Courage Under Fire
“ . . . and if I perish, I perish.” Esther 4:16 NASB
Perish – Would you die for the cause? I imagine your answer will be conditioned by an assessment of the cause. Is it worth dying for? But what if you believe you will die either way? If you choose to stand up for the cause, you die. If you choose to not stand up, you die anyway. What would you do if there didn’t seem to be any real choice?
Notice Adele Berlin’s comment about this verse:
Esther echoes Mordecai’s term “perish” in verse 14, but applies it to the opposite case. Mordecai said she will perish if she doesn’t go to the king; Esther is resigned to the possibility of perishing if she goes to the king. The grammatical construction, here and in Gen. 43:14 where the same syntax occurs, betokens a fatalistic acceptance of a choice of action to which there is really no alternative.[1]
Why does Berlin reference Genesis 43:14? That passage is about Jacob decrying the possibility of losing another child. At the end of his statement, Jacob says, “And as for me, if I am bereaved of my sons, I am bereaved!” The repetition of the thought and the duplication of the verb signals the nearly fatalistic situation. “What can I really do about this? If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen.” It is almost as if the pagan idea of fate enters the equation. Almost . . . but not quite. And this is a crucially important distinction—not only for exegesis and understanding of the Hebrew mind, but also for us. The lens through which all events are seen is not destiny, fate, or predestination. The pagan believes that the plan is already drawn and all we do is live out a script. Israel believes that God is at work in all of it but the purpose and meaning of events unfolds as the participants make choices. It might seem as if there isn’t any other way, but that’s only because we don’t know how the invisible hand of God works. The Hebrew lens assures us that God is at work and so are we, and somehow what we do or don’t do changes what God does or doesn’t do.
Jacob resigns himself to the potential consequences as he understands them. So does Esther. What neither one of them knows is what God is doing in between the lines. And, as it turns out, the expectations they feared do not come to pass because their perspective wasn’t big enough. It couldn’t be big enough. They weren’t God.
It seems to me that Jacob and Esther are a lot like us. We think there’s no real choice. Bad things happen either way. But the truth is we really don’t know. This is not a Hollywood script. We are not actors and actresses. This is real . . . and flexible. Perhaps we need another Twelve Step motto, not “Let go and let God” but “Go ahead and let God.”
Topical Index: perish, Jacob, Esther, fate, Esther 4:16
[1] Adele Berlin, The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther, p. 50.
