The Gospel Preserved in Persia

It is difficult to appreciate the suffering of people in different places at different times in history, so allow me to try to bring this a little closer to home for those who live in the U.S. Imagine if Congress passed a bill that said on a particular day 11 months from now all non-Christians were authorized (or commanded) to kill every Christian man, woman, and child¹ and then take all their possessions. Not only did Congress pass such a bill, but the President signed it into law. What’s more, the Supreme Court quickly took up a challenge to the law and ruled in a 9-0 decision that such was perfectly Constitutional.

Imagine the Christians’ fear and anxiety, the weeping and wailing, and the prayers to God for deliverance upon learning about such a law (for months leading up to the apparent day of destruction). Though such a scenario seems inconceivable, a comparable decree was made 2,500 years ago in ancient Persia.

An “Impossible” Predicament

In the early fifth century B.C., the Persian Empire was the world’s one superpower—made up of 127 provinces that stretched from India to Ethiopia. In about 475 B.C., the Persian king Ahasuerus² promoted a man named Haman to be his highest-ranking official in the kingdom. The king “advanced him and set his seat above all the princes who were with him” and entrusted him with his signet ring (Esther 3:1,10-12; cf. 8:2). The king even commanded all his servants within his gate to bow down and pay homage to Haman (3:2).

When a faithful Jew and Persian court official named Mordecai refused to bow down to the king’s new chief advisor, Haman became furious. He was so angry with Mordecai that he did not simply want to punish him. He did not just want to kill him. “Instead, Haman sought to destroy all the Jews who were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus—the people of Mordecai” (3:6).

The vindictive Haman proceeded to convince the king that there was “a certain people” (i.e., the Jews) who “do not keep the king’s laws” and “it is not fitting for the king to let them remain.” Thus, Haman encouraged the king to “let a decree be written that they be destroyed,” and then volunteered to fund the effort himself—to pay a staggering “ten thousand talents of silver³ into the hands of those who do the work” (Esther 3:8-9; 4:7). It seems that King Ahasuerus had total confidence in Haman and his plan to rid his kingdom of a rebellious people—whose precise identity seems to have been hidden from the king.

Make no mistake about it: the destruction of the Jews was to be total annihilation.

Then the king’s scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the first month, and a decree was written according to all that Haman commanded—to the king’s satraps, to the governors who were over each province, to the officials of all people, to every province according to its script, and to every people in their language. In the name of King Ahasuerus it was written, and sealed with the king’s signet ring. And the letters were sent by couriers into all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, on the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, and to plunder their possessions. A copy of the document was to be issued as law in every province, being published for all people, that they should be ready for that day (3:12-14).

What’s more, a royal decree in the Persian kingdom could not be altered or revoked. Recall how earlier in the book of Esther, when Queen Vashti was removed from her position, that the king’s counselors encouraged the king to “let a royal decree go out from him, and let it be recorded in the law of the Persians and the Medes, so that it will not be altered” (1:19; cf. 8:8).

To make matters worse, if the new queen, Esther, were to go before the king to intercede for the Jews (of which she secretly was one—2:10), she could be killed. After all, “[a]ll the king’s servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that any man or woman who goes into the inner court to the king, who has not been called, he has but one law: put all to death, except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter, that he may live” (4:11). Furthermore, Esther had not been summoned before the king in a month (4:11). The same king who had removed the previous queen from her position, the same king who had agreed to Haman’s request to exterminate an allegedly rebellious people, and the same king who had not called for Esther in 30 days, he very well could have allowed the Persian law to take its normal course and put Esther to death if she approached the inner court of the king’s palace uninvited.

God Will Keep His Promises

Amid such apparent hopelessness, Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, who raised her following the death of her parents, spoke these bold words: “[R]elief and deliverance will arise for the Jews” (4:14).

The book of Esther does not indicate why Mordecai was so confident that the Jews would be delivered from a murderous massacre, but the Bible as a whole does: God keeps His promises. Just as God had kept His promise to Abraham that He would make of Abraham’s descendants a great nation, and just as God had kept his promise to give Abraham’s many descendants the land of Canaan,⁴ God had promised (1,500 years before Mordecai) that through Abraham’s Seed all nations would be blessed (Genesis 22:18), and that promised Descendant had not yet come. Thus, despite the dire circumstances, Mordecai had confidence that deliverance would arise for the Jews⁵ from somewhere somehow.

God’s Providence at Work in Persia

Neither God nor a prophet of God is anywhere mentioned in the book of Esther, nor is any supernatural miracle specified. And yet, God is everywhere, quietly working behind the scenes through natural means, ensuring His promise of salvation through the Jewish Messiah is kept, even as He works with the choices of the free will of human beings, including Esther “for such a time as this” (4:14).

