Esther, David and the Old Testament - Evidence that Remarriage & Polygamy Are “Okay” for Disciples of Jesus?
The question was asked of whether people living after the time of New Testament should use accounts in the Old Testament as models or justification for their personal relationship choices. Specifically of whether Esther’s being as they put it “a second wife” is an example that God condoned remarriage after divorce.
It must first be noted that the interpretation that King Xerxes divorced Vashti before eventually marrying Esther is unsupported. Xerxes was polygamous and kept a harem. Vashti was Queen in that she was the Chief Woman if that harem and her children alone would have royal legal right to the throne. When the book of Esther recounts her dismissal as Queen, the inference is that she was sent back to harem to “live as a widow” as we hear both Tamar, Judah’s daughter in law, and several of David’s secondary wives ie. concubines had to do. Vashti was not divorced and set free to remarry, she was banished to the harem to live without hope of sexual contact or children again.
“Now, if the king wishes, let him send out a royal order and have it written into the laws of Persia and Media, laws no one can ever change. It should say that Vashti will never again come before King Ahasuerus. It should also say that the king will give her royal place to someone better than she. ” Esther 1:19
Esther, therefore, became a part of the harem and a wife in the legal sense wherein she as Queen was the only woman who was not a concubine, whose children would inherit true royal throne. This story was not an account of divorce and remarriage in the monogamous sense at all.
Our conversation about Esther is below:
In the case of Esther, she was living in a foreign land as part of judgement for idolatry which resulted in the captivity of Israel and their being carried off to another land. Also, she was “taken” by the king’s orders with many other virgins so he could choose a girl to replace Vashti. She was later selected (most likely after the king had already slept with her during her trial night with him) and became queen. Although no record is made of their wedding it is safe to assume that God was not a part of it as this was a heathen nation. No part of the covenant marriage ceremony is recorded as being observed. A bride-price was not paid to her father-figure, neither was she given away to the groom by him, neither did they pledge ANYTHING before GOD and in all likelihood the cutting of blood covenant had been done as an act of fornication before their “wedding” night. The king kept a harem of secondary “wives” aka concubines to whom the rest of the girls who he tried out and discarded would have needed to remain in because the girls would, like Vashti, now never be married to anyone else (unless Persia had very different laws about girls not needing to be virgins before marriage). Esther became the Chief Wife, as Vashti had been before her. Queen in the legal sense not the monogamous sense ie the only woman the king slept with whose children would have royal legal rights to the throne.
Therefore in my opinion God had no more joined Esther and Xerxes in a covenant union than He did those exiles in Ezra’s time who “married” foreign wives (some say in addition to Jewish wives but I’ve seen no evidence to conclude definitely). These men came under the conviction of the Word and repented by divorcing them. Legally severing a civil union that was not actually a spiritual union. Esther is not an example of a covenant union for those reasons, in my opinion.
Plus, since Esther lived under the Old Testament the charge of adultery was not fully revealed. That didn’t come until the sermon on the mount. More on that when I talk about David.
Can we then use the story of how Xerxes replaces Vashti (not a Jew) with Esther (a Jew) to justify divorcing before being born again and then remarrying someone else, a Christian, after being born again?
I humbly submit that NOTHING in the Old Testament after the Fall, including Esther and the practices of the Jews at the time of Jesus, can be taken as justification to support any kind of moral or lifestyle choices for followers of Christ after the Atonement. PARTICULARLY in areas where our Righteous Judge has clarified the Father’s heart as revealed in the Law such as revenge, murder, divorce (polygamy, whether polygyny or polyandry), and adultery. Even if He hadn’t given us a more stringent law of Love in this matter, the case of Esther for divorce and remarriage does not hold water.
Xerxes got rid of Vashti and married Esther as one among many concubines. He was a heathen king living completely by dictates that had nothing to do with the one true God and Esther was essentially his slave without choice or rights in the matter. Nothing I can see about this marital arrangement had anything to do with God either before, during or after. The only redeeming quality we can learn about this story is that Esther knew how to fast and through that humility God spared His people from the planned holocaust at that time.
David, Saintly Role-Model or Sinner?
We now turn to that old herring:
“Yes but David was perfect except for that one sin with Bathsheba and her husband, a man after God’s own heart, right? And look he had a bunch of wives at the same time! So multiple marriage supper must be okay.”
