I had known the Esther story was a kind of thorn in the canonical side of both Jewish and Christian exegetes through the ages. I had known it was the only book of the Hebrew Bible not found among the Dead Sea scrolls. And I had known that Luther, rather inconsistenly, thought it little better than the epistle of James. But I have only recently discovered that the (apparent?) absence of God is hardly the story’s most provocative feature.
Esther may well have been Mordecai’s wife, rather than his adopted daughter! Provided we follow this line of thought, the story reads quite differently from the one I learned in Sunday School. (Incidentally, I’m sure TBN would not adapt this version of the story into a feature film!) This is not a rag-to-riches story. Far from it. Instead, it is an irreducibly complex story of passionate sexuality and political intrigue that brings to bear powerfully the tenuousness of personal and racial identity, the ambiguity of language and truth-telling, and the sheer awfulness of responsibility for the destiny of others. It is a story fraught with moral uncertainty.
But does the text support this reading? At first glance, 2.7 seems to leave no room for it:
Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother. This girl, who was also known as Esther, was lovely in form and features, and Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died.
However, a second, closer reading brings this statement into a different light.
(1) Why the seemingly gratuitous repetitions? We’re told Mordecai brought Hadassah (Esther) up “because she had neither father nor mother” and then we’re told again that “when her mother and father had died, Mordecai took her as his own daughter” (the NIV’s “had taken her” is a bit misleading).
(2) Why are we told that Esther and Mordecai are “cousins”?
(3) Why mention that Esther was “lovely in form and features” (The Message: “had a good figure and a beautiful face”)?
Rivkah Lubitch (“A Feminist’s Look at Esther,” Judaism, vol 42, iss 4 [1993]) comments on these oddities:
It is possible that there were two traditions of Esther’s relationship to Mordekhai, which were merged together. One version may have claimed that she was his foster child, probably reading as follows: “He was foster father to Hadassah — that is, Esther — his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother, and, when her father and mother died, Mordekhai adopted her as his own daughter.”
The other version may have seen her as being Mordekhai’s wife, probably reading something like this: “Hadassah — that is, Esther — his uncle’s daughter, was shapely and beautiful, and Mordekhai took her as a wife.” The Hebrew verb, “lekakha,” translated literally as “he took,” is used many times in the Bible in connection with marriage, and the translation “adopted” does not hold within it both the possibilities suggested by the Hebrew verb “took.” The Hebrew “bat,” meaning “daughter,” will read “bayit” if merely one letter (“yod”) is added to it, changing the meaning from “daughter” to “house,” which in rabbinic language also means “wife”.
The LXX reads “wife” instead of “daughter.”
The Hebrew, as mentioned above, reads “daughter.” But besides the possible reading of “house,” consider this explanation, offered by Ohr Somayach’s “Ask the Rabbi” page:
Why does it use the term “daughter?” The terms “sister” and “daughter” are common expressions of endearment, as we see in other places in the Torah (e.g., Ruth 2:8, Shir Hashirim 4:9) and Talmud (e.g., Shabbat 13b). The idea is that a husband and wife should develop a loving and giving relationship as one naturally has with one’s child and sibling.
Obviously, this complicates the story a bit! Now, instead of a Jewish virgin marrying (and coupling with) a gentile – which is difficult enough in light of Torah – we have a Jewish wife marrying (and coupling with) a gentile! And that’s only the beginning of the compounding exegetical and moral difficulties.
Barry Dov Walfish (“Kosher Adultery”: The Mordecai-Esther-Ahasueras Triangle in Midrash and Exegesis,” Prooftexts 22 [2003]) writes,
As if Mordecai being married to Esther before she was taken to the king’s palace did not complicate matters enough, according to one opinion at least, the sexual relationship between Esther and Mordecai continued even after she became queen. Commenting on 2:20, “For Esther did the command of Mordecai just as when she was under his care,” Rava bar Lima says in the name of Rav: “She would stand up from the bosom of Ahasuerus, immerse herself, and sit down in the bosom of Mordecai.”
The erotic element is palpable. Esther, it seems, was, with Mordecai’s approbation, regularly moving from one bed to another! What are we to do with that?
