“And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews, for fear of the Jews had fallen on them.” — Esther 8:17 (ESV)
The same empire that had been the source of the Jews’ deepest dread became the stage for their greatest celebration.
When the second decree went out, the same network of couriers that had carried the first edict of destruction now carried the edict of permission and protection. The same roads, the same horses, the same imperial infrastructure. But the message was entirely different. And in every province where the first message had produced mourning and fasting and weeping, the second message produced gladness and joy and feasting.
The text says that many people from other nationalities became Jews during this period, because the fear of the Jews had fallen on them. This is remarkable. The very people who had been targeted for extinction were now being joined by the people around them. The turnaround was so complete, so evidently orchestrated, that it drew people toward the community that God had been protecting.
Psalm 30:11 describes this movement: you have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness. The Psalmist is describing a personal experience, but Esther is showing us the same pattern at the national scale. God did not erase the eleven months of dread that the Jewish people had lived through after Haman’s decree. He transformed what those months had been for by ending them in a celebration that would be commemorated in the festival of Purim for generations.
The mourning in Esther is real. The sackcloth at the gate is real. The fear in every province is real. And the dancing at the end is also real. Both are true. The mourning does not invalidate the dancing, and the dancing does not retroactively erase the mourning. Both are part of one story that God was writing from the beginning.
Today, if you are in the mourning portion of your story, hold on to this: the dancing is not a denial of the mourning. It is what the mourning was making room for. The sackcloth eventually comes off.
Father, I hold on to your track record. What begins in sackcloth can end in dancing. I do not know how far I am from the dancing, but I trust that you are moving the story forward. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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