Women with a Story to Tell: Esther, 2.

 You got a feel for the problems with patriarchal imperialism last week. The king thinks that he can do no wrong. He has a group of rich and powerful men around him as sycophants (suck-ups) and army officers who are trained to believe everything he says. The result is that the people, like you and me, have no representation at all at the highest levels. Things only get done as a personal favor from the king, not through proper courts and agencies. Notice that, in the first two chapters, the phrase “This pleased the king” or something similar occurs 5 times. Sounds rather like Mafia bosses. ‘Make him an offer he can’t refuse’.  

 Such systems eventually fail because they substitute blind loyalty for talent and expertise. A recent show emphasized that Adolf Hitler increasingly fired or killed talent and replaced it with loyalty...to his doom. In the meantime, people with a lower status suffer. Perhaps on behalf of all women, Queen Vashti has refused to perform for the king and his cronies. What do they think this is, Hooters? Such a refusal threatens to expose the oppression that is built into the system. Men are in control for men’s sake. If some men support the king, the law cannot touch them. 

 However, apparently it is a fragile system because the king and the elite hit the roof over Queen Vashti’s protest. What are they afraid of? 

“Then the king consulted the sages who knew the laws, … the seven officials of Persia and Media who had access to the king and sat first in the kingdom (considered this question) ‘According to the law, what is to be done with Queen Vashti because she has not performed the command of King Ahasuerus conveyed by the eunuchs?’ (Esther 1: 13-15).

 The issue seems straight-forward enough for a twisted society. The queen flaunted the command of the king, so what should be done to her? However, power that is based on deception is always paranoid. Those in power have a great imagination and a prodigious propaganda machine. Look at their legal brief. 

 “‘Queen Vashti has done wrong not only to the king but also to all the officials and all the men who are in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus. For this deed of the queen will be made known to all women, causing them to look with contempt on their husbands, since they will say, ‘King Ahasuerus commanded Queen Vashti to be brought before him, and she did not come’” (Esther 1: 16-17).

 Oh, no! Horrors! The women might get ideas about their lowly station in life and be emboldened to resist such oppression. They might wake up and see the hidden power that they have, the power of protest and of resistance. Up to now, the narratives about the proper social and cultural patterns have been a smoke screen touting ‘family values’ and nonsense about ‘the ideal family’.

 As an aside, this is still an issue. For example, a recent bill in the Indiana legislature is trying to valorize ‘the nuclear family’, whatever that is. It isn't because I haven't heard the term, but remember that I am a senior anthropologist with expertise on kinship and descent customs, particularly how these are configured in Pacific Islands cultures, but also in comparison with world-wide cultural practices of family, clan, and tribe. The ‘nuclear family’ is a recent concoction. Read the census data from the 1800s and you will see large complex households here in the United States, not so-called 'nuclear families'.

 So-called ‘Christian Nationalists’ are trying to go back to ‘the good old days’, that is, the days that were good for men. People in the movement have introduced the concept of a ‘tradwife’, short for ‘traditional wife’. They think that the Bible commands such hierarchical relations in both marriage and family that circumscribe the roles of women and girls. A careful study shows that these are not things that God commanded. Women served as judges, prophets, and even warriors (see the story of Deborah and Jael).

 An ethnological survey of cultures would show that men’s and women’s roles vary greatly. An example that might seem extreme to us is that, among some groups, women can fulfill the role of a hunter. 

Note: Tom Headland, a Christian Anthropologist associated with SIL/Wycliffe Bible Translators, who attended Bethel College a few years before I did and recently passed away, described such among the Agta in the Philippines. The truth is that women and men often take roles that we think are reserved for the other sex, and vice versa.  

 Back to the story. The men are worried that the women might get ideas. So they have a plan.

”This very day the noble ladies of Persia and Media who have heard of the queen’s behavior will rebel against the king’s officials, and there will be no end of contempt and wrath! If it pleases the king, let a royal order go out from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes … that Vashti is never again to come before King Ahasuerus, and let the king give her royal position to another who is better than she. So when the decree made by the king is proclaimed throughout all his kingdom, vast as it is, all women will give honor to their husbands, high and low alike. This advice pleased the king and the officials, … he sent letters to all the royal provinces, to every province in its own script and to every people in its own language, declaring that every man should be master in his own house (Esther 1: 18-22).  

 Whew! We men dodged an arrow there. Now women will know their place and will not meddle again in men’s affairs. Right?

Well, we'll let God have the last say. What's the plan for a Jewish woman in a society that abuses power and oppresses women, slaves, and the poor?