As I first started to read the article, I was like, "Ok, yeah... God uses morally questionable people to work his will, etc. etc. Yeah, I've preached on that ad-nauseum..."
Then the article took a sharp turn. My initial reaction was to stop reading at first, take some deep breaths, and then gather the courage to keep going and see what else he had to say.
If you're not familiar with the story of Esther - the short version is that the Persian Empire has defeated the Babylonian Empire and taken "custody" of the Jews who were carried into captivity after the Babylonians sacked and destroyed Jerusalem. Xerxes' predecessor, Cyrus, had allowed the Jews to begin returning to Judah. Under Xerxes, they're given even more freedom to return, though Mordecai, Esther's cousin, decides to stay in the Royal City of Susa.
The story of Esther opens with an immediate power struggle between the King of Persia and his Queen. He orders his wife to appear with him at a dinner so he can parade her in front of his court to show how beautiful she is. The Queen refuses to be treated like an object to be displayed - so the King gets rid her of because you can't have the women in the Kingdom thinking they can tell their husbands, much less the King, "no." Thus, the search is on to find a new Queen who will be more pliable to the King's wishes and won't give other women the insane notion that saying "no" is an option. The end of chapter one even states, "every man should be the master in his own house."
Esther is a young Jewish girl who is rounded up with other young virgins from "every province" in the Persian Empire and placed into the harem of King Xerxes of Persia. The King spends one night with each of the women to determine which one pleases him the most. It winds up for reasons we do not fully know being Esther and she is crowned Queen. Using her position as Queen, she is able to reveal a heinous plot to have her people slaughtered by one of the King's men and helps reveal the traitor, thus saving her people. Esther is revered in Jewish tradition as a heroine as a result, because to come before the King un-summoned meant death. So Esther risks her life going before the King in order to present her evidence. The King, who has the power to have her killed just for walking into his presence un-summoned, opts to pardon her for this "offense."
According to Jewish scholars, Esther is, in fact, read best as, of all things, a comedy. That its "over the top" elements do not lend itself to a historical understanding of the story but was written as a type of "crises literature" for Jews who were in captivity. Adele Berlin notes in her introduction to Esther in the Jewish Study Bible that the story draws from conventional themes from both the Bible and extraBiblical sources that were popular during the Persian period. Esther, Mordecai, Haman and the King are all character "types" - Esther is the heroine placed in a foreign court, reminiscent of Joseph and Daniel. Mordecai and Haman are the reincarnations of Saul and Agog. King Xerxes is the bumbling King of the foreign nation, a buffoon who never seems to know quite what to do in any given circumstance, relying upon his drunken advisors to make decisions for him. "Yes! Let's get a harem full of virgins for the King to sleep with so men can remain masters of their own home."
The "burlesque" depiction of the of the Royal Court only seeks to make caricatures of the voyeuristic authorities. The story is structured around improbabilities, exaggerations, and misunderstandings in order to elicit a few good belly-laughs from the audience.
Putting that understanding of it aside, however, that does not mitigate the basic problems, whether a parody of sorts or historical documentation - the story is filled with sexist overtures that are more bothersome if it is actually an historical event.
In many ways it is a very offensive book to women. Jewish Midrash even takes the scene of Queen Vashti a step further and rather than just summoning her before the King, he orders her to parade around in front of his courtiers naked wearing only a royal diadem. Vashti refuses and it is seen as an affront to the King. Yes, refusing to parade around naked in front of your husband's drunken friends is, of course, the woman's fault and therefore needs to be deposed of immediately.
The blatant sexualization and objectification of women inherent in the book of Esther is most definitely a disturbing tale of licentious debauchery going on within the courts of King Xerxes. Of oppressive power that knows no bounds, even in the bedroom. Scholars note that God is not mentioned in the book of Esther anywhere - and it is believed that is intentional, because what goes on is so lewd and comic, the less religion is mentioned as being part of this story... the better.
That's not quite the route the author of the aforementioned article takes, however.
The author's assumption is that, somehow, Esther could have said 'no' to the King of Persia when he brought her into his harem. That she should have chosen death in order to keep her "sexual purity," as that would have demonstrated true faith. That the story of Esther has embedded within it a question of "sexual morality" that we need to glean from its telling.
On one hand - I agree... it is a tale of sexual immorality - but the blame and the lesson in this story lies not with Esther, but with the powers that placed women in this situation to begin with. While the story does seem over the top, such objectification and sexualization of women certainly is not. Our own culture can testify to that. Take such objectification that exists even today and remove women's rights and advocacy groups - and you have yourself a very vulnerable group of people with little to no recourse.
While Sprinkle is quick to throw blame Esther's way for not just "saying no" there is no mention of the fact that she is likely a young teenage girl whose cousin, a man who has become her foster father, tells her to hide her identity and not let anyone know she is Jewish. In fact, it seems more likely that Mordecai saw an opportunity in this situation. He claims he wants to hide her identity - but then shows up to check on her every day. Her ties to Mordecai kind of give the whole Jewish thing away. It's about as good of a disguise as Superman's glasses...
