Saved by a beauty queen

Esther 2:17
the king loved Esther more than all the other women; of all the virgins she won his favour and devotion, so that he set the royal crown on her head and made her queen instead of Vashti. 

Esther 4:13-17
Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.” Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

Esther 9:19
Therefore the Jews of the villages, who live in the open towns, hold the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day for gladness and feasting, a holiday on which they send gifts of food to one another.

As our Jewish neighbours celebrate Purim, hearing the Megillah (the scroll of Esther) read aloud, making a noise when Haman’s name is mentioned, caring for the needy in community and sharing food, the bravery of Esther is remembered and celebrated.

Esther

Chosen for her beauty

Remembered for her courage

Offering her love

and her vulnerability

putting her life on the line

to save her people.

Risking all that she had

Daring to make her approach

Knowing that her beauty

was not enough to save her

Instead, she harnessed the petitions

of her people to God

and bravely put herself

in harms way

so that evil might be turned around

and justice might prevail.

Wise enough

to be subversive

No head on confrontation 

Instead, she lured her enemy

further and further

into feeling secure

until there was nowhere

for him to run.

She did the ground work

used her wisdom creatively

and won freedom

for all her people.

Esther

Queen of beauty

Wise beyond words

Saviour of the persecuted.

God’s chosen one

For such a time...

Believing women

Throughout the season of Lent, I’m reflecting on women in the Bible - 

named, unnamed, known and hidden...

Judges 13:8-12

Then Manoah entreated the Lord, and said, “O Lord, I pray, let the man of God whom you sent come to us again and teach us what we are to do concerning the boy who will be born.” God listened to Manoah, and the angel of God came again to the woman as she sat in the field; but her husband Manoah was not with her. So the woman ran quickly and told her husband, “The man who came to me the other day has appeared to me.” Manoah got up and followed his wife, and came to the man and said to him, “Are you the man who spoke to this woman?” And he said, “I am.” Then Manoah said, “Now when your words come true, what is to be the boy’s rule of life; what is he to do?”

An unnnamed woman

Manoah’s wife

Chosen to mother one

who would deliver the people 

from the hands of oppressors

Approached by an angel

with the joyful tidings

of the birth of hope

and instructed on how

to raise the son she would bear.

But the word of a woman

was not enough

Her husband had to hear for himself

demanding that God’s messenger revisit

and detaining the messenger

until he too, had heard

what the woman had already shared.

Yet she would be the one

adopting the spiritual practices

and teaching them to her son.

She would be the one 

carrying

delivering

and raising

Samson

the one born

to begin the rescue

of the people of God

She would be the one

submitting her life

to the ways directed by God

for the well-being of her child

and the redemption of the people.

Just another woman

whose word was not believed

whose sacrifice

was not acknowledged

whose name we do not know...

What God requires???

Judges 11:29-40
Jephthah’s Vow
Then the spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah, and he passed through Gilead and Manasseh. He passed on to Mizpah of Gilead, and from Mizpah of Gilead he passed on to the Ammonites. And Jephthah made a vow to the Lord, and said, “If you will give the Ammonites into my hand, then whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt offering.” So Jephthah crossed over to the Ammonites to fight against them; and the Lord gave them into his hand. He inflicted a massive defeat on them from Aroer to the neighborhood of Minnith, twenty towns, and as far as Abel-keramim. So the Ammonites were subdued before the people of Israel.
Jephthah’s Daughter
Then Jephthah came to his home at Mizpah; and there was his daughter coming out to meet him with timbrels and with dancing. She was his only child; he had no son or daughter except her. When he saw her, he tore his clothes, and said, “Alas, my daughter! You have brought me very low; you have become the cause of great trouble to me. For I have opened my mouth to the Lord, and I cannot take back my vow.” She said to him, “My father, if you have opened your mouth to the Lord, do to me according to what has gone out of your mouth, now that the Lord has given you vengeance against your enemies, the Ammonites.” And she said to her father, “Let this thing be done for me: Grant me two months, so that I may go and wander on the mountains, and bewail my virginity, my companions and I.” “Go,” he said and sent her away for two months. So she departed, she and her companions, and bewailed her virginity on the mountains. At the end of two months, she returned to her father, who did with her according to the vow he had made. She had never slept with a man. So there arose an Israelite custom that for four days every year the daughters of Israel would go out to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite.

The selflessness of a woman

who has not yet lived

who has not yet been given in marriage
(as her patriarchal culture norms demanded)

who has not yet borne a child

and watched her offspring grow

The selflessness of a woman

who considers her father’s promise to God

more important than her own life

The selflessness of a woman

who asks only for time with her friends

before she lays down her life

Time to wander the mountains

and mourn the future

she will never know

We do not know her name

Only her fate

and her selflessness

And the perversity of a culture

who praised her father

who kept his vow

at the cost of his daughter’s life

We do not know her name

but her friends

who wandered the mountains with her

and who gathered in memory

year after year

They knew her name

and they kept her memory alive

remembering her sacrifice

as they gathered in lament

And, though they were powerless

to prevent the death

of the daughter of Jephthah

surely part of their gathering to lament

also involved finding agency

to ensure that the lives of women

would be worth more

than a man’s promise to God?

