Hero stories in the Bible

daniel gideon ruth and esther moses and jesus what do these six figures have in common the answer is that they are all involved in hero stories uh they're also to some degree involved in something that we're going to call the epic uh the epic being something that i'm going to emphasize as a discrete type of story in counter distinction to the merely heroic but that's a matter for this lecture i first want to begin with the discussion of the heroic and note something second about the six figures that i noted to have something in common and it it's that most of them are not associated with uh one another namely jesus heroism is very commonly not associated with the heroism of the other five figures other than in terms of typology in the sense that we could see moses as a type of figure leading the people into the promised land giving the people the law and and teaching them and feeding them feeding and and leading them in a sort of an exodus and in fact we find that in the gospel accounts jesus is in fact likened to a new moses so there is a typological reading that is to be found there and when we speak of uh when when sermons are preached on on jesus in relation to moses if they are connected together in the exodus it is that typology and the reading of moses as a type of jesus which is emphasized and rightly so because that is obviously uh not only an emphasis that the preacher wants to make it's one that the gospel accounts themselves want to make by explicitly drawing the attention of the reader to that nonetheless i want to argue today that there are other features to the analogy that are being made between these figures figures like daniel and gideon and ruth and esther and moses and we could list others with jesus that are being ignored in this merely typological comparison and the the chief one that i want to address today is the common ground of heroism jesus is a hero he's also as it turns out an epic hero but i i will hold my fire on that for the moment and suffice it to say just put that out front uh that they are in fact heroic figures and this is one of the reasons why uh the bible is such a compelling work of literature because quite frankly people love stories of heroes and the bible is full of heroic individuals and heroic deeds and the deeds and the stories are in and of themselves compelling they are that much more compelling when they're drawn together into the whole epic sweep of scripture and that when we realize that the heroism that is primarily being exalted is that of god himself but i'll come to that in a minute let me start with a understanding and a definition of what the hero is because in our day the word heroism has been to some degree watered down to some degree reduced from what we would uh historically and in terms of a literary uh understanding understand by heroism so let me start with this then true heroes the sort of heroes that i'm speaking of and the sort that we will see exemplified in scripture and also in literature in general and then and in my discussion today of heroism i am going to say as i've uh emphasized throughout the course that there is much to be gained by looking at the bible as a work of literature and comparing and understanding the scriptural accounts of characters in narrative and in poetry with secular literature and with some of the features that are seen in those modes of writing but true heroes express accepted social and moral norms this is the first first thing i want to note true heroes express accepted understood moral norms and they also because they represent these things they ex they capture the popular imagination as well so there's something about a hero that we admire we admire and that is because they not only express the accepted social norms that are are adhered to by the people at least in their in their lips they also are in some ways able to uh cap likewise uh joseph i would regard as having features of of a heroic narrative and and likewise um israel has a uh in his life features of heroic narrative so there are significant they have significant lives and their lives also end well it's all those things now heroes then are idealized figures that must be said but that does not mean that they are um unrealistic or without flaws um so they're exemplary for the reader but not in a simplistic uh moralizing sense that we are being given something like an allegory or something that is clearly mythological and really does not seem um uh somebody that we could identify as being a as a human being that would do things so we can't have the sort of uh deeds that are done by the greek gods or or or figures that do supernatural deeds in their in and of their own strength that would not do for a heroic figure because they have to capture the popular imagination and they have to be someone that we can identify with so what that means is that heroes are are figures that represent us we can identify with them and when they do deeds we can imagine ourselves also doing them and this is true to this day in people that we regard as heroes often sporting heroes one of the things that we admire about sporting heroes is not simply their prowess in scoring the most points or doing some sort of showing superlative athletic prowess but also in enduring hardship and overcoming the odds in being demonstrating grace under pressure in demonstrating a resilience under hostility or a program so most recently jackie robinson has been mentioned as a great figure in the realm of baseball not simply because he was a great baseball player but because he endured horrific racism and was resilient and admirable in his character and also he also he played baseball but what was heroic was actually his uh character and i could go on about that but it's interesting that heroism uh constitutes far more than simply being able to uh play well at something heroes that play well are obviously people that we admire but what we really uh cleave to and gravitate towards and what captures the popular imagination is somebody who has stood against the odds and has demonstrated in some way an accepted social or moral norm even if it's tacit even if it's not being stated and we admire that person and we want to be like that person and we wish that we were that person because we see ourselves the little guy battling against the odds in that person and so our choice of heroes reflect uh our a comment uh upon um important matters of life so our choice of heroes reflect to some degree who we are and what we are uh asserting about certain things and ryken uh notes three of them there that i think are important here for our understanding of heroism uh the first of these he calls values i prefer principles um a hero will represent or and will be identifiable with with principles things that matter most things that don't change things that are not subject to discussion a a hero will represent that fully robustly and without any uh cavaling or any uh retreat first point so the hero will be our sort of commentary upon the hero's principles secondly um the hero will represent our view of morality he or she will demonstrate and express and give our commentary tacitly