Bridge to Esther

Esther 9:6-10

The Other Cheek

6. The thirteenth day of Adar had arrived, a terrible day of fighting and bloodshed in the capital city. And in Shushan the palace the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men who made use of Haman’s law to attack the Jews.

7. Most likely these five hundred people may have been encouraged by the ten sons of Haman, who wanted to take revenge. And Par-shan-da-tha, and Dalphon, and As-pa-tha,

8. And Po-ra-tha, and A-da-lia, and A-ri-da-tha,

9. And Par-mash-ta, and A-ri-sai, and A-ri-dai, and Va-je-za-tha,

10. The ten sons of Haman the son of Ham-me-da-tha, the enemy of the Jews, slew they; but on the spoil, the houses and riches of their attackers, laid they not their hand to take it for themselves.

Something to think about:

The light was green for both sides: both the Persians and the Jews were allowed to fight each other. At the end of the day, five hundred Persian men were dead in the capital city. But the Jews were able to protect themselves against the assaults of their enemies.

Notice that they did only that—they only fought against those who attacked them. According to the law, they were allowed to kill women and the children as well, but they didn’t. They were also allowed to take possession of the homes, businesses and all the riches of those whom they killed. But they did none of that either.

The Jews did the right thing. We are allowed to defend ourselves. In Matthew 5, the Lord Jesus teaches us that when someone hits us on the cheek, then we are not to resist evil, but turn the other cheek to them. He doesn’t here forbid us to defend ourselves, but rather He teaches us how to behave towards those who hurt us.

Yes, you may and you should defend yourself, your family and your country against wrong doing; but you may not take revenge! The Jews in Persia did not kill any more than necessary, neither did they plunder or destroy.

Another illustration of Jesus’ teaching occurred in 1945, after World War II, when the Allies and remaining Jews didn’t put the Germans into concentration camps to kill them, even though the Germans had treated millions of people that way. They turned ‘the other cheek’ to Germany when they didn’t take revenge; instead, as Jesus instructed, they helped the enemy rebuild their country.

So if someone is hurting you, you don’t have to allow that. You may resist by defending yourself or getting help. But when someone offends or hurts you, God forbids you to get back at him or her. I know you feel like hitting back when someone tackles you, don’t you? Or when your classmate calls you a nasty name, it is not hard to think of what you can say back; the hard part is not saying it!

God wants you to do something that’s even harder: He expects you to say something back that is kind and loving. Tough? No, impossible! Without Christ’s Spirit living in your heart, you can never be like that. It goes completely against the ugly spirit that lives in our evil hearts.

Yet that’s the beauty of God’s gracious power at work in people. He can turn us fighting and biting people into peacemakers. One way to make peace, even with your enemies, is to refuse to hit back and to be friendly to them instead.