But another, perhaps more serious, textual problem emerges with this reading. According to 2.2, “beautiful young virgins” were to present themselves to the king. If Esther were married, how could she be included among the contestants? Walfish points out the phrasing of 2.17 (reading NASB: the NIV, again, mistranslates),
The king loved Esther more than all the women, and she found favor and kindness with him more than all the virgins…
It seems Esther “pleased” (by the way, how did we miss the sexual overtones of this contest?) the king even though she wasn’t a virgin!
We all know how the plot unfolds. Haman takes offense at Mordecai, and plots the Jews’ extermination. Mordecai enforces upon (his wife?) Esther the responsibility to save her people, the Jews. So we come to her famous statement of 4.16,
I and my maidens also will fast in the same way. And thus I will go in to the king, which is not according to the law; and if I perish, I perish.
It hardly needs mentioning that I had always read this as Esther’s heroic, if somewhat melodramatically narrated, determination to enter the king’s presence without respect for her own life and to make her request known: “If I perish, I perish.” According to rabbinic exegeis, however, this reading is possibly, if not probably, mistaken. Up to this point, Esther had been merely passive (“as the ground,” says one rabbi) during her sexual encounters with the king; because of this resistance, she had not been guilty of adultery, for, effectively, she was being repeatedly raped. According to halakah, this meant she could continue to live as Mordecai’s wife. Now, however, because of the gravity of the moment, she must “go in to” the king willingly. This would constitute an unambiguous act of adultery, and would finally void her marriage to her beloved Mordecai. The “law” she knowingly violates, then, is not Persian law, but the Law, the Torah. And the “perishing” she fears is not death, but separation from her husband.
Esther’s name means “hidden.” Throughout the story, she hides the truth from Ahasueras. She hides her ethnicity, her marital status, her husband’s identity. According to one version, she even hides from the king the fact that she is not a virgin by coupling with him during her time of menstruation. Toward the end of the story, we read,
That same day King Xerxes gave Queen Esther the estate of Haman, the enemy of the Jews. And Mordecai came into the presence of the king, for Esther had told how he was related to her. The king took off his signet ring, which he had reclaimed from Haman, and presented it to Mordecai. And Esther appointed him over Haman’s estate.
What did Esther reveal to the king? Did she finally reveal that he was in fact her husband, and not merely her cousin? Almost certainly not, for if she had Ahasueras likely would have had Mordecai executed as a rival for Esther’s affections. No, she probably did as Abraham, her forefather, had done, and concealed the truth even as she revealed it. Walfish observes,
One might ask, what exactly did Esther tell Ahasuerus about her relationship to Mordecai? Conceivably, she told him about their blood relationship, but not about their marriage. Thus, Esther conceals even as she reveals, in keeping with the midrashic interpretation of her name: “Why was she called Esther? Because she concealed her [private] matters.’
The story continues, narrating the decisive triumph of the Jews and the meteoric ascendancy of “Mordecai the Jew” and “Queen Esther.” In the ensuing days, Esther and her husband would’ve had opportunity to meet one another on a daily basis, and, as Walfish wryly observes, “Lancelot and Guinevere could not have asked for a better situation.” We can’t know of course what they would’ve done in this (hypothetical) situation. According to Jewish law, her willful mating with Ahaseaerus had violated and voided her marriage to Mordecai. However, if the rabbis are right in discerning a deep affection for her husband, it is imaginable that Esther continued to “rise up from the king’s bosom” and return to Mordecai’s bed.
What are we to make of this reading, then? It has a proud and ancient history, though it is hardly commonly accepted now. Personally, I find it far more compelling, and wonderfully less sentimental than the version I got as a youth. If only for literary and historical purposes, it deserves a fair hearing.
But besides appreciation for the greatly enriched drama this reading gives the story, I’m intrigued by the moral questions it asks of us. Was Esther’s adultery “kosher”? Was she, in this case, under moral obligation to sin in order to save others? Do this provide us with a biblical base for arguing, much as Bonhoeffer did, that at times even mortal sins are required of us if we are concretely to serve our neighbor – and God? These aren’t questions to take lightly. They deserve a close examination; one which I hope to give them soon. But for now, I want to enjoy the pleasure of (re)discovering a good story.