upon what constitutes good or evil behavior and thirdly the hero will identify strongly with what we believe is the real uh way of living so it's a reality that exists in life and the universe now when i'm saying that i'm i'm suggesting that it it has a sort of a cosmic dimension here it's true of not just the hero's time but of all time it transcends the historical develop dimension and in that sense we could probably speak of it as uh identifiable in accordance with natural theology and the common good in such things so those three things uh it is that our choice of hero once again reflects our our commentary upon the great matters of life related to our principles related to our morality and finally with our sense of what ultimate reality is and in that sense it has a theological dimension it's not just a sociological it's a theological it's a metaphysical dimension and when we see those three things we can also see a variety of heroes and and reichen's very helpful here because again when we think of heroism we tend to think of perhaps a superhero someone who has superhuman capacities and really to some degree very few uh flaws in in times and if they are flaws they're not moral flaws so think of a superman superman's flaw is kryptonite but he doesn't seem to lack he doesn't seem to have any moral failings per se uh and isn't really identifiable as a human being he is superlative in every sense he just happens to have a a sort of a physical infirmity at least in relation to this element called krypton kryptonite rather but reichen mentions four categories of heroes and the categories of heroes that he mentions are really helpful i think so first of all there are those paragons of virtue that we could speak as of as ideal heroes and uh we can see them represented in figures uh like like daniel we can see them represented in figures perhaps like joseph uh where we see very few features that we would be able to identify as weaknesses or failings there seems to be to some degree in the portrait and idealization of the hero so there's the ideal heroes then and and when i'm listing the heroes as as i list them and uh there is a falling off in the degree of heroism um and it moves from the ideal towards the the commonplace and eventually moves towards the satirical and even the the villainous but the latter to the satirical and the villainous i'm not going to include under heroism just to say that there is a sort of a degree here so we begin with the ideal hero then one rank lower than that we have the tragic hero now i just taught i've been teaching a class for 18 years now at tyndale on intro to literature and i have taught every year a course on oedipus the king and in oedipus of course we have the quintessential tragic hero the one that aristotle in his poetics identifies as being the best tragedy for a variety of reasons and he lists those reasons and gives us language to discuss the tragedy which is quite helpful uh what i mean by tragic hero is that is of a very good character with nonetheless a tragic character flaw and that tragic character flaw leads the character to do a disastrous thing some sort of disastrous action brings the character down now in aristotle's depiction of tragic heroism he says that the tragic hero has to be somebody better than us superior to us and ideally a king or a nobleman or someone of a superior social rank that we look up to and the reason for that says aristotle is because when the character falls we have a greater sense of the uh of the depth of the fall whereas if somebody were uh inferior to us in social rank and they committed a tragic act we would not really sense that there was anything tragic in it we would rather think that it was probably something that they deserved so it wouldn't have the dramatic capacity to evoke our our pity for the character and wouldn't allow us to appreciate the sense of tragedy incumbent on the fall of the tragic hero but that's the second type and i will say to you that tragic heroes in scripture aren't necessarily kings uh they can be um but but they can be and they often are um they can be uh prophetic figures um and in general they have to be people that we admire and then in some sense are our social superiors but not necessarily kings and noblemen thirdly uh there is that category of hero which we could call comic now comic heroes are the sorts of heroes that are often found in uh i would say american culture but to some degree in in all cultures and these are figures that are really fundamentally flawed characters it's not that they're mostly admirable but they have one flaw and they give in to that flaw it's that they are fundamentally flawed characters who nonetheless triumph and whom we take great delight in because they triumph and they are sorts of heroes we may not want to admire their flaws but we are happy with the outcome that comes as a result of uh following their life so they're those sorts of comic heroes in scripture and to some degree the those comic figures we could say uh are like the disciples there's an element of comic heroism about the disciples because these are deeply flawed characters and portrayed as such warts and all who nonetheless have a very good outcome to their lives and they are meant to be heroic to us but they're clearly not idealized figures they're not paragons of virtue they're not tragic because their heroism doesn't have a fatal decision that brings them down in the end they triumph in their faith in christ so these are comic heroes finally we could talk about realistic heroes and the realistic heroes combine the typical strengths and weaknesses of mankind these are people just like you and i and raiken notes uh and this is interesting these are the majority the majority of the characters uh and stories in scripture present people who are realistic heroes they are just like you and i they are uh the common man uh they're sort of the sort of willie lomans if you're a fan of uh of theater in the uh 20th century willie loman in the death of a salesman is such a common man it's the hero for a democratic age people who are not of a higher social rank than we are not below us in social rank but are in fact just like us and interestingly that is the main uh body of uh portraits of heroism in scripture they constitute these realistic heroes but they're not what we commonly think of as heroic so those four now if you drop below that and somebody is more noteworthy in terms of their their bad features we can also get heroism being exalted but it's exalted by negative example and these will involve satire i'm going to talk about satire as a discrete subject later on in the course a satire is presented when we know that there's a social standard and those in authority tend not to meet that standard and yet claim to be an authority and so satar is used extensively in scripture jesus himself satirizes the pharisees and the teachers of the law there's he employs satire and there is a sort of a heroism there but these men who claim to be better and to be exemplary don't meet that and hence satire works and then of course further down on that skill we could talk about the outright villains in