Women waiting...

Judges 5:24-28

“Most blessed of women be Jael,
the wife of Heber the Kenite,
of tent-dwelling women most blessed.
He asked water and she gave him milk,
she brought him curds in a lordly bowl.
She put her hand to the tent peg
and her right hand to the workmen’s mallet;
she struck Sisera a blow,
she crushed his head,
she shattered and pierced his temple.
He sank, he fell,
he lay still at her feet;
at her feet he sank, he fell;
where he sank, there he fell dead.
“Out of the window she peered,
the mother of Sisera gazed through the lattice:
‘Why is his chariot so long in coming?
Why tarry the hoofbeats of his chariots?’

Jael waited 

for opportunity

for the chance

to avenge her people

Lying in wait

to charm the man

who thought he was home and dry

who thought he’d escaped the fate

of all who fought alongside him

felled in battle

And, as he slunk home

where his mother waited in welcome

Sisera was waylaid

by a resourceful woman

A woman who did not bring him

the water he demanded

but gave him more 

than he could have imagined

fine milk

a place to rest

and a deadly blow with a tent peg

He surely didn’t see that coming!

Meanwhile Sisera’s mother

knowing the cowardice of her son

in abandoning his comrades

waited anxiously for his return

endorsing his treachery

with a mother’s love.

Sisera’s mistake was not wrought 

in the midst of battle

but in his underestimating

the passion

and strength

 of a woman

whose loved ones he wronged.

Always a grave mistake.

Raising up sisters

Judges 4:4-9

At that time Deborah, a prophetess, wife of Lappidoth, was judging Israel. She used to sit under the palm of Deborah between Ramah and Bethel in the hill country of Ephraim; and the Israelites came up to her for judgment. She sent and summoned Barak son of Abinoam from Kedesh in Naphtali, and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you, ‘Go, take position at Mount Tabor, bringing ten thousand from the tribe of Naphtali and the tribe of Zebulun. I will draw out Sisera, the general of Jabin’s army, to meet you by the Wadi Kishon with his chariots and his troops; and I will give him into your hand.’ ” Barak said to her, “If you will go with me, I will go; but if you will not go with me, I will not go.” And she said, “I will surely go with you; nevertheless, the road on which you are going will not lead to your glory, for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman.” Then Deborah got up and went with Barak to Kedesh.

Deborah

A woman of her people

Among her people

Making herself available

to those who sought her wisdom

Using her power

and her vulnerability

to raise up her sisters

and her brothers

Lending her presence

to instil confidence in others

Making room for all to share

in the joys

and the sorrows

Drawing attention to

the corporate activity

the unique roles

each would play

united against

a common enemy

Encouraging others to shine

Ruling by facilitating

Negotiating peace

in her land

and in her people

Deborah

Prophet

Judge

Peace maker

On their shoulders...

Numbers 27:1-8
The Daughters of Zelophehad
Then the daughters of Zelophehad came forward. Zelophehad was son of Hepher son of Gilead son of Machir son of Manasseh son of Joseph, a member of the Manassite clans. The names of his daughters were: Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders, and all the congregation, at the entrance of the tent of meeting, and they said, “Our father died in the wilderness; he was not among the company of those who gathered themselves together against the Lord in the company of Korah, but died for his own sin; and he had no sons. Why should the name of our father be taken away from his clan because he had no son? Give to us a possession among our father’s brothers.”
Moses brought their case before the Lord. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: The daughters of Zelophehad are right in what they are saying; you shall indeed let them possess an inheritance among their father’s brothers and pass the inheritance of their father on to them. You shall also say to the Israelites, “If a man dies, and has no son, then you shall pass his inheritance on to his daughter.

I know that feeling well

Stepping into a room full of men

Men who have authority

Men who have power

It always takes courage

Even now with years of practice.

 Mahlah 

Noah 

Hoglah 

Milcah

Tizzah

were women

who knew their vulnerability

and who stepped into their power

Leaving the place assigned them

they entered the arena

Armed with truth

they confronted the law

pleaded their case

were heard

and achieved change

for themselves

and for the women who followed.

Not only did they confront power

with knowledge and truth

they also held space

for their sisters of the future.

Victory is hollow

short-lived

unless it leads to

lasting change.

Called to be courageous

Called to transform vulnerability into power

Called to model sisterhood

Today.

Protector, prophet , poet

Exodus 15:20-21
The Song of Miriam
Then the prophet Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand; and all the women went out after her with tambourines and with dancing.
And Miriam sang to them:
“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;
horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.”

The sister who protected her brother

watching over him as he was hidden

who was right by his side

when he went on 

to lead the Israelites to freedom

Who stepped boldly

into the waters of the Red Sea

as they parted

and then led the other women

in a song and a dance

Immortalised

as the sister

of Moses and Aaron

Miriam,

A leader

in her own right

not because she was a sister

or a wife

or a mother

but because she was Miriam

Protector

Prophet

Poet

Powerful woman.