Our conversation on this topic next...
David, and all other men in the Old Testament up to and including the Jews in Jesus’ day who either divorced their wives and took another or added another wife to their already intact relationship would today be guilty of adulterous polygamy under the Atonement.
This was not the case under the Old Covenant, however. Jesus tells the religious leaders that Moses wrote this law allowing divorce because of the hardness of people's hearts. Who did Jesus say wrote that law? God? No, Moses. Jesus says it was not this way from the beginning. In other words, the separation of spouses joined by God is not God's will for married couples, period.
He says that Moses wrote the law, the inference is with the allowance of God. Why allow such a thing? It seems reasonable to interpret His explanation to mean this was allowed to be written because He knew that people were, to put it plainly, stubborn, sinful jerks and since they lived among heathen lands who practiced this and they were eventually going to do this anyway it is best if it is regulated to protect from even further abuse the women and children that result.
However, just like He did with laws about incest and close-family polygamy being added to the OT roster LATER meaning those who came before would not be judged guilty (such as Cain marrying one of his sisters, a daughter of Adam and Eve, or Jacob marrying two sisters at the same time, both of which are direct violations of later laws given by God), Jesus being the fulfillment of all the Law and Elohim, the Creator of the Universe and the Law-Giver, Jesus alone is qualified to add to or take away from His own words. In the same manner that He clarifies and even heightens the Law surrounding adultery, revenge-taking and murder elsewhere in the Gospel accounts, He irrevocably makes the God-head's position clear about divorce.
Some proponents of Christian polygamy have said that these verses show that marrying another spouse without divorcing the first spouse is not adultery and it only becomes adultery if the first spouse is divorced. This does not stand up to Jesus' other assertions about lustful looks towards women being adultery but that aside it also can only work if one deliberately forgets the topic Jesus is actually dealing with in this discourse - divorce. Jesus, as God, is saying that God does not recognize divorce as a means of breaking a marriage covenant Hs has put together and therefore He does allow/join a second, new marriage covenant to become a valid spiritual aka "one flesh" union.
So, Jesus says that regardless of the addition of man's law to God's law through Moses in Old Testament times, the Creator incarnate says that in God's eyes there is no annulment of a marriage union even if a Jewish man obtains a civilly legal divorce paper which they called a "get". If there ever truly was before, after Jesus there is now no such thing as spiritual divorce. In much the same manner that previously lawful human relations such as incest and the eating of various animals became unlawful in the fullness of time when Elohim changed His laws to reflect His will, Yeshua states that divorce is not something that Yahweh acknowledges in the spirit. From that moment on, the utterance became the higher Law and Jesus thus clarifies with his disciples later that the man who gets a legal Get for his first wife to dissolve the union and then goes on to legally marry a second wife commits adultery against his first wife and likewise that a first wife who is told to "get away" and she then marries a second husband is actually caused to become an adulteress with this legally married second husband in God's eyes, although in the eyes of the world both are considered legally innocent and under the Old Covenant they would also have been considered morally innocent even if she were part of a harem or plural wives!
Therefore the question of God's position on polyamorous unions after the time of Christ becomes clear - David, Esther, Abram and everyone else in the OT who were morally innocent even while engaging in or being forced to live in such a “marital” circumstance have become IRRELEVANT to disciples of Jesus living under his Atonement. Marrying a second spouse while the first spouse is still alive is adultery. Whether divorced or not it is irrelevant because Jesus says, essentially, there's no such thing as divorce. In reality then, Jesus is literally talking about polygny and polyandry - a married man marries a second wife, his first wife is alive therefore he is doing this while still married to the first wife = adultery; a married woman legally marries a second husband, she is doing this while her first husband is still alive therefore she is doing this while still married to the first husband = adultery. God says that divorcees are actually living in polyamorous marital affairs and that in His eyes this breaks the seventh commandment and causes the already married one to commit adultery either against the first (real) wife by marrying another woman or against the first (real) husband by becoming an adulterous woman by marrying another man.
Further Jesus says that even though Moses in the Law allowed divorce in the past Jesus considers remarriage after divorce adultery (breaking one of the Ten). Following that kind of new revelation that Jesus shared then other relationship situations which existed in the OT and were even regulated in the Law and not rebuked by God (like plural marriage) would fall into the same category. Jesus set up a higher law than Moses in the respect of marriage.
