אסתר המלכה

Queen Esther is the heroine who acted from within concealment. Her very name hints at it, 'Esther' from the word for hiddenness, 'and I will surely hide My face' (Deuteronomy 31:18). An orphan raised in Mordechai's house, taken to the palace of Ahasuerus against her will, she hid her people and her homeland, until the moment came when the concealment itself became an instrument of salvation.

When the decree was issued, Mordechai asked her to go in to the king and plead for her people, though entering unbidden carried a sentence of death. Esther did not deny her fear, but she chose: 'go, gather all the Jews... and fast for me... and so I will go in to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish' (Esther 4:16). Three days of fasting, and then complete self-sacrifice.

The Book of Esther is the only book in Scripture that does not mention God's name explicitly, and precisely in it the hand of providence is present in every detail: the queen deposed, the wanderings, the scepter extended, a night the king could not sleep. Esther taught that even when God's face is hidden, He directs everything from behind the curtain, and that a person's task is to act in faith precisely within the concealment.

What do we learn from her? That true courage is not the absence of fear but the choice to act in spite of it, 'and if I perish, I perish.' Esther teaches that even one thrown into a foreign and frightening place may discover that this is exactly where she was sent, and that 'relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews' most often comes through one person who agreed to risk everything for the whole.