Though the Old Testament details many supernatural miracles that God worked on His way to saving humanity from having to face the eternal consequences of sin,⁶ surely the reader sees that God was continuing to work in Esther and Mordecai’s day to preserve the Seed promise, yet through divine providence (as in the life of Joseph—Genesis 45:5-9; 50:20).

WHAT IF, when the decree was made to annihilate the Jews:

• Queen Vashti had not previously refused to obey the king’s command to present herself in all her beauty before the Persian officials (1:11-12), and thus was still the queen of Persia (and not Esther, the Jew)?
• Among “all the beautiful young virgins…in all the provinces” of Persia chosen to go to the king’s palace as a possible replacement for Vashti, Esther had not been chosen (2:3-4,8)?
• Esther had not obtained favor in the sight of Hegai, who oversaw all the women (2:9)?
• Esther had not “obtained favor in the sight of all who saw her” (2:15)?
• Esther had not been the one woman in all of Persia to be chosen as the next queen (2:17)?
• Mordecai had not been at the king’s gate to overhear the plot of two men to assassinate the king (2:21-23)?
• Mordecai had not informed the king of this plot, and this information had not been recorded in the king’s chronicles (2:22-23)?
• Mordecai had been rewarded by the king at that time (2:22-23), rather than years later (6:1-11)?⁷
• The king was never sleepless and never had the chronicles read to him (6:1)?
• The account of Mordecai saving the king’s life years earlier was not the specific reading chosen (6:2)?
• Haman had attempted to hang Mordecai one day earlier than he had planned (5:14; 6:4)?
• The lots Haman had cast to see what month the Jews would be annihilated fell, not on the twelfth month, but the first or second month, giving Mordecai and Esther much less time to work with (3:7)?
• Esther did not agree to risk her life and approach the king unsummoned (5:1)?
• The king did not extend the golden scepter to Esther (5:2)?

Conclusion: God’s Providence Prevails

In the end, God turned Haman’s evil scheme upside down.

• Esther courageously approached the king and exposed Haman’s annihilation plan.
• Haman was hanged on the gallows that he had built for Mordecai (7:9-10).
• Mordecai was given Haman’s estate as well as his place as the king’s highest-ranking official (8:1-2).
• A second royal decree was written “according to all that Mordecai commanded” (8:9), which empowered the Jews to defend themselves against their enemies.
• The decree was sealed with the king’s signet ring, which Mordecai was given (8:2,8,10).
• Jews throughout the kingdom “had rest from their enemies,” while 75,000 of their enemies perished in provinces throughout the Persian Empire, on the day Haman had planned for the Jews to be destroyed (9:16).
• Rather than the Jews be annihilated, they actually increased in number, as “many of the people of the land became Jews, because fear of the Jews fell upon them” (8:17).
• And while Haman had “cast Pur (that is, the lot)…to determine the day and the month” on which the Jews were to perish (3:7), this day “turned from sorrow to joy for them, and from mourning to a holiday,” which they called “Purim” (9:22,26). 

Just as God was at work in Egypt in the 15^th century B.C.—when He rescued Abraham’s descendants from slavery and death and turned the Egyptian false gods upside down with 10 punishing plagues—God was at work in Persia in the fifth century B.C. Indeed, when all seemed hopeless, countless ordinary events fell perfectly in place for the preservation of the Jews.

Esther is not a book of random chances and events, but of a sovereign God Who is capable of working out His redemption plan even through the free-will choices of others. Though He is never specifically mentioned in the book, Esther tells the story of God magnificently working behind the scenes to preserve the Jewish nation, through whom He had promised to bless all nations. Had Haman succeeded, God’s covenant promise to Abraham—that through his Seed all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3; 22:18; Galatians 3:8,16)—would have appeared to be in jeopardy. Instead, God providentially ensured that His promise of salvation through the Messiah would never be thwarted.

Endnotes

¹ Not that all children of Christians are themselves Christians but that they are growing up in Christian homes.

² Also known as Xerxes I.

³ According to Herodotus, this amount nearly equals what the Persian empire collected in taxes annually some 50 years earlier, under the reign of Darius I (see Herodotus, Histories, 3.95, https://sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/hh3090.htm).

⁴ Genesis 12:1-3; 13:15; 15:7; 17:8; 18:18; 21:12; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14; Exodus 6:8; Numbers 13:2; Deuteronomy 6:10-12,23.

⁵ For at least some of the Jews.

⁶ From Isaac’s birth, to the plagues in Egypt, and the Red Sea crossing.

⁷ Esther became queen in 2:16 (in the 7^th year of Ahasuerus), while Mordecai is mentioned as uncovering the assassination plot seemingly soon thereafter (in 2:21-23). Mordecai’s reward (in chapter 6) is given in the 12^th year of Ahasuerus’ reign (3:7).

Published September 1, 2026

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