Tag Archives: Persia

Devotional

God’s People, part 116: Ahasuerus

Leave a comment

Read Esther 1

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE

“Years later when Xerxes began his reign, the enemies of Judah wrote a letter of accusation against the people of Judah and Jerusalem.” (Ezra‬ ‭4:6‬ ‭NLT‬‬)

When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.

  Part 116: Ahasuerus. “Eat well because this night we’re gonna dine in hades,” King Leonidas of Sparta shouted to his men. The time to defend all of Greece from Persian invasion had come, and the fate of Leonidas’ men had been sealed. They were to meet the Persian army at the pass of Thermopylae and hopefully block them from entering Greece. There was just one problem, they only had 300 men, 300 Spartans, and the Persian army had anywhere between 120,000 and 300,000 men, including an elite group of fighters known to the Greeks as the Immortals.

Well, there were only 300 Spartans, that is for sure; however, modern historians estimate that there were about 7,000 Greeks there that day, inlcuding 900 Helots, 700 Thespians, and 400 Thebans. Still, an army of 7,000 against an army of hundreds of thousands is doomed to lose, right? For sure. They did lose.

Prior to the invasion, the Spartan known as Ephialtes of Trachis, betrayed the Spartans and let Xerxes know about this pass and it’s strategic advantages in terms of invading Greece. The Greeks fought valiantly. When inevitable loss was before them, Leonidas with his 300 Spartans formed a rear guard to allow for the rest of the army to retreat and successfully held the Persians off long enought for that retreat to happen. By the time that Leonidas’ dead body was discovered by the Persians and brought back to King Xerxes, he was so enraged he had Leonidas’ corpse decapitated and crucified. This was out of character for the Persians, who typically showed respect to brave warriors they had defeated.

All of that aside, you may be wondering, “why on God’s green earth is Todd writing about the 300 Spartans’ valiant fight against King Xerxes of Persia? What does this have to do with Scripture, since that battle was not mentioned anywhere in the Bible? The truth is, I write of this battle as a way of pointing to how history and the Bible so often intersect. Like a giddy schoolboy, I am ever amazed and excited by the historicity of the Bible. That’s not to say that everything in the Bible is historical, but certainly it is exciting when history and the Bible intersect.

Esther is such an example. In the book we learn of Esther (aka Hadassah), Mordecai, Haman, and other characters. One of the main characters is King Ahasuerus, who exiled his wife, gathered young women throughout the land, and made one of them (Esther) queen of all of Persia. It is believed by most scholars and Biblical translators that Ahasuerus was, in actuality, King Xerxes. That’s right, the same King Xerxes who fought against King Leonidas at Thermopylae was the same King that took Esther to be his queen.

As it turns out, Xerxes is the Greek rendering of the Persian name Xšayārša. This actually makes sense, when one pauses to think about it. What we know of Leonidas and his last stand against Xerxes at Thermopylae all comes from Greek sources who later recorded it down. Thus, they were referring to the ruler as Xerxes in their native language, which was Greek. The Babylonian name for Xšayārša was Aḥšiyaršu. Transliterated into Hebrew, Aḥšiyaršu became ʼĂḥašəwērôš. When the Bible was translated much later on into Latin, it became Ahasuerus.

Thus, the Bible actually records the Hebrew translitertation of the Babylonian name for the PERSIAN King Xšayārša. This was the same king, known by the Greeks as Xerxes, that King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans defended Greece against. Crazy awesome, right?!?! It’s kind of ironic how people will read Frank Miller’s graphic novel 300 (about the 300 Spartans) and be captivated by it, and yet many of those same people think the Bible is boring and are ignorant that some of the characters they are reading about are actually written about in the Bible.

To conclude, here’s the point in all of this. The Bible is a book that is filled with such a wealth of information. In it one finds poetry, history, law, narrative mythology, theology, prophecy, and the overarching plan of God to redeem this broken world. What we also find is that in some of the world’s most powerful rulers, God worked that plan of salvation into the world. For instance, the same king who brutally crushed the 300 Spartans and had Leonidas’ dead body decapitated and crucified, is the same king who fell in love with a Jewish woman named Esther and made her his queen. This same king who crushed the Greeks, God worked through to save the Jews from genocidal annihilation.

