Esther
Introduction

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Women
Family Values
Cruelty and Violence
Sex
Injustice
Science and History
Interpretation
Intolerance
Absurdities
Good Stuff
Contradictions

Source Index
-Illustrations

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Injustice in Esther

  1. Vashti refuses to entertain the king's drunken guests by dancing before them. For this she is no longer to be queen, to be replaced by someone better (prettier?). 1:12-19

  2. Because of Vashti's disobedience, the king decrees that "all the wives shall give to their husbands honor, both the great and the small" and "that every man should bear rule over his own house." 1:20-22

  3. "Many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them."
    God's favorite way of making converts: Convert or be killed! 8:17

  4. At Esther's request, the king orders a preemptive strike on all 127 provinces from Egypt to Ethiopia. Everyone who planned to kill Jews shall be killed by Jews, along with their wives and children. And all this killing is to take place on a single day.
    (How are the Jews to figure out who planned to kill them and who didn't? Were they supposed to just kill them all and let God sort it out? And why did they need to kill the women and children?) 8:9-11

  5. "The Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them." 9:5

  6. "In Shushan the palace the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men." 9:6

  7. "The ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews, slew they." 9:10

  8. Esther asks the king to kill all those who planned to kill the Jews and hang the already dead bodies of Haman's ten sons on trees. 9:12-14

  9. "The Jews ... slew three hundred men at Shushan." 9:15

  10. "The other Jews ... slew of their foes seventy and five thousand." 9:16