Vashti

I was thinking about this striking beauty and some things struck me.

Why didn’t she have qualms about directly disobeying the king?

And why were the king’s advisors very quick to banish her from her position, to the point of making a law for the same?

I think she was a very modern woman, empowered to her core even in those medieval times.

She was beautiful and knew it. She was admired far and wide. I won’t be surprised if it was her beauty that drew the attention of the king. It is possible that the king heard of her acclaim and personally looked for her before finally deciding that was the beauty commensurate with the title queen. She therefore overtook many of the wives she found the king having, probably having the queen before her demoted so that she could take her place. It is even possible that she came from a distant kingdom.

You see, kings do not have one wife. Yet only one wife can be queen.

To imagine that not even a queen could go to see the king without permission without risking death, yet Vashti could actually defy his summons blows my mind.

It is possible that her presence melted the king to jelly whenever she appeared. She could therefore make him do whatever she wanted however she wanted.

In short, the king was at her mercy and there was nothing anybody could do about it. It was as if she had bewitched him, and probably had.

Due to that, she was arrogant and abrasive to everybody else.

Everybody wondered what the king they feared saw in this woman.

It is possible that his advisors tried to advise him against her to no avail.

She was the single largest sore thumb to the people around the king.

Her open defiance took things to a boil.

It left egg on the king’s face and he really had to do something.

That gave her enemies THE OPPORTUNITY.

I am sure they had prepared for that moment for long as they did not need to have any discussions.

One of them gave their united verdict, a verdict that must have been deliberated for so long that the words would perfectly move the king to conclusively banish their enemy.

They had even prepared for a replacement so that the king had no opportunity to miss her and do something stupid, since he was the king anyway. Probably he had done something like that some other time.

They were able to execute that because they must have been so fed up with her and were looking for an opportunity to finish her.

Contrast her with Esther.

Just as everybody was looking to finish Vashti, everybody was anxious to help Esther, anybody who came across her.

To imagine she was communing with a commoner outside the palace gates using the same characters who were responsible for banishing Vashti says a lot about what was wrong with Vashti.

As I have written elsewhere, Esther freed those around her to serve her without dictating how they were to do it. It made them serving her a pleasure.

Vashti must have been like Haman who wanted everybody to tremble before him.

She must have wanted anybody walking near her to walk as if walking on glass.

Her presence therefore meant stress to all who were around her, so much stress that had they known a way to poison her secretly they would not have hesitated. But in palaces there are people who first eat to ensure the safety of the food.

Reminds me of a dark chapter of my life where a similar thing to this played.

In my teenage rebellion years, I was a real pain in the neck of authorities.

From prefects to teachers to headmaster, nobody wanted to cross paths with me.

I would do something wrong and win any case taken to the authorities. I do not understand how convincing I was as I would be taken to the no nonsense headmaster and once I started talking, incidentally after first admitting having done what I was being accused of, would give such a convincing defence that he would have to plead with me to take a punishment, which I would then gladly take.

Then one day I was framed for something when I had been nowhere near the scene of the crime.

I have never seen such a case and hope to never see one.

Even the prefects I was with far from the scene of crime ‘forgot’ I had been with them.

It was me versus the whole school as even the teachers came to take part in the case.

I simply couldn’t win under those circumstances.

That was the only case I lost but the loss was devastating because all my friends turned against me. And everybody knew I was innocent of that crime.

I suspect I had been like Vashti. They just needed somewhere to get me.

I was punished for something I had not done when I could win any case concerning crimes I had committed.

I am using legal language when those were school rules I was breaking.

But I want us to get the point that our relationships are important, especially when we are in positions of authority. For me then though, my authority was my rebellion and wits.

That for me is the different between a boss and a servant leader.

A leader allows people to thrive under him, very eager to carry out his desires.

The other one carries his weight around, a weight that is overbearing on the people under them.

They will therefore be looking for ways to get rid of all that weight.

Sadly, this many times carries over to ministry where the lead minister becomes the head honcho.

Due to that, they will have many under them either looking for escape routes from the structure they head or like Vashti look for the best way to kick them out of their position.

Unless they are the bootlickers who feed off the overbearing weight others are carrying as I am sure Vashti had her loyalists.

Let me leave it here for you to write your own conclusion