It is always amazing to me how, despite us, God works salvation into the world. Whether someone appears to be one of “God’s people” or not, we are truly ALL God’s people, for God created us all. Thus, unbeknownst to the person, God can and often does work through people to bring about hope, healing and wholeness. This could be seen in Nebudchanezzar, in Darius the Mede, in Cyrus, in Darius the Great, and in Xerxes. Each of these men were polytheists who did not worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yet God worked through them to bring about redemption for God’s people and for the world. This should, and hopefully it does, challenge you to remove your trust in human leaders and place all of your trust in whom it properly belongs: God.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

“Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.” —Jesus of Nazareth

PRAYER

Lord, I surrender my life to you and place all my trust in you as opposed to humans. Amen.

Devotional

God’s People, part 113: Esther

Leave a comment

Read Esther 1-2

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE

“Mordecai sent this reply to Esther: “Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?” (Esther‬ ‭4:13-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬)

When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.

  Part 113: Esther. We have, up to this point, spent quite a bit of time looking at the Jewish people, their leadership, their priests and their prophets who returned to Jerusalem following Cyrus’ decree that they were no longer exiled and could return home. While many certainly did return, in waves as has been stated in previous installments of this series, the reality is that many also chose NOT to leave.

Think about this for a minute. How many of you have had to move? Following moving, following settling in and creating a new home for yourselves, did you feel like uprooting once again? What’s more, many of the Jews living at the time of Cyrus had been born in Babylon/Persia and that was the only home they had ever known. Persia WAS their home, why would they wish to return?

This is the reality that we come upon in the Book of Esther, which is a narrative centered on a diaspora Jewish girl who became Queen of Persia. Before we get into the nitty gritty of this story, it is important to note that this is the ONLY book in the entire Bible that does not explicitly mention God. There is, in fact, no mention of God at all, but it can be presumed a belief of God is implicit in the story and the actions of Esther and Mordecai.

Esther was born in Persia as Hadassahm, a Jewish girl in a fairly well-off family. As a young woman, perhaps as young as 14 years old, she was taken from her home and from her cousin Mordecai (who had adopted as his own daughter when her parents died) and brought to King Ahasuerus’ palace to live in his harem as a sex slave with benefits. What were the “benefits”, you might be asking? Simply put, if she was found to be super “pleasing” to the king, she could get picked to be his queen. Yay, right?

Hold your horses, for this is not as “awesome” as it might sound. First off, a Jewish girl losing her virginity pre-marriage would have been shameful to her and her family. That act would have defiled her and forced her to break the covenant between her and God. Secondly, if she were to be picked as queen, she would not rule equally with the king. The queen’s job was to be the king’s plaything and to be an appendage of his at public functions whenever he demanded. That’s about it. Oh, wait, of course there was one other function: to bare the king a male heir.

She would be taken care of and could have whatever the king afforded her; however, it would come a very steep cost, one that Hadassah would have wished she didn’t have to pay. But she wasn’t so lucky and she went to live with the king, taking on the Persian name Esther so that the king would not know she was Jewish. She hoped that would give her a better chance to be married, which would at least give her back some of her honor.

I recently heard podcast hosts criticize Esther saying that she should not be looked up to as a role modely because of her “immoral” character. In fact, they likened her to Stormy Daniels. This, of course, has to do with the fact that she lived in a harem and had premarital sex with another man. Let me just say that this is horrendous theology. She was no more immoral than Daniel was for serving the Babylonian king. Neither of them had a choice. What’s more, implicit to the story is the fact that God (again, not explicitly mentioned in the narrative) gave her the strength and the courage to overcome her terrible circumstance and become the savior of her people.

So, back to the narrative. Esther did find favor with the king and was picked to be his king. Overtime, however, he bored with her and didn’t call her to be in his presence very frequently. During this period of isolation, her uncle contacted her and informed her of a plot by Haman, the King’s advisor, to commit genocide against the Jews. He wanted to kill them all. Though hesitant at first, Mordecai convinced Esther to do the right thing and go before the king unannounced, an act that could have gotten her killed as it was illegal to be in the king’s presence without being invited. Esther did just that and, to sum it up quickly, she was able to inform the king of the plot.