scripture which also negatively reinforce the heroic uh archetype here so hero stories um in general speaking about these four categories of heroic and once again they are the ideal hero the tragic hero the comic hero and the realistic hero all four um are about the struggles and the triumphs of the human race in general so this is also what needs to be said here um and i i said it at the outset and we need to uh continue to emphasize it because it's little hurt in our day the portrait of human nature that the bible gives us is that human nature is common to all human beings there aren't identity groups that are heroic we're not being told that there is a certain type of individual even that are pleasing to god and another part another type that are simply beyond repair and beyond his uh interest all humanity is caught up in the struggles and the triumphs of uh the hero story because the heroes represent the human race and so there's an implied comment about life and reality that lends insight into how we are to live our lives and so with that in mind um it seems to me and i may comment on this later as well that there's a great deal of it's actually almost tragic how few pastors will emphasize how important heroic stories are in scripture or we'll read them and comment on them and preach on them in their congregation because in heroic stories we have we're being given something like wisdom literature teaching us how to live sharing many of the features of wisdom literature looking at a hero in the context of the hero doing great things doing tragic things doing things that are comic and yet identifiable or being entirely realistic warts and all just like we are and at the same time teaching us how to live and of course the ultimate model for how this will comport itself is of the life of jesus uh himself but i will get to that later on but for now i simply want to say that hero stories as presented in scripture ought to be read as scripture and for our edification more commonly and in my experience and this is my experience growing up as well the hero stories of scripture are the ones that i most loved and wanted to have read the story of david and goliath daniel in the in the lion's den moses confronting pharaoh and and not bending in the face of the enormous pressure against him joseph doing being thrown into prison and enduring great suffering and hardship we could go on and on these are heroic stories and they are ones that we want to read and go and god has given us these heroic stories and the bible is replete with hero stories precisely because we need something that will capture our imaginations and make us want to be like the characters we see depicted while recognizing that they often are men and women just like we are so most stories then in the bible are actually hero stories and i'm going to talk about two as hero stories before moving on a little later to talk about the epic i want to talk about the epic as i said as a discreet topic although it is under the the general rubric of heroic uh narrative um and i want to look then at a couple of figures now um i i'm going to take one man and one woman ryken mentions daniel and gideon and ruth and esther it's a hard choice to make quite frankly because they're all really interesting and worthy of our attention but i'm going to look at daniel and i am going to look at esther although i will say this about about ruth that ruth and i agree with reich and on this the book of ruth is the supreme masterpiece of narrative in the whole bible but it also isn't a sort of an idyllic romance as he describes it and i agree it's it's in a pastoral setting and for most um of my audience that's listening to that uh story or following it that's not our setting we don't live uh in the countryside uh and in a rural setting we tend to live in in urban settings and there's something of the book of esther which i think maybe it's just because i'm speaking here from toronto which is identifiable with the court intrigues and the politics and the complexities of life and quite frankly the moral compromise of the figure of esther uh whereby god nonetheless delivers in the context of that which i think is helpful for us to look at but i will i will come to that in a minute let me begin with with daniel and the features of daniel's story which as i say i never uh ceased to find delight in and due to this very day and one final comment before i come to look at daniel we know about heroes through through uh five different ways and these five different ways are connected with the way in which we know all literary uh characters uh and and ryken is very helpful because he breaks down in in discrete categories these features that we i think quite frankly connect without identifying as discrete we simply see them as being heroic in general but they it's helpful to see them broken down because sometimes not every character has these qualities but they can be seen in heroic figures so they are the personal abilities and the skills and the qualities and and and the traits that are uh incumbent upon that character so could we so we could talk about the strength of um of jacob the physical strength or or of samson for that matter this is a heroic quality uh we could talk about the uh intelligence of daniel um we could talk about the wisdom of solomon these are uh personal abilities these are distinctive features not all heroes have this particular feature that's being emphasized in relation to gideon we could talk about actually his cowardice interestingly he's sort of a comic hero um and um and who who is heroic almost in spite of himself and that's an interesting feature of of gideon but uh i'll move on from that so the personal ability skills qualities as has heard that we often most strongly identify with the characters so the the strength of samson for instance um secondly the character's actions as throughout the actions of the character are decisive what do they in fact do um thirdly the thoughts and feelings of the characters now and this includes their their motivations for their actions uh and their their goals and and what characterizes the the responses to things going on around them fourthly the relationships that they have with other characters these are features of the heroes in the book of judges we often find isolated individuals that are fighting on behalf of the people but they don't seem to have the people behind them per se although the popular imagination is clearly with them but those relationships are also an aspect of the hero's identity that we identify with them so david is a hero for example before he becomes a king he's a popular hero because he's identifiable as a hero he's captured the popular imagination you know saul has has slain his thousands and david his tens of thousands so although saul is king and the people love him as king they love david moore he's appealed to them because of his the features of his character his ability to act for good and the fact that he seems to be doing significant things and and saul bitterly uh resents the fact that they love him more than they love uh saul um so that doesn't mean that saul is is a bad figure at the