Speaking in the Silence
I started reading Esther today for my daily reading and something stood out to me that I had never noticed before. The story begins not as a story about the oppression of the Jews, but about the silencing of women. The tension in the story begins because a woman told a man "no," and that man happened to be the king. Queen Vashti refused to come when King Xerxes called her, in front of a whole banquet of guests. How humiliating! The king's pride was wounded, and he called his advisors to know what to do. His advisors also felt threatened by the queen's actions, saying, "For the queen's conduct will become known to all the women, and so they will despise their husbands...There will be no end of disrespect and discord." So the king banished Queen Vashti and sent edicts throughout his empire, from India to the upper Nile, in every language, saying, " every man should be ruler of his own household." How tragic, that a woman's "no...