Esther, like the rest of us, was afraid to act and hesitated. Even if it was momentary, it was a moment that showed her humanity and her fear of the unknown. That makes her relateable to us as we fear to do the right thing. How many of us stay silent against wrongdoing, for fear that we might get caught up in a conflict? How many of us fear “stirring the pot” and calling the status quo into question because it could backfire in our faces? Let Esther be a reminder that we can AND SHOULD overcome such fear and trust that God is calling us for such a time as this.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

Remember, “for such a time as this” we are where we are, being asked by God to do what is right.

PRAYER

Holy Lord, while you don’t put bad circumstances upon us, you do ask us and strengthen us to do what is right when those circumstances arise. Give me the strength to rise up to righteousness. Amen.

Devotional

God’s People, part 106: Darius

Leave a comment

Read Ezra 6

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE

“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.” (Romans‬ ‭8:28‬ ‭NLT‬‬).‬‬‬‬

When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.

 Part 106: Darius. King Darius I of Perisa (aka Darius the Great) is yet another example how history is weaved in and throughout the Bible. While the Bible does not offer too much background information on Darius, he is one fo the Persian kings mentioned in Ezra and was an ancient ruler of historical significance. Darius was an influential king during the rise of the Persian Empire, especially in regard to the Jews exiled in Babylon. In fact, he brought the empire to its peak.

While an entire volume could be written on Darius. In fact, several volumes have been written on Darius. If you are a history buff and you are interested in getting a more in depth view of Darius’ life, you can search for “Darius the Great” on Amazon.com and if you have an Amazon Kindle, or the Kindle App and are a Prime member, you can download one of the books, “Darius the Great: Makers of History”. Otherwise, there are plenty of options that come up in the search results.

As for the purpose of this devotion, I will focus on a brief summary of Darius and how he is significant in the history of God’s people. Darius was born in 550 CE, forty-eight years following the first deportation (which included Daniel and his friends), forty-seven years following the second deportation, thirty-seven years following the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and third wave of deportations, and thirty-three years following a possible fourth wave of deportations. What’s important to note here is that the Babylonian Exile happened in waves spanning a time period of 15 years. Think about the devastating effects that would have on a people and/or a nation.

Darius was born into a noble family, but not one of royal blood. His father was a governor and was given the title of “king” (a fancy title for governor) of one of the Persian Provinces, and served under Cyrus the Great, who was king of the entire Persian Achaemenid Empire. While governors got the title of “king”, Cyrus was THE KING and was also known as Great King and King of kings. It can also be said that Darius was not trusted by Cyrus who had a dream that Darius was king of the whole world. The dream was seen as an omen that Darius had treasonous plans. As such, Cyrus sent Darius’ father back to Persis, where Darius lived, to closely watch over his son.

While Darius did not end up trying to immediately usurp the heir to the throne, Cyrus’ dream did become a reality and Darius became king, under suspicious circumstances, at the age of 28. Because he became king suspiciously, a number of rebellions rose up against him throughout the empire and he successfully put an end to them within a year as his powerful army was loyal to him. Following that, he focused the beginning part of his reign on strengthening and expanding his empire and began a successful campaign to conquer and control Egypt. In 516 CE he also invaded the Indus Valley, and by 515 CE had conquered that land and expanded his empire going as far east as what is now known as Pakistan.

Following those campaigns he turned his sights on Babylon, which had been conquered early by the Persian King Cyrus the Great (at a later point) but were rebelling against the empire. It his here where Darius the Great enters in to the Biblical narrative. He, of course, quelled the Babylonian revolt and ruled over Babylon in the same way that Cyrus had. Though a devout follower of Zoarastrianism, Darius, and his successors, were extremely tolerant and allowed for others to have religious and cultural freedoms so long as they were submissive to his rule and peaceable. This historical fact is clearly reflected in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Like Cyrus before him, Darius gained the respect of the Jewish people under his rule. Cyrus had permitted Jews, if they wished, to return home to Jerusalem and to begin to rebuild the holy city and its temple. To ensure that happened, Darius gave funding to help the efforts of rebuilding of the Jewish Temple. While he was not a Jew, nor did he worship the Jewish God, he certainly showed respect for their people and their God, just as he did toward the Egyptians and to the Greeks who allied with him (though the Greeks eventually united and defeated him at the Battle of Marathon, which set up the events of the film 300 about the 300 Spartan warriors led into battle by King Leonidas at Thermopylae against Darius’ son (who’s believed to be Esther’s husband) Xerxes I.