outset it means he is a jealous and resentful character his he's actually a tragic hero i would say is seoul uh although we're not going to look at at david orsall here but he would fall under that category and finally the role that they play and the role that they play can be identified with something like a calling so the calling of of prophet or or of priest those are roles that they play and they to some degree identify with those roles and do them well or badly so is it a good king or is a bad king we have a man saul before we have the king soul what was he like as a man what is he like as a king how do we reconcile those things david likewise has elements of being an idealized figure but he's also a tragic hero because of course it was his his uh uh affair with bathsheba his adulterous affair with bathsheba and his decision to murder her husband uriah the hittite these are tragic decisions that result in the division of his kingdom and of civil war this is a tragic decision nonetheless the lord perseveres with david and david is the exemplary king of israel but these are features that the bible's not shy in depicting namely the terrible tragedy of certain decisions that david made so those are those are incumbent not only on his relationships those are also connected with his role because how did he use the role of king in that situation well he used it for selfish personal reasons and not those which would glorify god let alone benefit the kingdom and as a result uh god is displeased and the kingdom is brought into civil war a civil war that marks the entirety of david's reign so um as i say in summary uh the hero stories are about the struggles of life and the triumphs of the entire human race and the hero represents us in that so let's look at the story of daniel uh the story of daniel as reichen notes is so thoroughly heroic that it actually violates the rule of narrative which is the unity of action there isn't a common unity of action which we will see for example in this in the life of abraham where we have district discrete events being depicted in what i call the pericopes the those narrative segments that are presented to us there is something of a narrative thread there in the uh account of abraham however much time falls between the passages not just years but sometimes decades fall between the the narrative passages that we are presented but nonetheless there seems to be a thread a unifying thread of narrative that falls between them the actions here connect with the actions there and the actions there there's a common uh unity of action but in the six first six books of daniel we don't see anything like that we don't see a single sustained action being repeated and connected with the with the foregoing one each episode is like in abraham's life self-contained but in two of the episodes in the book of daniel daniel's not even participating in the action so this is what say the the unity of narrative is broken in the uh first six books of the book that we name after uh daniel who is the hero so as we read these chapters we participate in these ordeals these trials that as i say span many many decades from daniel as a very young man to daniel as a very old man and yet in some of them it's not even daniel who's the main subject to the story he's in the backdrop he's connected to them through relationships so shadrach meshach meshach and abednego let me let me list the six features before making further comment so first of all uh in daniel chapter one we have the testing of the four hebrew youths we have daniel and we have his three friends shadrach meshach and abednego as i said in daniel 2 we have the famous passage of nebuchadnezzar dream and daniel's interpretation thereof uh thirdly we have the ordeal in which daniel's not even present the trial in the fiery furnace of shadrach meshach and abednego they get thrown in the fire the flames where's daniel there we don't know but he's not with them fourthly we have the account of nebuchadnezzar's fault and the restoration um so where where nebuchadnezzar is because he uh insults the lord and is proud he is he's reduced to being something like a beast of burden and eating grass for seven years before he's finally restored this account doesn't seem to particularly connect to daniel and yet it's featured in the book of daniel and is part of the heroism being exalted so there's an element in which the story of of daniel is so heroic that it it transcends the individual hero of daniel it gives us something of the portrait there fifthly we have belshazzar's feast in which the writing is on the wall for belshazzar and the end of his reign and then finally we have the passage of daniel in the lion's den that famous uh passage and the governing principle throughout is to hold up models of heroism for us to contemplate as we read these six discrete stories we are throughout looking at what is going on and contemplating how we relate to the events being depicted there now what are the principles of selection right and asks i think it's a good uh question to ask here um basically um they're two-fold you can either choose an event that is crucial in an individual's life so a a tsn turning point a decisive moment that will change the game and and make uh move the hero in a in a direction that the hero would not have gone up to this point so there's a decisive moment and that is what's being depicted so that's one possibility uh in any dramatic depiction are we how what event are we going to choose to describe here is it a decisive one or is it a typical one that's the second possibility it can either be a decisive one and one on which an individual's life turns or it can be one that's typical or representative of the character and the in the latter case the typical or representative are things that a hero would do every day and so what's heroic about it is the consistency and then the integrity of the hero is being admired if we said this is what this is just a small event and actually it's insignificant in the great scheme of human life and yet nonetheless there's a quiet sort of heroism the sort of heroism which is true of so many uh parents uh that sort of heroism and we could have the bible sometimes describes those quiet moments of heroism with mothers uh and their and their sons or or fathers with their uh children um but in the book of daniel the events that are chosen are are decisive ones so they're of the former category um and that at least in the book of daniel as i say it's not true of all heroic narrative but it is true of daniel so in addition to this model there are three other motifs that we need to uh observe here and these motifs are ways that the storyteller uh alerts us what's most important in the story so there's a decisive uh point in a character's life and the narrator tells us of what the significance is and why it's significant through the use of certain motifs so the first of these and it's true of all six of the narratives by the way here is that there is a testing of the chief character so there's a trial of some sort and the character is being put under duress and the character will not be able to stand under the trial