Tales of the Restoration: Stepmother Superhero

I have a new superhero.

There are plenty of examples of wicked stepmothers. Stepmother heroes are much more difficult to find, but I think I just stumbled across one.

Better yet, my new stepmom hero lived during the time of the restoration, the time I have been learning about, and using as a model.

When Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king, Artaxerxes was the king.  His father was Xerxes, the King Xerxes who made Esther queen.  That makes Esther Artaxerxes' father's wife -- his stepmother!

Listen the this quote from Halley's Bible Handbook, p235.
"Esther most probably was still alive, and an influential personage in the palace, when both Ezra and Nehemiah went to Jerusalem. Our guess is that we have Esther to thank for Artaxerxes' kindly feeling toward the Jews and his interest in having Jerusalem rebuilt."

Picture this, the mild mannered queen stepmother glides quietly along the passages of the women's palace. Few know that sweeping red cape she wears is not merely the royal garb of a queen, it marks her as SUPER STEPMOM! In her role as Super-Queen-Stepmother she changes the course of history, again.

We don't have proof that Esther was the behind the scenes force that moved the powerful hand of the king, but she very well might have been. Nehemiah chapter 2 makes a point of mentioning that the queen was sitting beside the king when Nehemiah asked for leave to go the Judah. Could it be that the older queen Esther was tutoring her young successor in the art of moving the hand of a king? If so, the young queen learned her lesson well. Maybe she took a lesson from Esther, when she diverted the king's attention away from the weighty political issues associated with helping a troublesome ancient enemy rebuild the wall around their city. It was simple. All she had to do was whisper in the king's ear, "ask Nehemiah how long he will be gone". Maybe.

Maybe Esther didn't say a word. Maybe her Jewish identity combined with her winsome personality were enough to give the King a positive feeling toward the Jews and want to help them, reversing the edicts of earlier Persian monarchs. Probably Esther never even realized the full extent of the impact she had. Wouldn't it be great to sit down for tea with queen Esther in Heaven and ask her to tell the whole story, now that she knows it, complete with the details women crave?

No matter how she did it,  I love the idea that Esther's influence extended well beyond the events in the book of Esther, into her stepson's life, and cleared the way for the rebuilding of the wall in Jerusalem.

It is too soon to know what influence we will have. We may never know how our modeling impacts the generations that follow us and influences the choices they make. Our job is to be the simple people God calls us to be in the life he gives us to live.