Mordecai and Esther

by DATA-DOG 3 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  DATA-DOG

  The Drama at the DC was strange. It seems the dramas have been a bit lacking, and is there ever a drama about the New Testament? Oh, well.. Anyway, it seems like the WTBT$ has put it's own spin on Esther as well. While reading through it I noticed some things. Here are my questions:

  1) WHY didn't Mordecai show respect to Haman? It wasn't really explained. The King commanded it, and it doesn't break YHWH's commands to show respect to a ruler.

  2) Did Mordecai cause the problems by his actions? Remember when Abraham lied about Sarah being his wife, and caused all that trouble, when all he had to do in the first place was to say that Sarah was his wife? That's what I thought of. Mordecai could have just been respectful if none of God's laws were being broken.

  3) There is also a verse that most JW's forget. I just argued with a family member about it. Here it is: Esther Chapter 4

  " 12 And they proceeded to tell Mor′de·cai the words of Esther. 13 Then Mor′de·cai said to reply to Esther: "Do not imagine within your own soul that the king's household will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 For if you are altogether silent at this time, relief and deliverance themselves will stand up for the Jews from another place; but as for you and your father's house, YOU people will perish. And who is there knowing whether it is for a time like this that you have attained to royal dignity?"

  So Mordecai believed that Esther would perish if she did not defend herself. My point that was scoffed at, was that if Esther had remained silent, YHWH would still have saved the Jewish people. He had promised to do so. Just like he promised Abraham to make him a great people. So Esther did not need to do anything to save the Jews. YHWH was not going to let them be exterminated, even if Esther said nothing. Would Esther's silence have condemned her father's house? That was Mordecai's belief. I guess we will never know. My point to my family member was that Esther did not wait on Jehovah. Jehovah had promised to safeguard his people. So Esther did not have to do anything to save the Jews as verse 14 shows.

  Your thoughts?
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  blondie

  Haman was an Amalekite.....Amalekites had a long history of war with the Jews.

  This nomadic nation was, in ancient times, Israel's eternal foe. Shortly after the Israelites left Egypt and were wondering the desert, the Amalekites attacked the weary nation, slaughtering the weak and elderly. The Israelites, under the leadership of Joshua, later avenged the attack and defeated the Amalekites, but failed to completely eradicate the nation. Israel was then plagued with raids Amalekite raids. Today, the name Amalek is a symbol for evil and hatred against Jews, and Haman, the Persian leader who vowed to destroy all Jews, is considered a descendant of Agag, king of the Amalekites.

  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Amalek.html

  See Agag and King Saul account as well

  Seems like the WTS is not doing a good job of teaching the bible accounts to jws.

  http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0002_0_00937.html
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  Larsinger58

  My thoughts?

  From "Insight", page 121 under "Apocrypha":

  Additional ancient testimony. One of the chief external evidences against the canonicity of the Apocrypha is the fact that none of the Christian Bible writers quoted from these books. While this of itself is not conclusive, inasmuch as their writings are also lacking in quotations from a few books recognized as canonical, such as Esther, Ecclesiastes, and The Song of Solomon, yet the fact that not one of the writings of the Apocrypha is quoted even once is certainly significant.

  The Book of Esther is not inspired, so... it doesn't matter, really.
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  CaptainSchmideo

  Agag was the Amalekite king that Saul did not kill, as he was ordered to by God (through Samuel). Samuel had to do the dirty work for him. But, once again, they didn't eradicate them all (genocide in ancient times was a haphazard thing, I suppose).
  
  If you want to see a VERY high dollar production of the story of Esther, find the movie "One Night With the King". Cameos abound, with Peter O'Toole as a very old Samuel in the prologue, and John Rhys Davies as Mordecai (Sallah from the "Indiana Jones" movies, and Gimli from "Lord of the Rings".) The movie itself looks like they took many production cues from "Lord of the Rings". One hilarious apochryphal detail has Haman wearing an amulet with (wait for it...) a symbol that looks very much like a Swastika. It's not a bad film, it's just, well, "bad" in a good way.