This goes to show us that God can and does work through anyone. The Persian King Darius was no observer of the Jewish religion, and yet he had a respect for the Jews and their religion and, as such, became the vehicle through which God fulfilled Jeremiah’s prophecy that one day God would bring the Jewish people back home as shepherd leads his or her sheep (Jeremiah 31:10). The challenge for us is to remember that all the children of the earth are God’s people, whether they realize it or not, for God created them and loves and can work through them. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY

There is no one, and nothing, that can separate us from the love that God has for us.

PRAYER

Lord, help me to be less judgmental and more open to see your handiwork in the world. Amen.

Devotional

God’s People, part 103: Belshazzar

1 Comment

Read Daniel 5

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“I am the LORD your God, who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery. You must not have any other god but Me.” (Exodus 20:2-3 NLT)

When we think of God’s people, we tend to think one of two things. We might think of the Israelites who were God’s “chosen people”, or we might think of specific characters in the Bible. Either way, we tend to idealize the people we are thinking about. For instance, we may think that God’s people are super faithful, holy, perform miracles and live wholly devout and righteous lives. Unfortunately, this idealism enables us to distance ourselves from being God’s people, because we feel that we fall short of those ideals. As such, I have decided to write a devotion series on specific characters in the Bible in order to show you how much these Biblical people are truly like us, and how much we are truly called to be God’s people.

Part 103: Belshazzar. In our last devotion, we discussed King Nebuchadnezzar II’s reign and how pride got the best of him. He had great potential. He was a brilliant tactician, a leader with vision, and a ruler that all of the surrounding nations feared. He was, indeed, the “first king” in his dream of a great statue. He was the golden head, the first and the greatest of the kings that the statue represented.

Yet, Nebuchadnezzar had a huge ego and allowed it to get the best of him. He believed that it was HIS power and authority that was to be feared and made the people worship the very ground he walked on. Thus, God allowed him to be humbled and reminded of who was the TRUE AUTHORITY over heaven and earth. Once the king was humbled and came to that realization and place of repentance, he was restored back to his place of authority.

Belshazzar was not of the same ilk as Nebuchadnezzar. He ruled in place of his father, Nabonidus, during his father’s prolonged abscense from the city. While he was technically king in his father’s absence, he never assumed the titles or ritual functions of kingship. Still, while his father was  not around, the crown prince Belshazzar acted as regent and in charge of domestic matters. One of the things he tried to do in his father’s absence was overseeing temple estates and renting out temple land, as well as working to restore the top position of the Babylonian god Marduk of which his father had demoted in favor of the Babylonian moon goddess.

This insight helps us to understand Belshazzar’s actions against the Jews in Babylon. The Bible tells us that the crown prince (the author of Daniel refers to him as “king”) had the plundered cups and plates of the Jewish Temple used for one of his parties. Such an act, according to Jewish law, would defile the sacred cups of the Temple. Belshazzar did not heed that warning and a message was inscribed on the wall by a ghostly, disembodied finger. It read: “Mene, mene, tekel, and Parsin”, which loosely translated to mean that the king had been judged by God, that he  was found wanting, and that his days were numbered and his kingdom would be divided.

That very night, per the Bible, Belshazzar was killed by Darius the Mede who was conquering the city on behalf of King Cyrus of Persia. Whether these events are exactly historical is beside the point; rather, what is important is the point the narrative is conveying to us. The author of Daniel wants us to know that putting other things before the LORD is a defilement of God and will lead to our destruction.

