She Stood Up for God's People

 ESTHER tried to calm her heart as she approached the courtyard in the palace at Shushan.  It was not easy.  Everything about the castle was designed to inspire awe-oits  multicolored relief sculptures of winged bulls, archers, and lions of glazed brickwork, it fluted stone columns  and imposing statutes, even its position atop huge platforms near the snowcapped Zagros Mountains and overlooking the pure waters of the river Choaspes.  All of it was intended to remind each visitor of the immense power of the man whom Esther was going to see, the one who called himself "the great king." He was also her husband.

Husband!  How different Ahasuerus waas from the kind of husband any faithful Jewish girl might have exprected!  He did not look to such examples as Abraham, a man who humbly accepted God's direction to listen to Sarah, his wife.  (Genesis 21:12)  The king knew little or nothing of Esther's God, Jehovah, of of His Law.  AHasuerus knew Persian law, though, including a law forbidding the very thing that Esther  was about to do.  What was that?  Well, the law said that anyone who appeared before the Persian monarch without first  being summoned by the king was liable to death.  Esther had not been summoned, but she would be going to the king anyway.  As she drew near to the inner courtyard, where she would be visible from the king's throne. she may have felt she was walking to her death. - Read ESTHER 4:11; 5:1.

Why did she take such a risk?  And what can we lear from the faith of this remarkable woman? First, let us see how Esther got into the unusual position of being a queen  in Persia.  

Next time: She Stood Up for God's People - Esther's Background

From  the jw.org publications