{"id":8428,"date":"2023-11-13T11:15:40","date_gmt":"2023-11-13T17:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/?p=8428"},"modified":"2025-08-08T10:14:36","modified_gmt":"2025-08-08T15:14:36","slug":"%e7%8e%8b%e5%90%8e%e4%bb%a5%e6%96%af%e5%b8%96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/bible-faith\/devotional-notes\/2023\/11\/%e7%8e%8b%e5%90%8e%e4%bb%a5%e6%96%af%e5%b8%96\/","title":{"rendered":"Esther the Heroine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Esther was a queen of ancient Persia in the mid-5th century BC, a beautiful, kind, and courageous Jewish heroine. She belonged to the tribe of Benjamin and her original name was Hadassah (meaning “myrtle” or “guava”). Because her parents died, her cousin Mordecai adopted her, and she was renamed “Esther” (meaning “star”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: Pomegranate flower in Israel, like a star.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To save the lives of the Jewish people throughout Persia, Esther, using her wisdom, exposed the wicked plot of her enemy Haman before King Ahasuerus. Haman ultimately met his end by being hanged (on the very gallows Haman had prepared to hang Mordecai, Esther’s adoptive father), thwarting Haman’s evil plan to exterminate the Jews in the Persian Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: Esther Denouncing Haman, an 1888 oil painting by British artist Ernest Normand, depicting Esther accusing Haman: “The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman!” (Esther 7:6).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Image: Archaeological ruins of King Ahasuerus’s palace in Susa. It was very hot here in the summer and primarily served as the Persian king’s winter palace. This site confirms the internal details of the palace described in the Book of Esther, proving the author had firsthand knowledge.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To celebrate Queen Esther’s bravery and to commemorate the survival of the ancient Jewish people scattered across the Persian Empire from annihilation, the Jews thereafter established the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar as a festival. On these two days, Jews hold feasts to celebrate their victory. Based on the name of the lot, “Pur,” these two days are called Purim. This festival commemorates how God, through Esther and Mordecai, “rescued them from the hand of those who hated them,” turning their sorrow into joy and their mourning into celebration, allowing them to enjoy the “rest” that victory brought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image: “Purim baskets” (Mishloach Manot) are gifts sent by Jews on Purim, and must include at least two basic types of food or drink. Every Jew who has celebrated their Bar or Bat Mitzvah must send a gift containing two different food items to at least one person on Purim.
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Image: A Gragger, a noisemaker used by Jews during the Purim festival to symbolize the blotting out of the name of Haman the Amalekite. In the time of Esther, Haman, a descendant of King Agag of Amalek, tried to exterminate the Jewish people. Every year on Purim, Jews publicly read the Book of Esther, and each time Haman’s name is mentioned, listeners loudly create noise to drown out Haman’s name, using various forms to symbolize “you shall blot out the name of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget” (Deuteronomy 25:19).
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Esther was a queen of ancient Persia in the mid-5th century BC, a beautiful, kind, and courageous Jewish heroine. She belonged to the tribe of Benjamin and her original name was Hadassah (meaning “myrtle” or “guava”). Because her parents died, her cousin Mordecai adopted her, and she was renamed “Esther” (meaning “star”). To save the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8437,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-devotional-notes"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8428"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11243,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8428\/revisions\/11243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ccic-iowa.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}