it's impossible for the character by his own strength and by his own merit to be able to overcome that trial and god has to rescue him and insert himself into the narrative so god is very much in the forefront in the heroic narratives of daniel whereas we're going to see when we come to the book of esther it god's not even mentioned so very much in the background and that's why i've chosen to some degree to um put the book of daniel as a foil for the book of esther this very much so and daniel god is very much involved because we see him constantly intervening to rescue the hero who is nonetheless heroic for for resisting but he resists and his resistance is futile the character is going to die and he can't win but god intervenes so that's the first motif and that's the sort of a type scene a heroic resistance which is about to end in disaster and yet god intervenes and saves so that's the first motif secondly and this takes place in the same context as the book of esther the whole of human history is the theater for god's sovereign action so that sovereign action is a constant feature of biblical narrative and every one of these episodes that i mentioned the six episodes in the six chapters of the book of daniel involves supernatural action by god and then finally and this is only true of three of the six episodes the heroic act involves some form of resistance to the surrounding pagan culture note that it's not consistent there but in certain cases it is so obviously in in daniel chapter 1 when daniel will not eat of the food that's being offered to him this is a resistance to the pagan culture there and likewise when he uh won't pray to nebuchadnezzar this is likewise resistance to the pagan culture but this is not consistent through all of the passages that's there um so let's look at the the the six uh ordeals um and i'll deal with it rather quickly here because i see him running out of time uh very quickly the first ordeal is a religious test for daniel and his three friends now remember they have been dragged here to babylon and not just babylon if we look at the at the text in its original it's the land of shinar now the land of shinar if we go back to genesis 11 is the place where the tower of babel was originally constructed and this is interesting because of course the tower of babel is a place where where uh humanity and its collective identity proudly resisted the the dominion of god and and built themselves through technology a great tower that vied with god in his rule over the earth and god came down but that was in the land of shinar where the tower of babel was originally constructed associated with human pride and with and quite frankly with terrific human oppression and also with technology now we're back there so the people of god have been pulled all the way back to the original place where where the people that most strongly opposed god once identified themselves and they are now there again and there's a religious test what are these four men going to do in response to the pressure to conform so the whole crisis centers around something that seems relatively innocuous are they going to eat the rich food and wine that the king has served in the dorm to the whole group of prize students they they've been included in these students are they going to go along and eat the rich food that's been offered there and it doesn't seem like there's a great issue per se but it's clear that there is because daniel and his friends have taken a very strong stance against participating and joining in with what the others are doing so what is at risk here or at issue here is a conflict between two lifestyles one that will please the lord one of separation and distinction or are there's or or are they simply going to adopt the path of inclusion and follow along with the crowd here and note that uh daniel's diet is very simplistic simple and there's a there's a a foil being cast here between daniel's diet which is simplistic and the diet of the babylonian with it which is rich and elaborate and quite frankly sounds much more appetizing to my mind but his diet is a vegetables and water water and vegetables now this does not mean that that god uh prefers vegetarianism it's got nothing to do with that it's a contrast being cast between god's commands which seem to be less appetizing less nourishing and those which by the world standards seem to be entirely appetizing and thoroughly nourishing and at the outcome of this um daniel of course and his friends not only flourish but they do as well as if not if not better than the youths of uh that have defiled themselves but this is the issue in verse eight it appears that daniel recognizes that this is the issue if he should eat the food that has been offered at the king's table he would defile himself so he he himself initiates the test and he passes the test so the very opening of chapter uh of daniel 1 marks a common trait of heroic narrative which is the search for superlatives just to simply describe it so we hear that the the youths were without blemish they were handsome and skillful in all wisdom they were endowed with knowledge they were un they had understanding they had learning they were competent to serve in the king's palace and they even learned the letters and the language of the the chaldeans so they were exemplary by the world standards and by the center piece of human culture they were exemplary so daniel is in that sense a great illustration if you're talking about christian education you can talk about how daniel and his fellow hebrew believers uh existed in the midst of a very hostile environment so in that sense they're exemplary but they note that they're full of superlatives they they excel in every respect and this spills over into the story of uh daniel in general and this is a great point that reichen makes here is that this the uh the the way in which the story is told is unusual for scripture insofar as it breaches what i said was a general biblical principle of narrative namely to be laconic and economic in its details the book of daniel is the opposite it's it's written in a high style it's repetitive there are the characters when they speak are given long stately speeches in ways that we would say surely uh we could have cut some of we needed an editor editor here to cut some of the repetition and the extensive details why do we need to hear that well because it's a reflection of the the the stateliness and the richness of the babylonian court and in that context so it's a a period of terrific cultural richness and there's a high style here and so that it's it's decorous in its repetition and the narrator and the characters in the story emerge in the context of that but they are by context contrast rather simple straightforward and nonetheless triumphant in the midst of that second ordeal is the test of dreams uh and in this uh testing um and like in the previous chapter the ideal moves to exalt god's sovereign power so the dream is given uh the statement of the the chaldeans that is the the babylonians uh is that there's not a man on earth uh that who can meet the king's demand to interpret this dream that's what the chaldeans