Furthermore, the conditions of being in a harem were far from ideal. Esther is said to have been given special favor by the man who oversaw the women - giving her extra "rations" and cosmetics, treating her with kindness. Meaning - the other women were not. They, like Esther, were in a situation not of their own making but had been kidnapped and were being confined until the King summoned them to sleep with him.
Today we call these sex slaves.
Esther was, along with the other women, a prisoner - one of these slaves. She was not free to leave whenever she wanted. She apparently had charm and was able to make her situation a little more livable and bearable. She somehow "pleases" King Xerxes - which Sprinkle surmises involved Esther's sexual prowess. Now I have no idea what went on exactly in that bedroom. We aren't given that. But anyone who has studied serial rapists knows some of the language they use. "She pleased me," is frequently something they will say about their victims, and it is not in reference to whether or not the woman enjoyed or willingly participated in the experience.
The entire story sets the women in it up as sexual victims and objects. This was their reality. This story is a horrible tale of male dominance and power over women - and Sprinkle has the audacity to take this story and turn it around and lay the blame for Esther's "sexual failure" (yes, that is what he calls it!) in such a situation on Esther. Not on the King. Not on the courtiers, not on Mordecai.
Now I'll grant you - yes, Esther probably did have a choice in how she chose to handle the situation. She could have sat in her cell, sullen, and refused to be the charming individual she apparently was. This would have resulted in worse treatment while she waited. Regardless of her charm or willingness in this endeavor, the King was going to summon her to his bedroom at some point no matter what and forcibly have sex with her. Does Sprinkle really think any of these women, even if they had resisted, would have been able to avoid being sexually molested by the King in this circumstance? Really? The only difference if she would have resisted, if she would not have "pleased" the overseer or the King, is she would have still become a "sexual failure" as Sprinkle states it, and been thrown out of the palace afterwards like yesterday's garbage.
In light of the awareness that is being brought to the forefront of American conversation regarding violence, and in particular sexual violence, towards women at the moment, I haven't quite decided if this author is purposely trying to incite criticism (there are some out there who write such things just for the pure shock value of it) or if he's really that disconnected and clueless about the extreme power differentials between genders not just today, but especially in the ancient world.
I fear it's the latter.
Whether or not this story is meant to be a comedy or a serious rendering of an actual event - the core issue Sprinkle is highlighting here is absurd no matter how you read the text. This is not the same situation as choosing or not choosing to bow down to an idol and being thrown in a lion's den or a furnace. She was never given the choice or the option to say "no" to what happened to her. The two correlations are not even remotely the same. Esther made the best out of a situation she had no control over. End of story.
Sprinkle states he doesn't want his daughter to follow in Esther's footsteps. Well, you know, I wouldn't want mine to follow in her footsteps either. I really don't want to see my daughter (if I had one) kidnapped and imprisoned so she can be raped by the leader of the country I'm living in. I don't want her to be in a situation where she is forced to decide whether she is going to make the best of her horrible situation and try to bring something good out of it, or if she's going to rot on the floor of her cell or once the King is done with her, be returned back home a broken and violated woman whose father is going to look at her and go, "you're a sexual failure because you could not single-handedly fend off the most powerful man in the known world from raping you." She would be put away and shunned - like David's daughter, Tamar, after her brother rapes her. The Bible has taught us that women who are violated are typically sent away never heard from again. They are silenced and quickly forgotten. Even Hagar gets sent away eventually (because she, too, was a slave who had no real option to tell Abraham "no.") when Sarah gets ticked off at her.
Plus, don't forget the brainwashing. Powerful rulers don't become powerful rulers usually unless they have charm and charisma of some sort. A young girl, in the presence of such a force has been conditioned - conditioned to think that this is not a horrible thing that is happening. Her society has conditioned her. Her cousin has even conditioned her to a certain degree to accept this - and not just accept it, but embrace it.
As offensive as the story of Esther overall may be to our feminine sensibilities, I find Mr. Sprinkle's assessment and interpretation even more offensive.
So "for all you ladies out there" - this entire story and situation was not OK. Not because Esther could not control her situation and lost her "sexual purity" to a "pagan" King (he actually wasn't pagan - he was a monotheistic Zoroastrian, because Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion of Persia at the time), but because there are still people who think it's OK to blame the victim in a situation like this. That there are still people under the delusion that there is some "choice" to whether or not you are sexually assaulted.
I would implore Preston Sprinkle to revisit his article and recognize how tasteless and horrific his assertions are given the context of Esther's world. We all have interpretations that can go a little wonky sometimes... but this particular interpretation sets a dangerous precedent in the realm of victims rights and sends absolutely the wrong message to young women who are placed in situations where powerful men exert their dominance over them. Women deal with enough shame and guilt when such an encounter occurs. This article only fosters that misperception and the lie that the woman is solely to blame when she is sexually violated.
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