God hiding in plain sight
In the Scriptures, God has been seen to work overtly: at the Red Sea, in Egypt, manna, water to wine & feeding 5,000. On the other hand Purim is a celebration of a covert God's invisible hand guiding the destiny of his chosen people. Purim epitomizes a sovereign Creator protecting his elected & working in the affairs of men.
Purim (/ˈpʊərɪm/; Hebrew: פּוּרִים Pûrîm "lots",
from the word פור pur, related to Akkadian: pūru)
Book of Esther, מגילת אסתר, Megillat Ester in Hebrew
The Megillah Esther or the Book of Esther, with no direct mention of God, is a reminder to us that God is intimately involved in the affairs of men; even when hiding in plain sight. See the oversimplified summary of story of Esther below.
King Ahasuerus dethrones Queen Vashti.
Esther is crowned queen after winning a beauty contest.
Mordecai uncovers & reports a plot to kill Ahasuerus.
Ahasuerus promotes Haman, making him the most powerful next to the king.
Mordecai refuses to bow before Haman.
Haman attempts to destroy the Jews after Mordecai refuses to bow to him.
Mordecai appeals to Esther to save her people.
Esther approaches Ahasuerus to invite him & Haman to a banquet.
Mordecai is honoured for having saved the Ahasuerus' life.
Esther entertains Ahasuerus & Haman.
Esther invites them to a second banquet.
Esther pleads for her people at the second banquet.
Esther accuses Haman.
Ahasuerus grants Esther’s request.
Ahasuerus condemns Haman to be hanged on the gallows that Haman built for Mordecai.
The Jews defend themselves throughout Persia against those following out
Haman's decree to destroy the Jews.
The holiday of Purim is established.
Mordecai advances to a position of importance.
For centuries, the Purim holiday observed on 14th of Adar on the Jewish calendar, or the Feast of Lots. Haman had cast lots purim to determine when he should initiate his genocidal plot against the Jews.
Purim celebrates God’s faithful, miraculous deliverance of His people from destruction, which has been manifested in the centuries since. From Haman of ancient Persia, to Herod, to Hitler, to Hamas, the enemy has regularly attempted to exterminate Jewish People. Without success.
The Megillah of Esther
Every time, God has intervened to rescue, deliver & sustain His People. God’s power & desire to deliver His People has not diminished.
God is still ready, able & willing rescue anyone who calls upon His name: you and me included.
God is for us—a God of deliverance.
Adonai my Lord has escapes from death.
Pss 68:21 TLV
Purim is deliverance, an escape from death. For everyone.
Replacement Theology
Replacing Israel with the Church
The lack of an overt mention of God makes it impossible to replace the church with Israel; the essence of replacement theology. For Purim's being dissembled from the world, one must factor in convoluted logic; discounting Romans 9-11; & created men arrogating to themselves the wisdom to evaluate election of their Creator.
The book of Esther makes it impossible for replacement theologians to replace the church with Israel.
The book of Esther has been dismissed as unimportant to Christians, at best. At the worst, it is deemed unworthy to be included in the canon of Scripture. This is fertile ground, from the 4th century Church Father John Chrysostom to Martin Luther, birthed the church's & the world's chequered history of anti-semitism. This culminated in the ultimate 20th century expression of anti-semitism: the Holocaust.
The righteous Law of Moses
The Jews here misapplied,
Which their deceit exposes,
Their hatred and their pride.
The judgement is the Lord's.
When by falsification
The foe makes accusation,
It's His to make awards.
Medieval hymn
When Luther's call to Jews to convert to his version of Christianity was rebuffed, he became hostile, even though he was sympathetic to them as "the children of Israel" at first.
In On the Jews and their Lies, Luther excoriates Jews.
venomous beasts, vipers, disgusting scum, canders, devils incarnate.
Their private houses must be destroyed and devastated, they could be lodged in
stables. Let the magistrates burn their synagogues and let whatever escapes be
covered with sand and mud. Let them force to work, and if this avails nothing, we
will be compelled to expel them like dogs in order not to expose ourselves to incurring
divine wrath and eternal damnation from the Jews and their lies...we are at fault in
not slaying them.
Martin Luther
The Nazis merely built on the foundation of medieval Christian deicide Christ killer canards. Unfortunately, the Nazis constructed an anti-Semitic theology for the German church, in part, on the works of a a great father of the Reformation: Martin Luther.
Purim, circa.1918 Marc Chagall
The הברית החדשה Brit Chadasha New Testament is described in the Old Testament.
“Behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant
with the [a]house of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) and with the house of Judah
(the Southern Kingdom), not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in
the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My
covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says the Lord.
“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,”
says the Lord, “I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and
I will be their God, and they will be My people. And each man will no longer teach his
neighbor and his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me
[through personal experience], from the least of them to the greatest,” says the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness, and I will no longer remember their sin.”
Jer 31:31-34 AMP
Jeremiah 31:31-34 is in the context of God's unwavering commitment to Israel in Jeremiah 31:35-37
Thus says the Lord,
Who gives the sun for light by day
And the fixed order of the moon and of the stars for light by night,
Who stirs up the sea’s roaring billows or stills the waves when they roar;
The Lord of hosts is His name:
“If this fixed order departs
From before Me,” says the Lord,
“Then the descendants of Israel also will cease
From being a nation before Me forever.”
Thus says the Lord,
“If the heavens above can be measured
And the foundations of the earth searched out below,
Then I will also cast off and abandon all the descendants of Israel
For all that they have done,” says the Lord.
Jer 31:35-37 AMP
Eliphaz & Timna to Amalek to Agag to Haman
Haman, was an Agagite. Agag was the King of the Amalekites. Amalek's father was Eliphaz, Esau's son. Timna was both the daughter & concubine of Eliphaz & the mother of Amalek.
Timna from Hebrew verb מנע, mana, meaning to withhold, keep back or refrain.
Though Timna was of noble birth, she debased herself into becoming a concubine.
And Timna was a concubine of Eliphaz, Esau’s son; and she bore Amalek to Eliphaz
Gen 36:12
According to Tanhuma, Vayeshev 1, Eliphaz’s _marriage to Timna indicates the corruption & degeneration of Seir's descendants. Thus reconciling inconsistency in Timna’s lineage between Gen. 36:20–22, in which she is the sister of Lotan, the son of Seir, & I Chr. 1:36, where she is the daughter of Eliphaz. The Rabbis further reconcile this by explaining that Timna was Eliphaz’s daughter, as a result of his adulterous relations with Seir’s wife. Compounding his sin, Eliphaz took his own daughter as his concubine. The Torah details the lineage of Esau’s descendants , showing that this lineage was founded in adultery.
The Amalekites, descendants of Esau were the consistent adversaries of Israel.
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this in the book as a memorial and recite it to
Joshua, that I will utterly wipe out the memory of Amalek [and his people] from
under heaven.” And Moses built an altar and named it The Lord Is My Banner; saying,
“The Lord has sworn [an oath]; the Lord will have war against [the people of] Amalek
from generation to generation.”
Exo 17:14-16
God reminds the children of Israel about Amalek's opposition to them & the Amalekites' lack of fear of God.
“Remember what Amalek did to you along the road when you came from Egypt,
how he met you along the road and attacked all the stragglers at your rear when you
were tired and weary; and he did not fear God. Therefore when the Lord your God
has given you rest from all your surrounding enemies, in the land which the Lord your
God gives you as an inheritance to possess, you shall wipe out the memory of Amalek
from under heaven; you must not forget.
Deu 25:17-19 AMP
Saul, the first king of Israel was specifically commissioned by God to destroy Amalek.
Samuel said to Saul, “The Lord sent me to anoint you king over His people Israel.
Now listen and pay close attention to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of
hosts (armies), ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself
against him on the way when Israel came up from Egypt. Now go and strike Amalek
and completely destroy everything that they have; do not spare them, but kill both
man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
1 Sam 15:1-3 AMP
Saul wilfully disobeyed God.
Then Samuel said, “Bring me Agag, the king of the Amalekites.” And Agag came to him
cheerfully. And Agag said, “Surely the bitterness of death has come to an end.” Samuel
said, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among
women.” And Samuel cut Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal.
1 Sam 15:32-33 AMP
18th-century Dutch megillah, Haman shooting an arrow at the zodiac: forecasting the future. Prof. Shalom Sabar's collection.
From Nuremberg to the Holocaust to Nuremberg
holocaust
/ˈhɒləkɔːst/
a Jewish sacrificial offering which was burnt completely on an altar.
Nazi theology was that the extermination or final solution of the Jewish poeple would be the holocaust the sacrifical offering for Germany and the Aryan Super Race. Like Haman's hanging on his own gallows, the Nazis were hoisted on the petard that they had planned for the Jews.
At the 1935 Nuremberg Nazi Party rally the Nazis revoked Reich citizenship for Jews while proscribing Jews from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of German or related blood.