It must first be noted that the interpretation that King Xerxes divorced Vashti before eventually marrying Esther is unsupported. Xerxes was polygamous and kept a harem. Vashti was Queen in that she was the Chief Woman if that harem and her children alone would have royal legal right to the throne. When the book of Esther recounts her dismissal as Queen, the inference is that she was sent back to harem to “live as a widow” as we hear both Tamar, Judah’s daughter in law, and several of David’s secondary wives ie. concubines had to do. Vashti was not divorced and set free to remarry, she was banished to the harem to live without hope of sexual contact or children again.
“Now, if the king wishes, let him send out a royal order and have it written into the laws of Persia and Media, laws no one can ever change. It should say that Vashti will never again come before King Ahasuerus. It should also say that the king will give her royal place to someone better than she. ” Esther 1:19
Esther, therefore, became a part of the harem and a wife in the legal sense wherein she as Queen was the only woman who was not a concubine, whose children would inherit true royal throne. This story was not an account of divorce and remarriage in the monogamous sense at all.
Our conversation about Esther is below:
In the case of Esther, she was living in a foreign land as part of judgement for idolatry which resulted in the captivity of Israel and their being carried off to another land. Also, she was “taken” by the king’s orders with many other virgins so he could choose a girl to replace Vashti. She was later selected (most likely after the king had already slept with her during her trial night with him) and became queen. Although no record is made of their wedding it is safe to assume that God was not a part of it as this was a heathen nation. No part of the covenant marriage ceremony is recorded as being observed. A bride-price was not paid to her father-figure, neither was she given away to the groom by him, neither did they pledge ANYTHING before GOD and in all likelihood the cutting of blood covenant had been done as an act of fornication before their “wedding” night. The king kept a harem of secondary “wives” aka concubines to whom the rest of the girls who he tried out and discarded would have needed to remain in because the girls would, like Vashti, now never be married to anyone else (unless Persia had very different laws about girls not needing to be virgins before marriage). Esther became the Chief Wife, as Vashti had been before her. Queen in the legal sense not the monogamous sense ie the only woman the king slept with whose children would have royal legal rights to the throne.
Therefore in my opinion God had no more joined Esther and Xerxes in a covenant union than He did those exiles in Ezra’s time who “married” foreign wives (some say in addition to Jewish wives but I’ve seen no evidence to conclude definitely). These men came under the conviction of the Word and repented by divorcing them. Legally severing a civil union that was not actually a spiritual union. Esther is not an example of a covenant union for those reasons, in my opinion.
Plus, since Esther lived under the Old Testament the charge of adultery was not fully revealed. That didn’t come until the sermon on the mount. More on that when I talk about David.
Can we then use the story of how Xerxes replaces Vashti (not a Jew) with Esther (a Jew) to justify divorcing before being born again and then remarrying someone else, a Christian, after being born again?
I humbly submit that NOTHING in the Old Testament after the Fall, including Esther and the practices of the Jews at the time of Jesus, can be taken as justification to support any kind of moral or lifestyle choices for followers of Christ after the Atonement. PARTICULARLY in areas where our Righteous Judge has clarified the Father’s heart as revealed in the Law such as revenge, murder, divorce (polygamy, whether polygyny or polyandry), and adultery. Even if He hadn’t given us a more stringent law of Love in this matter, the case of Esther for divorce and remarriage does not hold water.
Xerxes got rid of Vashti and married Esther as one among many concubines. He was a heathen king living completely by dictates that had nothing to do with the one true God and Esther was essentially his slave without choice or rights in the matter. Nothing I can see about this marital arrangement had anything to do with God either before, during or after. The only redeeming quality we can learn about this story is that Esther knew how to fast and through that humility God spared His people from the planned holocaust at that time.
David, Saintly Role-Model or Sinner?
We now turn to that old herring:
“Yes but David was perfect except for that one sin with Bathsheba and her husband, a man after God’s own heart, right? And look he had a bunch of wives at the same time! So multiple marriage supper must be okay.”
Our conversation on this topic next...
