The Persian Legal System was a marvellous affair. Like a well-oiled machine ready to spring effortlessly into life, it stood, in all its enormous power, waiting to be deployed at the command of the king. He, in turn, stood waiting for a trigger of a different kind, as an earlier article attempted to show. It was all very well to have a machine such as this, but it was rather intimidating to have to decide how to use it for oneself. This is where the king’s advisors came in.
Influence of advisors
The first time we meet, there are seven of them, ‘chamberlains’ by rank, who ‘serve in the presence of the king’ (1:10). One might expect such high officials to be engaged in important affairs of the State, but this is not so. In chapter 1, they are sent, all seven, on a much more important mission: to fetch the king’s wife from another part of the palace! One messenger would have been enough surely (so one would have thought), yet King Ahasuerus sends all seven. And so off they troop (one can almost picture them wearily trudging along one behind the other, or else bustling importantly, long robes flowing, almost falling over one another as they each hurry to be the first to find her). Some readers of the book have even suggested an element of comedy in their cumbersome names.
The needless bureaucracy of the Persian system is mocked with continued effect when Vashti refuses the king’s request. The one class of official having failed in its mission, Ahasuerus summons another group, also consisting of seven. These men are ‘princes of Persia and Media’ who ‘know the times’ and who ‘see the king’s face and sit the first in the kingdom’ (1:13,14). But will they really prove any more effective than the first party? After all, some of their names are disconcertingly similar: (Mehuman // Memucan, Shethar // Zethar, Carshena // Carcas, Abagtha // Admatha). The reader is left wondering whether the king will have any more success in solving his domestic issue with his wife with this second seven, perhaps amongst the finest civil servants at his disposal. The imbalance is considerable. The king has become so dependent on the Persian bureaucratic system that he needs to enlist its greatest talent to solve a domestic quarrel that he cannot handle for himself.
One woman’s conduct impacts all women
Bureaucrats that they are, it is perhaps no great surprise that the seven princes suggest the creation and implementation of a law to resolve the matter. It gives them and their subordinates something to do.
But it does far more than that. It gives them a way of extending their control and influence right into the very heart of the family. It enables them to shore up pre-existing power structures that have begun to look a little shaky round the edges. Legislation and bureaucracy are often closely connected with the creation and maintenance of power structures, and that is certainly the case in this passage. It is no surprise that people with power want to maintain or increase it, and the principle applies in many spheres. Legislators are forever creating legislation, bureaucrats create bureaucracy, and kings make decrees. It is almost as though they can’t help themselves. They tend to do it whether or not it is the right thing to do.
Yet the absurdity of the law promulgated in Esther 1 is noteworthy. For one wife who does not obey her husband in one instance, a universal law is created which demands the obedience of every wife to every husband’s requirement. Even disregarding the probable inappropriate nature of Ahasuerus’ original request, this is hopelessly heavy handed. It is a ‘thinend-of-the-wedge’ argument, perhaps a little suspect and lacking in scriptural support at the best of times, and here almost certainly misapplied. But what did the legislators care? They were not the ones who would suffer; on the contrary, this would give them just the sort of leverage they needed to settle all their domestic disputes. What did it matter to them if women were disenfranchised? What did it matter to them if it gave males carte blanche for divorce? This was just the sort of power that could come in handy.
This law is patently foolish
The king is too much in awe of his own legal system (and probably too angry also) to notice the danger of the empowerment the law would create. It is all very well having a powerful machine, but one has to have the maturity to use it. Ahasuerus is like a child with a chain saw; who knows what may happen if he is left to his own devices?
As the narrative moves on we quickly discover the answer to this question: the attempted massacre of the Jews (despite no particular antagonism toward them on the king’s part). First, though, a final point about the decree concerning Vashti. It is easy to read 1:16-20, without noticing the foolish nature of the decree suggested by Prince Memucan:
“If it please the king, let there go a royal commandment from him, and let it be written among the laws of the Persians and the Medes, that it be not altered, that Vashti come no more before king Ahasuerus; and let the king give her royal estate unto another that is better than she” (1:19).
It transpires that the decree is not explicitly a command that all women should obey their husbands (though that would clearly be the implication). Instead the specific wording of the decree, forever to be written into Persian Law, is that Vashti in particular (and not women in general) come no more before the king. This law would be virtually irrelevant even for the king after only a brief separation from his wife, for he would quickly establish other relationships. How much more irrelevant it would be after his death — not to mention its irrelevance for all other members of society even while he remained alive! Certainly, it is an example of ‘case law’, but the absurdity remains. It would be like writing into English Law five years ago that Princess Diana should never appear again at any royal function with Prince Charles. Fine when Diana was alive (though in its specific nature highly irrelevant to society at large), but absolutely pointless for the rest of history now that Diana has passed away.
A comic irony
Nevertheless, Ahasuerus is so impressed by his official’s suggestion that the edict is quickly passed. The king’s legalistic machine purrs obediently into life and the law is enforced throughout the land, despite the fact that the only person who needed to know was Vashti herself and any officials who might have to block her way should she try to reject it. Ironically, her original refusal to come to the king is ratified through the edict and set in stone; now she need never appear again — in a kind of way she is now guaranteed to get her way for all time, the very opposite of what the king wanted to achieve!
Foolish use of power
We are reminded too that the decrees of the Medes and Persians cannot be altered (cf. 8:8). This is potent reminder of Daniel and Darius, and given what transpires in that passage, we might well expect something unfortunate here also. The expectation is not disappointed. Ahasuerus’ next piece of law-making is spectacular by its folly. It is Haman’s plan to destroy all the Jews.
There is a close parallel between the first decree and this the second. Initially, the disobedience of one woman had been scaled up and extrapolated into a decree spanning all women. Now the disobedience of Mordecai becomes the basis for a decree to annihilate all Jews. Again the king does not have the wisdom or the discipline to control the power that he wields. He has no sense of proportion, no feeling for the implications of what he has the power to set in motion. What he as an individual feels like doing at the time (with scant consideration) dictates the sorrow of the many. What a contrast with the Lord Jesus who was able to subsume the wants of the one (his own instinct for survival) to the needs of the many.
The king realises his folly
The folly of Ahasuerus’ legal creativity does not dawn on him until Esther’s cunningly planned banquet. It is not until then that he realises the idiocy of what he had once thought so statesmanlike. It is not until then that he sees the way he has been manipulated.
It was just the same for Darius, whose officials were only too quick to point out to him that the laws of the Medes and Persians could not be altered, and that Daniel was well and truly caught in the trap. Unlike Darius, there is no clear indication in Esther that Ahasuerus will curtail his rash lawmaking in the future or that he is particularly repentant of it, but at least he realises that something must be done to resolve the immediate situation, and that it must be done quickly.
With the guidance of Esther and Mordecai, further decrees are made which enable the Jews to circumvent the evil of the earlier decree (there is always a loophole!). Once this has been accomplished the Persian legal system is at last used for good: to establish the keeping of the festival of Purim at which the Jews will remember the deliverance they enjoyed.
The lesson is that one’s greatest assets and strengths can easily be one’s greatest weakness. Imagine having the power of Ahasuerus to create law and legislation! Just think of the good that one could do! Yet in that very opportunity there was also an enormous inherent danger. One’s strengths are often also one’s weaknesses, a huge potential for use or misuse, for good or ill. Only the wisdom of God and careful consideration of the implications of our actions will enable us to make good use of the power(ful) tools that may come into our hands.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One