Wednesday Bible Study: The end of all things- Esther

When I saw the 10th chapter of Esther, I thought, "Boy, you are up against it this time!"  For what I meant, let me show you the ENTIRE chapter of Esther 10:

Est 10:1  And King Ahasuerus laid a tax on the land and on the isles of the sea. 
Est 10:2  And all the acts of his power and of might, and the declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, with which the king made him great, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? 
Est 10:3  For Mordecai the Jew was next to King Ahasuerus and great among the Jews, and pleasing to the multitude of his brothers, seeking the wealth of his people and speaking peace to all his seed. 

That's it- three seemingly tacked-on verses.  And I had no idea of where to go- maybe a slight inkling, but nothing astoundingly useful- until something from last week's stop in Ephesians struck me.


In our look at Ephesians 6, we saw how the verses referenced in Paul's listing of the Whole Armor of God were attributes of the Returning Christ.  One of those, which I had to find on my own, was in Psalm 5:

Psa 5:12  For You; O Jehovah, will bless the righteous; with favor You will surround him as with a shield. 

And in the word "favor" we found the core meaning, "to satisfy a debt".  And guess what?  That same word (actually a direct derivation thereof) is in those above 3 verses.  And in finding that, I learned that Mordecai was a type of Christ.  Let's look at the attributes in v3 of Mordecai.

1- "he was NEXT to King Ahasuerus".  That word for 'next' contains a very interesting meaning:

משׁנה
mishneh
mish-neh'
From H8138; properly a repetition, that is, a duplicate (copy of a document), or a double (in amount); by implication a second (in order, rank, age, quality or location): - college, copy, double, fatlings, next, second (order), twice as much.

And while Jesus, while on earth, consistently put Himself BELOW the Father, He also told us "The Father and I are one", and, "He who has seen Me has seen the Father"- in essence, He was a 'repetition, that is, a duplicate' of the Father.  Just so, in the eyes of all who mattered, Mordecai became a 'duplicate' of the King.

2- "...and GREAT among the Jews..."  No hidden meaning here.

3- "...and PLEASING to the multitude of his brethren..." And here is where I figured out what God was saying to me, because the word "pleasing" is virtually the same word as 'favor' in Psalms 5:12.  In effect, Mordecai "satisfied the debt" of his brethren.  How?  Not only did he stand where others bowed, but was willing to give the most precious thing to him- Esther- to save them all.

4- "...seeking the WEALTH of his people..." This a bad translation for the modern day from the MKJV; most other versions use "good" or "welfare".  The definition says the word is good as an ADJECTIVE.  In that sense, you might re-write the sentence, "he sought to make his people good.."

5- "...and SPEAKING PEACE to all his seed..." These are two figurative terms, and actually is more like "arranging safety".  Which Mordecai in essence did for them, and Christ does for us.


It might seem a hard task to see Mordecai as the hero of our tale (especially since it got named after Esther) but consider he did save both his people and the King; the tale began to turn ONLY when the King realized that Mordecai had done HIS will in the past.  And he did the same again in the end, not through word but through sacrifice.