David, and all other men in the Old Testament up to and including the Jews in Jesus’ day who either divorced their wives and took another or added another wife to their already intact relationship would today be guilty of adulterous polygamy under the Atonement.
This was not the case under the Old Covenant, however. Jesus tells the religious leaders that Moses wrote this law allowing divorce because of the hardness of people's hearts. Who did Jesus say wrote that law? God? No, Moses. Jesus says it was not this way from the beginning. In other words, the separation of spouses joined by God is not God's will for married couples, period.
He says that Moses wrote the law, the inference is with the allowance of God. Why allow such a thing? It seems reasonable to interpret His explanation to mean this was allowed to be written because He knew that people were, to put it plainly, stubborn, sinful jerks and since they lived among heathen lands who practiced this and they were eventually going to do this anyway it is best if it is regulated to protect from even further abuse the women and children that result.
However, just like He did with laws about incest and close-family polygamy being added to the OT roster LATER meaning those who came before would not be judged guilty (such as Cain marrying one of his sisters, a daughter of Adam and Eve, or Jacob marrying two sisters at the same time, both of which are direct violations of later laws given by God), Jesus being the fulfillment of all the Law and Elohim, the Creator of the Universe and the Law-Giver, Jesus alone is qualified to add to or take away from His own words. In the same manner that He clarifies and even heightens the Law surrounding adultery, revenge-taking and murder elsewhere in the Gospel accounts, He irrevocably makes the God-head's position clear about divorce.
Some proponents of Christian polygamy have said that these verses show that marrying another spouse without divorcing the first spouse is not adultery and it only becomes adultery if the first spouse is divorced. This does not stand up to Jesus' other assertions about lustful looks towards women being adultery but that aside it also can only work if one deliberately forgets the topic Jesus is actually dealing with in this discourse - divorce. Jesus, as God, is saying that God does not recognize divorce as a means of breaking a marriage covenant Hs has put together and therefore He does allow/join a second, new marriage covenant to become a valid spiritual aka "one flesh" union.
So, Jesus says that regardless of the addition of man's law to God's law through Moses in Old Testament times, the Creator incarnate says that in God's eyes there is no annulment of a marriage union even if a Jewish man obtains a civilly legal divorce paper which they called a "get". If there ever truly was before, after Jesus there is now no such thing as spiritual divorce. In much the same manner that previously lawful human relations such as incest and the eating of various animals became unlawful in the fullness of time when Elohim changed His laws to reflect His will, Yeshua states that divorce is not something that Yahweh acknowledges in the spirit. From that moment on, the utterance became the higher Law and Jesus thus clarifies with his disciples later that the man who gets a legal Get for his first wife to dissolve the union and then goes on to legally marry a second wife commits adultery against his first wife and likewise that a first wife who is told to "get away" and she then marries a second husband is actually caused to become an adulteress with this legally married second husband in God's eyes, although in the eyes of the world both are considered legally innocent and under the Old Covenant they would also have been considered morally innocent even if she were part of a harem or plural wives!
Therefore the question of God's position on polyamorous unions after the time of Christ becomes clear - David, Esther, Abram and everyone else in the OT who were morally innocent even while engaging in or being forced to live in such a “marital” circumstance have become IRRELEVANT to disciples of Jesus living under his Atonement. Marrying a second spouse while the first spouse is still alive is adultery. Whether divorced or not it is irrelevant because Jesus says, essentially, there's no such thing as divorce. In reality then, Jesus is literally talking about polygny and polyandry - a married man marries a second wife, his first wife is alive therefore he is doing this while still married to the first wife = adultery; a married woman legally marries a second husband, she is doing this while her first husband is still alive therefore she is doing this while still married to the first husband = adultery. God says that divorcees are actually living in polyamorous marital affairs and that in His eyes this breaks the seventh commandment and causes the already married one to commit adultery either against the first (real) wife by marrying another woman or against the first (real) husband by becoming an adulterous woman by marrying another man.
Further Jesus says that even though Moses in the Law allowed divorce in the past Jesus considers remarriage after divorce adultery (breaking one of the Ten). Following that kind of new revelation that Jesus shared then other relationship situations which existed in the OT and were even regulated in the Law and not rebuked by God (like plural marriage) would fall into the same category. Jesus set up a higher law than Moses in the respect of marriage.
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