say when nebuchadnezzar calls daniel forth he says not only that he should interpret the dream but tell me what the dream is tell me what the dream is and what the interpretation is so if you want to see how extraordinary this is compare and contrast this demand with what happens to joseph where at least pharaoh tells joseph what his dream is before he interprets it but daniel supersedes that heroic act by actually being given insight into the dream that pharaoh himself was given now faced with this crisis daniel turns to prayer verses 17 and 18 which follows directly by god's answer to prayer so this is the supernatural invention intervention as i said it's an impossible task he no man can do this it doesn't matter the fact that daniel is uh superlative in his own natural capacities no man can do what daniel has been asked to do but daniel does it because it's actually god who does it for him and so at the end of this 19-23 there's a a poem from daniel in which he praises god as the revealer of mysteries and testifies to that fact to nebuchadnezzar verses 27 to 30. so this is a feature of that so there's a model of behavior there's an example to be followed by daniel here be by all means be in the world but don't be of the world even when you do this and even when you excel in every uh respect there's nonetheless limits to what you're going to be able to do and you will be pressed beyond your limits and at that point only god can save you and as we see in in the book of daniel that god does save him and the third segment is the trial of the fiery furnace the testing and the courageous resistance to the cultural i'll largely skip over that but to some degree what's really interesting here is that nebuchadnezzar moves now from simply being the a figure of pride which is in the idea of the tower and being you know the the stone striking the feet of clay from being this figure of pride like the tower of babel itself to a figure that is quite frankly nothing less than evil and we encounter what reichen notes is a characteristic of slave literature which is the mockery of the of an oppressive master nation and especially its king and we can see that in the account in in the book of exodus which is itself um heroic literature and epic for that matter i'll get to i'll get to that um but but here so everything the king does here to punish the three friends turns against him and so as i said there's an element of mockery here and anything that he commands is going to come back on him just like pharaoh so he says do this and then and it comes back directly upon him now this is characteristic of of slave narration uh the fifth chapter returns to jan daniel the you know the hand writing on the wall um and the king's color changes and transforms and so forth this is a new king now this is belshazzar and not um nebuchadnezzar and then and then finally um under the king darius the persian king who's now come in and and and triumphed uh and and wiped out belshazzar and the babylonians uh daniel is one of the three presidents in the kingdom of darius and this is the final chapter in his life we began when he was a young man now we have him as an a sort of an elder statesman trusted by one king after another and there was an excellent spirit in him and this is a feature here his spirit is is mentioned he's in spiritual integrity as mentioned and above all his covenant faithfulness is mentioned and in the end of this segment daniel says uh and emphasize what we notice throughout the word daniel means god is my judge so in the heroism of daniel we see the god's own power is being magnified and in that sense his own life is heroic his own person is heroic and exemplary not just his deeds so he expresses the accepted social and moral norm uh his loyalty to god and to the nation of israel even in the midst of the babylonian captivity um is uh is normative and and also exemplary and he reenacts in his own experiences the conflicts of the the community itself and you can read for other accounts in scripture of what happens during the babylonian captivity and different prophetic passages but he in his life exemplifies how to act properly and they capture the popular imagination they did in daniel's day and they do to this very day so let me move on now and i'm seeing because of the course of time here that i'm going to be cut short on my uh account of uh heroism and going to have to exclude epic so i'm going to do that in a separate episode it will be a little bit briefer but i i don't want to uh curtail a discussion of epic and i'm also not going to do what i was tempted to do here which is to cut out the book of esther i'm not going to do that so let's look at esther in a little bit of detail here and focus on her in part because i wanted to deal with a an account of female heroism as well of which there are many accounts in scripture which seems to me to defeat the portraiture of radical postmodern feminism which is suggests that the bible is written in a patriarchal society and women are seen as uh substandard and inferior and so forth that might be true of the culture it's not true of how god sees women which becomes clear in these many stories exalting female heroism having said that when we look at esther we have something like a cinderella motif which of course is going to set the the teeth of the feminist uh gnashing um but it is the story of esther is one of the world's favorite stories and and it remains it retains its power to capture the popular imagination just as it did uh in the beginning so let's look at the characterization of the heroin esther first of all and do so in the context of the richness of the plot so the richness of the plot is because it's it has a two-fold plot on one level it's just a focus on esther and her character this is key she is the it's the book of esther it's it's named after her in the same way that daniel's written after daniel so she is clearly one of the main features of the book of esther and the as such when we're looking at aster we do see the cinderella motif and and it falls within a well-made plot uh we begin with the dethronement of queen vashti and the enthronement of esther from rags to riches um and all that but in addition uh to that we also have uh a story of national deliverance and this is a different type of story and this is what makes the book of astor also i will say to some degree an epic story because it it it has that quality of epic in so far as it becomes a national story and purim the festival that is celebrated here is to this day by by jewish people to be celebrated as one of the great high holidays uh time of deliverance um and and it has the epic in the sense that it seems to be immense in scope it goes beyond just a girl in a court it it pulls the whole of the of the people who are at risk of annihilation in the story so it has features of an epic i don't i wouldn't normally categorize it as an epic and i'll talk about why that is in a bit but it doesn't seem to have all of the features there but it does have most of them it's got a historic impulse it involves national identity but it lacks certain features which i would say are necessary for it to