Queen Esther

             In this essay, I am going to summarize the story of the beautiful Queen Esther! I am going to start with King Xerxes of Persia, then I will get into the actual story. 

           King Xerxes lived during the time of the Persian Wars, and his father was King Darius the Great. In the Bible, Xerxes name is Ahasuerus. In the beginning of the story, Ahasuerus hosts a 180-day banquet before he went out to war with the Greeks. During the Festival, he wanted his wife Vashti to come and show off her beauty, but she refused. This made Ahasuerus furious, so he had her deposed.

            When Ahasuerus came back from war, he was looking for a wife, so he had women from around the world come for him to choose out of them. Hadassah was one of them. She was a beautiful young Jew who was brought to Persia by her cousin, Mordecai. Her name in Persian was Esther. The king loved her, so he made her his queen.

           It would be perfect if it wasn’t for a very important character, Haman. Haman was a Agagite who despised Jews. When he noticed Mordecai wasn’t showing him the respect he thought he deserved, he decided that he wanted to kill all the Jews. He had the king make a degree that a certain race of people who were not obeying the king would be killed on an upcoming, however, he did not tell the king who the people were, so Ahasuerus made the degree.

           When Mordecai found out about this degree, he immediately told Esther to go to the king and tell him about the plot. Esther was scared because the king could get angry with her if she came in without him calling for her. However, she told Mordecai to ask the people to pray for her. She too prayed and went to the king. The King accepted her, and she asked him to dine with her, as well as Haman. While they were eating Esther told her husband, the king, about the plot Hamon had made, and how he tricked him to make the degree. The king was very angry, and he had Haman and his whole family executed, and Mordecai took his place. Unfortunately, Ahasuerus could not undo the degree, but he made another law that allowed the Jews to fight back.

            Because of her heroic actions, Queen Esther is known as one of the greatest queens in history. In fact, the Jews made a feast in her honor called Purim. I encourage you to learn more about Esther, the Bible, and Persia anytime you can.