Esther: Courage in the Night, and the King Who Could Not Sleep

It is a strange and beautiful thought: the most important night here was not one of battles or banquets, but a night when one man simply could not sleep. A king tossed and turned in a palace in Susa and called for an old book to be read to him in the dark — and by sunrise, an entire people’s fate had quietly turned around. But first, a young woman had to find a kind of courage few people are ever asked for. Her name was Esther.

The orphan who became a queen

Esther — Hadassah, in her own language — had no father and no mother. She had been raised tenderly by her older cousin Mordecai, a Jewish man carried far from Jerusalem in the days of exile. When King Ahasuerus, ruler of a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, sought a new queen, young women were gathered from across the empire — Esther among them. She asked for nothing beyond what was appointed, and made no noise about herself. And it was Esther — the orphan girl with no dowry — whom the king loved above all the rest and crowned queen. One thing she kept quiet, as Mordecai had taught her: no one knew she was a Jew. Some doors open best in their own season.

Hold one small detail gently in mind. Sitting daily at the king’s gate, Mordecai overheard two chamberlains plotting against the king’s life. He told Esther; she told the king; the plot was uncovered, and the affair written down in the book of the chronicles — then closed and shelved in the dark archive. The king forgot. The court forgot. But the book remembered — and books have a way of being opened again on the very night they are needed most.

A decree, and a question for the ages

Soon the king raised up an official named Haman, commanding everyone at the gate to bow before him. Everyone did — except Mordecai. “I am a Jew,” he said, and sat still, day after day, while Haman’s pride grew hotter, until it reached for something terrible: not Mordecai alone, but all his people. With smooth words and silver, Haman persuaded the king; the signet ring was pressed into wax, and riders galloped to the empire’s ends with a decree: on the thirteenth day of Adar, the Jewish people were to perish. The king and Haman sat down to drink. But the city of Susa was perplexed.

Mordecai, in sackcloth and ashes, sent Esther the truth — and a charge: go in to the king and plead for your people. Esther’s answer came back full of fear: anyone who approached the king uninvited faced death, unless the king held out the golden scepter — and she had not been called for thirty days. Then came Mordecai’s words, echoed down three thousand years: do not think you will escape in the palace; deliverance will arise from another place — but who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Esther’s reply had the calm of deep water: Gather the Jews of Susa. Fast for me three days; my maidens and I will fast too. Then I will go in to the king, against the law. “And if I perish, I perish.”

The scepter, the banquets — and the sleepless night

On the third day, Esther put on her royal robes and stood in the inner court. The king looked up — and held out the golden scepter. She touched its top, and the whole court breathed again. Asked what she wanted, Esther asked for almost nothing: a banquet today for the king and Haman, and a second tomorrow. Haman went home glowing, until he passed Mordecai at the gate, still not bowing. At his wife’s counsel, he had a gallows built fifty cubits high, ready to ask for Mordecai’s hanging in the morning.

But that night, the king could not sleep. He commanded the book of the chronicles to be brought, and an attendant read the dry old record of his reign aloud into the dark — until it arrived at one small entry from years before: Mordecai, who had uncovered the plot against the king’s life. “What honour has been done to Mordecai for this?” the king asked. “There is nothing done for him.” At that hour, footsteps sounded in the outer court: Haman, early, with his request ready. But the king spoke first — “What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour?” — and Haman, certain it must be himself, described his own dream: the king’s robe, the king’s horse, a prince to lead him through the streets proclaiming his honour. “Make haste,” said the king, “and do so to Mordecai the Jew.” By morning, all Susa had watched Haman lead his enemy through the city in royal apparel. And at the second banquet, Esther spoke: let my life be given me — and my people. “Who is he that would dare do such a thing?” cried the king. “The adversary and enemy,” said Esther, “is this wicked Haman.” Before the night was out, Haman hung on the gallows he had built for Mordecai — and the king’s anger was pacified.

The old decree could not be unwritten, so a new one was sealed with the king’s ring: the Jews might stand for their lives. Riders carried the new words down the same roads — but this time carrying life instead of death. Mordecai went out in royal apparel of blue and white, and the city that had been perplexed rejoiced, keeping those days ever after as the feast of Purim: days of feasting, gladness, and gifts to the poor.

The God of Esther’s story is awake all night long — the psalmist sang of Him: He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. So tonight, if your thoughts are restless — if some worry hangs over something you love — hand it over, quietly, to the One who stays awake on purpose. You do not have to hold the night together. It is already held.