be considered an epic and the primary one is it doesn't have any supernatural natural machinery god is not even mentioned as i say in the story he does not involve himself in ways that are obvious and miraculous in the way that we see in the book of daniel are particularly evident so she is more of a heroine with national importance who will deliver her nation rather than um constituting an epic heroine and in the fact that it is a national uh story of national deliverance we note a plot trajectory or shape which narrative analysis we'll call a u-shaped plot it begins on a high it drops down to potential tragedy and disaster and before finally coming back up to the type of deliverance that i described there at the outset so it begins as i say with the dethronement of vashti the previous queen which establishes the king's character as this is a reckless buffoon of a man and again something of the slave narrator uh narrative here that i mentioned earlier uh is also a part of this narrative the the ruler is presented as as powerful but quite frankly uh not extremely bright and quite and probably a very bad character um and the enthronement of vashti so his character is being established as oh he's one of those bad rulers that we always suffer we jewish people always suffer men like pharaoh men like nebuchadnezzar men like here um like uh the king of um of uh gosh where's where's esther placed in babylon as well right so those features at the outset and the animosity towards the jews is also being brought to our attention in the first two chapters this is at the moment just put in in the foreground but is not particularly important but it is going to become decisively important because it will connect in chapters three to seven with a figure that by the name of haman who is such an evil character that when the story is told there is booing and hissing it's almost like a uh a pantomime play he's so bad like nobody can like haman or or root not root against him he has a plot against the jews and it's a murderous plot and mordecai on the other hand has a counter plot in here and here there's a politics of power at play and as i say it's very different than the portrait presented in the book of daniel the book of daniel has an exemplary character who does not compromise at all here we have a conniving political figure namely mordecai not really likable per se but clearly wise and shrewd and and again this is characteristic and realistic in his portraiture mordecai is not admirable per se but he is wise and he he counsels in a way that is comparable to daniel because daniel remember is also a counselor but he is marked by an idealization which we don't see of mordecai so mordecai is not the hero here it's esther this isn't the book of mordecai it's the book of esther it's esther that we are to attend to not mordecai there's nothing exemplary about mordecai's council although it's crucial in uh esther's action but how will esther act that's what we want to know finally in chapters 8 to 10 we get the deliverance of the jews so as i say the u-shaped plot trajectory and it's extraordinary uh that we see in the story of esther most the ingredients that we value in in all heroic stories there's good versus evil there's we have a beautiful and courageous heroine we have lured scenes of banqueting and carousing there's a palace that you even have a harem in the palace um there's romantic love uh in the in the form of the king's love of the wife we have an orphan girl here from an enslaved nation who ends up being married to a king we have a a woman who i think is compromised in her own religious identity at the outset and uh is quite frankly not to be admired i think one of the ways in which i've heard this depicted in radio plays and so forth they often present um the the heroine um esther as a sort of a cinderella in the sense that she's like um pollyanna she sees no evil she's just she's a she's beautiful but she's also virtuous and and uh throughout and then finally she has to make a terrible decision but i don't think that that's how she's actually depicted in the account and i think it's unfortunate that we don't notice the fact that she's probably compromised her religious principles such that when she finally does identify herself as a jew everyone's shocked how is this even possible that you should be a jew because first of all um in in section 2 verse 10 and also in 20 we're told twice that nobody in the court even knows about ju astor's jewish identity so it's very much the opposite of daniel secondly in order for her to get that sort of recognition and acceptance among the populists she is clearly doing what daniel did not do she is eating food that has been dedicated to idols and probably violating jewish dietary laws so she's not being separate and distinct very much different than daniel in that sense very much in a sense a a non-heroic character so not marked by a heroism in her actions she's just simply beautiful but also morally compromised and she's going to end up being married to a pagan king which will be as a consequence be violating the covenant faithfulness she will have to the jewish people now that doesn't mean that we don't have any sympathy for her remember she's an orphan and she's a slave and and no doubt she's compelled to make compromises and there's nothing being said here there's no commentary in the account about it it's simply glossed over but nonetheless there is a compromise there and she is compromised in that sense so that is a very mixed portrait and i think we need to see this at the outset she's not just a beautiful orphan girl who becomes the disney princess she is a is a strikingly beautiful exact example of of femininity in the same way the disney heroines are and so much so that she just needs to show up and the king is wowed and falling at her feet because of her terrific beauty but beneath this she's living a double life and her spiritual integrity is being compromised in the process so her beauty is winning her favor with the king but she has not in any way identified herself with that woman of beauty and she is reluctant to do so furthermore because she realizes that this might lead to her rejection and i want to add something to this a girl who is as vulnerable as this who's been orphaned who's part of a slave people who has been brought into such great favor is totally dependent upon the king and that dependency on the king is that much greater because in the court of babylon the king's word is law and it cannot be revoked he himself can't uh revoke his own decrees so when it's stated that's the end of it it's the all-powerful king and the all-powerful decree in the face of little face of which little beautiful esther is like a reed in a storm and so there's terrific pressure being put on her and so in chapter four the pinch comes when mordecai sends word to her that about haman's plot against the jews now up to this point esther's is just the beauty queen taking the path of least resistance and who can blame her she has no power what is she supposed to do and her uncle has encouraged her to do this furthermore so again mordecai is not very admirable he's sacrificing