06.23.2014 Old Testament: Esth 8.5–6

To read the Bible in a year, read Esther 7–10 on June 23, In the year of our Lord 2014

By Don Ruhl

Esther did everything she knew to do to help the Jews in the Persian Empire, but that was not enough. Therefore, she sought to undone what a wicked man had plotted against her people,

“If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor in his sight and the thing seems right to the king and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to revoke the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to annihilate the Jews who are in all the king’s provinces. For how can I endure to see the evil that will come to my people? Or how can I endure to see the destruction of my countrymen?” (Esther 8.5–6). 

It is not just that we should balance evil by doing good, no, just as we work to do good so we should earnestly work to revoke evil, both within our own selves, and in the world around us, as far as we are able.