Esther: God's Unseen Presence--A Providential Queen, Esther 2

This may be the most difficult passage in the book of Esther.
Last week, we met a pagan king doing pagan things, and it all blew up in his face. That makes sense to us. What we see today is different. The pagan king is still doing pagan things, but we also meet God’s people, and they are doing some questionable things as well.
In chapter 2, we meet Mordecai and Esther. We see her get rounded up in the search for the new queen, and we see her rise through the masses to be crowned. Clearly, God’s providence is at work. He is setting the stage for the drama to unfold, but the people He choses to work through are not bastions of Godliness.
If this book were about Esther or Mordecai, this would definitely be a hard sell, but this book isn’t about either of them, nor is it about Ahasuerus. This book is about God. Even unnamed, God’s presence, power, and plan are on display.
As we unpack this chapter, we will see this is no fairytale romance, not is it the very cleaned-up VeggieTales rendition. There are some disturbing details in this chapter, but more importantly, there are some Biblical principles here that apply to life in ancient Persia as well as to our modern day.