Vashti
AM Psalm 69:1-23(24-30)31-38 • PM Psalm 73
Esther 1:1-4, 10-19 or Judith 4:1-15 • Acts 17:1-15 • John 12:36b-43
The Book of Esther is named after that great Hebrew woman of the faith, but it’s the Persian Queen whom I find compelling. Vashti, first wife of King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I, 485-464 B.C.), appears and quickly disappears in chapter one, as she is deposed from the throne and banished from the palace forever or, possibly, executed. But her actions during those short verses were described by Harriet Beecher Stowe, in her writings on courageous women of the Bible, as “the first stand for woman’s rights.”
As the story begins, King Ahasuerus is hosting a large, all-male banquet. On day seven of the festivities, when he and his noblemen are well in their cups, Ahasuerus sends his house eunuchs to order Vashti to appear before the court wearing her royal crown, and, at least according to some early Jewish textual interpretations, nothing else. Vashti refuses to come, and humiliated by a woman—an underling—in front of his attendees, the king is enraged. Adding to his anger, one of his advisers reminds the king that Vashti has not only wronged the king but also all the husbands of Persia because now their wives will be encouraged to disobey as well.
Ahasuerus summons his lawyers for advice on how to handle Vashti. One of them, Memucan, advises the king to issue an irrevocable royal decree forbidding Vashti to come into the presence of the king and to give her crown to one more worthy than she: Esther. (Whether Esther has to parade before the banquet wearing nothing but the royal crown is not recorded in either the original text nor in any exegesis.) The king takes Memucan’s advice and sends letters to all of the one hundred twenty-seven provinces, spread from India to Ethopia, that every man should “be lord in his own home” (Esther 1:22, New American Bible).
To replace Vashti, Ahasuerus subsequently does choose Esther, who rapidly and solidly supplants Vashti as the hero of the story as she ascends the throne and eventually averts the pogrom planned against the Hebrew people by Haman, the jealous and powerful vizier of the King. But doesn’t Vashti also deserve a place in our great cloud of witnesses for her refusal to obey the summons of a drunken husband? As notable an early activist for women’s rights as Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote that Vashti “added new glory to [her] day and generation...by her disobedience; for resistance to tyrants is obedience to God” (The Woman’s Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective, 1895, p. 83).
Written by Kay DuVal
Kay gives thanks for those who have preceded her in the fight for women’s rights, and for the many men in her life, especially John, who have considered her their equal.