Short Stories Old and New | Page 2

how the note of empty Persian bigness versus simple Jewish faith is
struck at the very beginning and is echoed to the end. Thus, Ahasuerus
ruled over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, the opening
banquet lasted one hundred and eighty-seven days, the king's bulletins
were as unalterable as the tides, the gallows erected was eighty-three
feet high, the beds were of gold and silver upon a pavement of red and

blue and white and black marble, the money wrested from the Jews was
to be eighteen million dollars, etc. The word "banquet" occurs twenty
times in this short story and only twenty times in all the remaining
thirty-eight books of the Old Testament. In other words, Ahasuerus and
his trencher-mates ate and drank as much in five days as had been eaten
and drunk by all the other Old Testament characters from "Genesis" to
"Malachi."
Note also the contrast between the two queens, the two prime ministers,
the two edicts, and the two later banquets. The most masterly part of
the plot is the handling of events between these banquets. Read again
from chapter v, beginning at verse 9, through chapter vi, and note how
skillfully the pen is held. In motivation as well as in symmetry and
naturalness the story is without a peer. There is humor, too, in the
solemn deliberations over Vashti's "No" (chapter i, verses 12-22) and in
the strange procession led by pedestrian Haman (chapter vi, verses
6-11).
The purpose of the story was to encourage the feast of Purim (chapter
ix, verses 20-32) and to promote national solidarity. It may be
compared to "A Christmas Carol," which was written to restore the
waning celebration of Christmas, and to our Declaration of
Independence, which is re-read on every Fourth of July to quicken our
sense of national fellowship. But "Esther" is more than an institution. It
is the old story of two conflicting civilizations, one representing
bigness, the other greatness; one standing for materialism, the other for
idealism; one enthroning the body, the other the spirit.
Characters. These are finely individualized, though each seems to me a
type. Ahasuerus is a tank that runs blood or wine according to the hand
that turns the spigot. He was used for good but deserves and receives
no credit for it. No man ever missed a greater opportunity. He was
brought face to face with the two greatest world-civilizations of history;
but, understanding neither, he remains only a muddy place in the road
along which Greek and Hebrew passed to world-conquest. Haman, a
blend of vanity and cruelty and cowardice but not without some power
of initiative, was a fit minister for his king. He lives in history as one

who, better than in Hamlet's illustration, was "hoist with his own
petard," the petard in his case being a gallows. He typifies also the just
fate of the man who, spurred by the hate of one, includes in his scheme
of extermination a whole people. Collective vengeance never received
a better illustration nor a more exemplary punishment. Mordecai is
altogether admirable in refusing to kowtow to Haman and in his
unselfish devotion to his fair cousin, Esther. The noblest sentiment in
the book--"Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for
such a time as this?"--comes from Mordecai.
But the leading character is Esther, not because she was "fair and
beautiful" but because she was hospitable to the great thought
suggested by Mordecai. None but a Jew could have asked, "Who
knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as
this?" and none but a Jew could have answered as Esther answered.
The question implied a sense of personal responsibility and of divine
guidance far beyond the reach of Persian or Mede or Greek of that time.
It calls up many a quiet hour when Esther and Mordecai talked together
of their strange lot in this heathen land and wondered if the time would
ever come when they could interpret their trials in terms of national
service rather than of meaningless fate. Imagine the blank and bovine
expression that Ahasuerus or Haman would have turned upon you if
you had put such a question to either of them. But in the case of Esther,
Mordecai's appeal unlocked an unused reservoir of power that has
made her one of the world's heroines. She had her faults, or rather her
limitations, but since her time men have gone to the stake, have built up
and torn down principalities and powers, on the dynamic conviction
that they had been sent to the kingdom "for such a time as this."]


CHAPTER I
THE STORY OF VASHTI
1. Now it came to pass in the days of Ahasuerus, (this is Ahasuerus

which reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over