Bible in 90 Days - Day 36 (Esther - Job 7)

O God, open our hearts and minds

by the power of your Holy Spirit,

that as the Scriptures are read

and your Word is proclaimed,

we may hear what you are saying to us today. Amen.

Esther becomes queen about 20 years before Ezra returned to Jerusalem – somewhere around 480 B.C. This is about 60 years after the Persians conquered the Babylonians and the first exiles returned to Jerusalem. Mordecai and the other Jews in the Persian empire (outside of Israel) are now there by choice.

Esther is such a great story. I always thought it would make a great movie, and in 2006 it was made into “One Night with the King.” The movie begins with Saul not killing king Agag in 1 Samuel 15, and then it traces Haman the Agagite to this scene (The movie adds Agag’s queen and unborn son, but there is no record of that in the Bible). Esther 2:5 traces Mordecai back to Kish, Saul’s father. Saul/Agag – Mordecai/Haman. The conflict with Haman also reflects the animosity that goes back to the Amalekites in Exodus 17 (Agag was king of Amalek in Saul’s day). This is a replaying of an ancient feud.

God is never mentioned in the book of Esther, but it is clearly God who is orchestrating the events. A key passage is in 4:14, “And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?”

Up until now we have been reading more or less in chronological order (following a timeline), but now the rest of the Old Testament is not arranged that way. With each book we will have to place it somewhere in the history that we have already read. This is where reading the whole Bible in 90 days may be a big advantage – the history is relatively fresh in our minds.

Job is difficult to accurately place on a timeline since there are no historic details anywhere in the book. That doesn’t alter its importance one bit for us, though.  

These first few chapters of Job are packed with fascinating bits. I won’t even attempt to hit them all, but I’d love to hear from you! 1:20-22 shows intense mourning coupled with worship. The two can go hand in hand, and I think this is something for us to try to understand and live out. 2:7-10 play this out again.

Job is a man in anguish. Although he does not know what is going on, we know that God is allowing Satan to have nearly free reign on Job’s life with the express goal of getting him to curse God. The depths of his pain come out in his speech. Do you think the three friends are also sent by Satan?