This may sound harsh; however, there is much truth in it. It is not that God is harsh or cruel, but that when we put ourselves above God we do things that end up harming others. Such actions bear unnatural consequences that ultimately come back to bring us down in the end. In our world today, there are plenty of Christians who have made an idol out of their government and its leaders. These Christians have not only put Christ second to these human leaders, but they have distorted Christ and the Gospel message to make the Gospel conform to their worldly ideologies. Woe to such people who use God as a means to their own wicked end. Let us be challenged to subject our ideologies to God’s measure, rather than subject God to the measure of our ideologies.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“The art of government is the [organization] of idolatry.” – George Bernard Shaw

PRAYER
Lord, help me to lay my idols to rest. You are LORD of lords and KING OF kings, and you in you alone do I place my trust and my allegiance. Amen.

Devotional

Anointed

Leave a comment

Read Isaiah 45:1-8

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what He requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8 NLT)

When you hear the word Messiah, who do you think of? When you hear the word Christ, what do you think of? Some of you may know that the words Christ and Messiah mean the same thing, that “messiah” is the English equivalent of a the Hebrew word “mâshı̂yach” (מָשִׁיחַ) and “christ” is the English equivalent of the Greek word “christos” (Χριστός). My guess is that when most people hear the phrase “messiah” or “christ”, whether they or Christian or not, they immediately think of the man who ended up becoming the figure head of the Christian religion, Jesus of Nazareth. Some may even mistakenly think that “Christ” is Jesus’ last name!

I am very certain that when most people hear the words “messiah” or “christ”, they do not think of Cyrus. In fact, if I were a betting person, I would bet that most people would not even know who Cyrus actually is. As it happens, Cyrus was the king of Persia. He ended up being the ruler who took over the kingdom of Babylon after it fell to the forces and the might of Persia. Within Babylon were the people of Judah who had been exiled there because of their trying to ally with Egypt against Babylon. When that happened, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon beseiged Jerusalem and, upon overtaking it, forced all of the leaders, the Temple priests, the scribes and people of import were exiled from Jerusalem and relocated in Babylon.

Once Babylon fell to Persia, King Cyrus (who was not a Jew and had no in depth knowledge of the Jewish religion) let the Jewish people return back to Jerusalem. What is even more striking than that, is that Cyrus seemingly had no agenda other than to just let them go home. He didn’t require them to send any money back to him, or pledge their loyalty to him in any way; rather, he simply let them go home to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and its Temple. In response to that, the Jewish priests and scribes wrote of Cyrus that he was the LORD GOD’s “anointed one”, or Messiah (which is “Christ” in Greek). Let me reiterate that. Cyrus, the non-Jewish, polytheistic, war mongering Persian King was the Messiah…the Christ…the LORD’s anointed one.

I bet you didn’t see that one coming. The Hebrew Scriptures are filled with such richness that really help point us to the nature of God. If we read Scripture carefully, there were many messiahs. Saul, David, Solomon, and every other King of Israel were all the LORD’s anointed ones. That’s different than being “the Messiah”, the one that some of the first century Jews were looking to come and rid them of their oppressors and reestablish the line of King David forever; however, there were many messiahs and each one of them were anointed by the LORD’s prophets. There really is nothing unusual about a king, or others, being called messiah. What is unusual is that this particular king does not even know, let alone worship, the God of Israel.

What does that say for us? It says that God constantly exceeds our expectations. It says that God will anoint anyone who is willing to have compassion, who seeks justice, who loves mercy, and who walks in the path of humility. Whether that person is a Jew or a Gentile, whether that person is a Christian or a Muslim, whether that person is a monotheist or a polytheist, whether that person is a male or a female, God will work in and through anyone who is willing to humble themselves and let LOVE rule the day. The fact is that God was calling Israel to live in that love, to be God’s chosen, and God worked through Cyrus to remind them of that. The fact is that God is calling us to live in that LOVE, to be God’s chosen, and once again is using Cyrus to remind us of that. Be reminded and live a life of LOVE that witnesses to the LOVE of God.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“This is not the time to shrink back in fear. This is the time to move forward in Faith. Get up every morning knowing you are anointed. You are equipped. You are empowered. You have everything you need to fulfill your destiny.” – Elton Sibiya

PRAYER
Lord, allow me to step out in faith, to see that you have anointed me to fulfill the work of love, compassionate justice, and mercy that you began at the outset of the world. Allow me to act upon that knowledge in service of others. Amen.