Two Powerful Women Whom You Wouldn’t Want to Mess With

AM Psalm [83] or 146, 147 • PM Psalm 85, 86
Esther 7:1-10 or Judith 12:1-20 • Acts 19:11-20 • Luke 4:14-30

The lectionary for today gives us a choice of readings, one from the Old Testament and the other from the Apocrypha: Esther or Judith. What the heck, I say! Let’s look at both because both offer stories of strong women who step up to save their people from mayhem and destruction.

The Book of Esther tells the tale of a young Jewish woman, Hadassah (later known as Esther) who becomes a consort of Ahasuarus, the king of Persia, after he has dismissed his former wife, Vashti, for not cow-towing to his every demand. Ahasuarus appoints Haman, who turns out to be the villain of the story, as his viceroy, and when Mordecai, Esther’s uncle, refuses to bow down to Haman because Mordecai is Jewish, Haman vows to kill not only Mordecai but all the Jewish people Haman can track down. The reading in today’s lectionary shows Esther blowing the whistle on Haman, an act that leads not only to Haman’s execution but also to the subsequent destruction of several thousand of the enemies of the Jewish people. Esther’s heroic actions are celebrated in Judaism in the annual Festival of Purim.

The Book of Judith introduces us to Judith, a young Jewish widow, who after her husband’s death becomes highly vocal proponent of an uprising of her people against Holofernes, who had been sent by the wicked Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar to wreak vengeance against the Israelites. Using a considerable amount of stealth, Judith attends two banquets with Holofernes, the second of which is described in today’s reading. Our passage ends with Holofernes getting mighty drunk at the banquet table; the following chapter describes Judith’s beheading of Holofernes.

For many cultural reasons, heroic men tend to outnumber heroic women throughout the Bible, but “ah tell you whut,” as I learned to say in my Texas years, you’d be hard pressed to find more forceful, more strong-willed women than Esther and Judith.

Written by David Jolliffe

At St. Paul’s, David sings in the choir and doles out the assignments to the roster of Morning Reflections writers.