or he's using for power politics his beautiful niece esther to get her into this position so we don't like mordecai for this quite frankly he's a politician and up to this point she has been thoroughly marked by the paganism of the babylonian court and but her response and her response to her uncle's message is to continue with that pattern so look at verses uh chapter 4 verses 10 and 11. and then he appeals to her self-interest in 12 and 13 and she realizes at this point and this is the decisive turning point in esther's life where she will have to be exemplary and decisive in the same way that daniel was so up to this point she has been a foil for daniel studying contrast nothing like daniel not sticking out not daring to be a daniel she's been she's been acting like an esther but now she will have to dare to be a daniel and go against a pattern of life that she has not demonstrated to this point so it's a an apocalyptic passage now note that in the book of daniel following the first six that i narrated there is this uh apocalyptic phase from seven to twelve in which there are a number of revelations that come to daniel this is very interesting in the book of esther the apocalypse is the revelation of esther herself as a jew and as a jew we're going to find out whether she is going to be crushed by the edict of the king which cannot be broken remember or whether she is going to triumph and there's no good reason on the surface in accordance with the rules and customs of the pagans why esther should not be crushed she must be crushed in and of herself there's no plotting and no conniving that can deliver her and yet god does not intervene god is not mentioned there is no supernatural deliverance per se this is terrific tension that builds and it builds as the story builds the suspense built so her behavior in chapter five exhibits and and and exemplifies this tension that we've seen in the earlier action so it's true that she does enter into the king's presence without having been summoned which she uh which she cannot do it's already a risk simply to come without being summoned and then she carries out the plan of requesting to the king a delay in his verdict but she what she doesn't do and this is what builds the suspense is she doesn't give her real request and why does she not do that is it because she's in control of the situation and she knows she has the king in her grasp because her beauty bewitches him and keeps him in her power i i think not but i think i think she's likely so terrified about the consequences of the action she can't bring herself to make the real request because she's just asked to delay and delay and the longer she delays the more we suspect that she's going to fail the test she's not daring to be a daniel and in the end um uh she has to disguise herself and in that sense she's acting in in uh keeping with her previous mode of life she's acting just like a babylonian so will you just delay and when she invites hama into the banquet with the king haman's not even suspicious of this that's how innocuous the request is so in the climax of the story which comes in uh chapter seven esther finally discloses her request for her whole nation and it is rich rich rich rich in drama and also in paradox paradox because at this point the villain of the story the terrible black villain what a blacker villain in the corpus of scripture cannot be found i'm not even sure ahab is as dark as haman is here when she unmasks him she also unmasks herself and now note this apocalypse revelation and judgment come at the decisive point now these are characteristic of god's own action in the the apocalypse we're also being given the judgment of god upon human nature and on human history it's the second coming it's a time of judgment it's also a time of apocalypse what was hidden is now revealed esther in the unmasking of the villain also unmasks herself and now a judgment will come what will the king do so when she accepts her identity as a jew before the king her husband she is showing a courage which she did not before possess she lacked this courage but now she has this courage once came this courage but when she makes that step she has acted decisively to control the destiny of an entire nation the the weight of the nation and the lives of the jews in babylon hang in the balance and to a superlative degree she meets the requirements of a hero she has terrific conflict and the conflict that she has marked her whole religious community she represents this originally she is a beautiful woman but she's quite frankly a weak character she's not admirable disney heroines are not admirable they're dislikable actually because they're beautiful and they're vacuous and they're morally lacking integrity they're trying to rectify this through uh repeated renderings now of the barbie type of of heroin but she is in fact transformed by her revelation of herself into a heroic uh figure of terrific stature and also a political skill for that matter so she she takes on the best characteristics of her uncle mordecai in playing here so we see her as a terrifically wise character much like daniel and finally she's able to act decisively for good and it it it validates the religious view of life that if you hold and assert your principles god will overrule and this her act here in which god is absent only magnifies the terrific heroism of this weak orphan girl caught in a slave culture in which not only her life but the lives of her whole nation are in the balance and this is just absolutely terrific now i will note one final thing and it's the what i said at the outset and the reason why i put a female hero in here alongside of male uh a male hero it's because in ancient literature heroines are exceedingly rare and this this is just one of several heroic narratives that make women uh the central figure of the narrative and we could look at the story of ruth as i said which is in some ways uh supersedes the excellence in the narrative uh to that of esther but i mean i think they're both terrific um but we could also look at the story of deborah in judges four to five we could look at hannah in 1st samuel 1 and we could look at abigail in uh first samuel 25 these are all memorable heroines in scripture and we could even to some degree look at miriam and the song of miriam and the song of the sea but i think that's sufficient for now and amply illustrates the terrific nature of heroism and biblical heroism that i want to bring to your attention today

Channel: Dr Scott Masson

Views: 113

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: how to read the bible, little big heroes, sunday school, bible stories for kids esther, bible stories for kids daniel and the lions den, bible stories for sunday school, bible stories for kids, how to teach bible to kids, greatest heroes & legends of the bible, greatest heroes of the bible, greatest heroes, greatest heroes & legends of the bible daniel, how to read the bible literary styles, how to read the bible for all its worth, little big heroes esther, sunday school lesson

Id: S0kI2-LHlY0

Length: 72min 48sec (4368 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020