Passports issued to a German Jewish couple, with "J" for "Jude" stamped on the cards. Karlsruhe, Germany, December 29, 1938. US Holocaust Memorial Museum
The hanging of Haman’s 10 sons in the story of Purim & the hanging of 10 Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials.
According to the Talmud, Haman’s daughter committed suicide. Hermann Göring also killed himself.
Names of Haman’s 10 sons who were hanged.
Haman was an Agagite. Agag was the King of the Amalekites, Hence, the sons of Haman were Amalekites. The Vilna Gaon explained that the Germans are descendants of the nation of Amelek. Simon Dubnow, Arthur Szyk and Raul Hilberg also identified the Nazis as being Amalekites. Talmudic passages mention a nation called Germania during the Roman Diaspora.
The ten sons of Haman had already been killed, why bother to hang them?
In the writings of the Sages and the commentators, we find several ideas that
could clarify this: On the word ‘tomorrow,’ in Esther’s request, the Sages comment:
‘There is a tomorrow that is now, and a tomorrow which is later.’ In other words,
Esther was asking that the hanging of Haman’s ten sons not remain an isolated
episode in history, but should recur in the future, as well.”
Dr. Moshe Katz, Hebrew University
19th-century Baghdad megillah with Mordechai’s genealogy along the upper margin. Haman’s genealogy is written upside down along the lower margin.
This is Purim Fest 1946!
In the Book of Esther, four of the Hebrew letters in Haman’s sons names utilize small instead of big characters. Jewish sages teach that throughout the generations that whenever there is a variation in the size of a letter or spelling of a word, it has a specific meaning. If these four small Hebrew letters, representing 5707, are used to represent the Jewish number for recording years, 5707 was the year on the Jewish calendar that the 10 Nazi war criminals were hung for committing genocide against the Jewish people.
“Since the trial was conducted by a military tribunal, the sentence handed down
should have been death by firing squad, or by electric chair as practiced in the
U.S.A. However,
the court specifically prescribed hanging, exactly as in Esther’s original request:
'…let Haman’s ten sons be hanged.’
Dr. Moshe Katz
“This is Purim Fest 1946!” Nazi Julius Streicher, before being hanged in the Nuremberg Prison gymnasium on Oct. 16, 1946. Julius Streicher (1885 – 1946) was the founder & publisher Der Stürmer, a Nazi propaganda organ. He published Der Giftpilz , The Toadstool also known as The Poisonous Mushroom, using the metaphor of an attractive but, deadly mushroom which warned German children about insidious dangers that the Jews posed.
Early 20th-century Purim tablet or coloured lithograph from Jerusalem by Iranian folk artist Mosheh Shah Mizrahi. Haman & his sons shown as contemporary soldiers. The Gross Family collection, Tel Aviv.
במגרש הוא יצוק לחיקו אך ההחלטה בכל שלו היא מאת ה '
The lot is cast into the lap,
But its every decision is from the Lord.
Pro 16:33 AMP
God keeps His Word
Purim, the book of Esther, & Israel is God's cipher that God keeps His covenant promises. God keeps His Word. Since God continues to keep His Word to Israel, everyone can expect God to keep His Word to them. I can expect God to keep His promises to me. You can anticipate God's honouring everything, that He has inspired to be written down, to you. Circumstances do not matter.
And we know [with great confidence] that God [who is deeply concerned
about us]
causes all things to work together [as a plan] for good for those who love
God, to those who are called according to His plan and purpose.
Rom 8:28 AMP
חג פורים שמח
Chag Purim Sameach
Happy Purim
See also
The Purim Law
Message of Purim
Honouring the spirit of Purim
k'riatmegillah—Listening to the public reading (usually in synagogue) of the
book of Esther in the evening, and again the following morning.
mishloach manot—Sending food gifts to friends.
matanot la'evyonim—Giving charity to the poor.
se`udat mitzvah—Eating a festive meal.
Further reading
Five Ways To Pray On Purim
Paris: Wannsee 2.0?
Bonus Features
Esther in Art
Queen Vashti deposed, Ernest Normand, 1890
Edwin Long Queen Esther
Theodore Chasseriau's Esther Preparing Herself to Meet King Ahasuerus, also known as The Toilette of Esther
Esther before Ahasuerus, Claude Vignon, 1593-1670) Esther before Ahasuerus, Musee du Louvre, Paris, France
Esther denouncing Haman, Ernest Normand's
Esther in the Movies
Esther - The Bible Movie Online
The Book of Esther
Esther and the King
One Night With The King
Also see
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