham, "They that bless you I will Bless, and he that curses you I will curse." I love to see God's Judgment on those that do despite to God's Name, Blaspheme His Son, Jesus and reap in their lives the Promise of God to Judge them. Grace is here now for all to partake of freely, just as surely as His Judgment is Promised on those that reject Jesus that they may be saved. I'm in favor of God's Will being done in all things, He is never wrong and as in the case of Preserving the Jews of Ester's time, or Judging the wicked terrorists of today in Israel. He'll do all things well. In fact, when God permits the Jews to be run out of Israel in the future for the last half of the Tribulation Period, He will protect & nurture them in the desert place He has prepared for them already. So that when Jesus returns they'll all "Look upon Him Whom they pierced,...and mourn as one would their only child's death." The Remnant of Israel will all be saved in that day, and Jesus will restore the Kingdom at that time & settle the accounts of all satanic Jew haters by casting them into the Lake Of Fire. Praise God for His Unfailing Word, True Justice will be meeted out & Jesus is the Judge that those Jew haters have to face.

Answer 4

If it wasn't for Esther, those of us who are Jewish, wouldn't be here. Happily, her cousin Mordecai was alerted to what Hamen was planning.

Answer 5

I think the book of Esther is a great book. It personifies this verse from the book of Romans for me.

Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

I mean, I have to laugh when I read about how the King "coincidentally" couldn't sleep and how he finds out that Mordecai hasn't been rewarded for turning in the traitors. And then when Haman builds a gallows for Mordecai and goes to tell the King about it and...

Esther 6:4 And the king said, Who is in the court? Now Haman was come into the outward court of the king's house, to speak unto the king to hang Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him. 5 And the king's servants said unto him, Behold, Haman standeth in the court. And the king said, Let him come in. 6 So Haman came in. And the king said unto him, What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour?

Now Haman thought in his heart, To whom would the king delight to do honour more than to myself? 7 And Haman answered the king, For the man whom the king delighteth to honour, 8 Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head: 9 And let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king's most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honour, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour.

10 Then the king said to Haman, Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse, as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king's gate: let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken. 11 Then took Haman the apparel and the horse, and arrayed Mordecai, and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour.

As to the Jews being marked for persecution, that's the work of the Devil who is trying to cause the prophecy that God gave to Adam and Eve to fail to come to pass through the line of David.

Genesis 3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Answer 6

Females can change the world

Answer 7

I feel that we are here for such a time as this...