If I Perish, I Perish

God is not mentioned in the book of Esther. Not once. It is the only book in the Bible where that is true, and it is the book where He is most obviously at work: an orphan girl made queen of Persia by a beauty contest, a decree to kill every Jew in the empire, a king who could not sleep one night and asked for the records to be read to him, and a gallows seventy-five feet high with the wrong man on it. Nobody prays out loud. Nobody sees a vision. And everything turns on the night a king lay awake.

An orphan in the palace

"And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter: for she had neither father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful; whom Mordecai, when her father and mother were dead, took for his own daughter" (Esther 2:7). A Jewish orphan in the Persian capital, raised by her cousin, swept up in the king's search for a new queen, and chosen: "the king loved Esther above all the women… so that he set the royal crown upon her head" (2:17). And she told no one what she was. "Esther had not shewed her people nor her kindred: for Mordecai had charged her that she should not shew it" (2:10). A queen with a secret, in a palace where secrets got people killed.

Then Haman. Promoted above every prince, and every knee at the gate bends to him, "But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence" (3:2). One man not bowing. And Haman "thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone… wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom" (3:6). All of them, for one man's stiff neck. He tells the king there is "a certain people scattered abroad… their laws are diverse from all people" (3:8), and the king, who does not ask which people, hands him the signet ring. The decree goes out by post to a hundred and twenty-seven provinces: "to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day" (3:13). The date chosen by lot, Pur, eleven months off. And the king and Haman sat down to drink.

For such a time as this

Mordecai tears his clothes and goes into the city in sackcloth, crying, and Esther, inside the palace, does not even know why. He sends her the decree, and a charge: go to the king. And she sends back the fact everyone in Persia knows: "whosoever, whether man or woman, shall come unto the king into the inner court, who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death, except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden sceptre" (4:11). And she has not been called in thirty days. Then Mordecai's answer, which is the centre of the book and one of the plainest statements in Scripture of how God's purpose and a person's choice sit together:

Read both halves. Deliverance will come from another place regardless: God's purpose will stand whether Esther rises to it or not. And: you may have been made queen for exactly this, and if you keep silent, you will lose everything. Her choice is real and it matters, and His plan does not depend on it. Both at once, in one sentence, and Mordecai does not try to reconcile them. Neither does the book. It is the clearest window Scripture gives onto that question, and it leaves the glass unpolished.

And Esther answers. "Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish" (4:16). If I perish, I perish. The orphan who had kept her secret for years decides to walk into the throne room uninvited, and she asks for a fast first, three days, the whole community, though the book never says the word prayer. Clement of Alexandria, in the second century, knew what the fast was:

The night the king could not sleep

"Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court" (5:1). The third day. She stands where standing means death, and "the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand" (5:2). And she does not ask yet. She invites the king and Haman to dinner, and then to a second dinner. Haman goes home glowing, and his wife suggests a gallows, seventy-five feet, for the Jew at the gate, and he has it built that night.

And then the verse the whole book hangs on, and God is not in it: "On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king" (6:1). A king with insomnia, asking for the dullest reading in the palace, and the scribe happens to open to the entry where Mordecai once exposed a plot against the king's life, and the king asks, "What honour and dignity hath been done to Mordecai for this?" (6:3), and the answer is nothing. And at that moment Haman walks in, come early to ask for Mordecai's hanging, and the king asks him first: "What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour?" (6:6). And Haman, thinking it is himself, describes the royal robe and the royal horse and a prince leading it through the streets. "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" (6:10). And he does. Haman leads Mordecai's horse through Shushan, shouting his honour. No miracle. A sleepless night and a coincidence, and the whole empire turns over.

At the second dinner Esther speaks: "let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed" (7:3-4). Who did this? "The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman" (7:6). "So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai" (7:10). And the day the enemies of the Jews had chosen by lot to destroy them "was turned to the contrary" (9:1), and they called it Purim, after the lot, and Jews keep it still, a month "turned unto them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day" (9:22).

Where this lands

God is not named, and He is everywhere. He is in the orphan being chosen, and the secret kept, and the man who would not bow, and the fast, and the sceptre, and the insomnia, and the scribe's page, and the timing of a knock at the door. The book leaves Him out of the text so that you will see Him in the events, which is where most of us have to find Him most of the time. And Mordecai's sentence stands: deliverance will arise from another place whether you rise or not, and who knows whether you were put where you are for such a time as this. Both are true. Your choice is real, and His purpose is certain, and the Bible does not tell you how, and Esther did not need to know how. She fasted, and walked in, and said, if I perish, I perish.

She did not perish. The sceptre came out. And centuries later another of her people stood before a throne He had every right to and was not spared; the gallows built for us was used on Him, and the day chosen for our destruction was turned to the contrary, and the church keeps a feast about it every week. If I perish, I perish, she said, and lived. He said it in a garden, and died, and that is why she lived, and why we do. For such a time as this. It is always that time.

Related: Esther: For Such a Time (the commentators), Free Will and the Plan That Cannot Fail, Predestination, and Women. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of God are marked in gold, the words of Christ in purple.