This is not an easy conversation today because we're dealing with things that we kind of

just have to cover factually to get through the details and set the stage of what's going

on here culturally in Esther's world in Esther chapter four. But this topic is delicate and

it's human and it brings up a whole lot of issues and a whole lot of things. So I'm just going

to do my best to relay what the deal was in the ancient world with Unix, how that worked,

what their lives were like, what we know about them, and then think a little bit about what the

original audience would have assumed about Unix as Unix started to factor heavily in the story

of Esther, the further into it, we get. That said, this is sort of a content warning,

you're smart, you see what I'm doing, I know a lot of you listen to this, the kids and family

and everything, and I want it to be a family-friendly program. But sometimes the Bible just gets into

topics that aren't totally family-friendly. So there, I've bought you a little bit of time to

discreetly change what's going on and distract anyone you need to distract and now we're going to

get into it in three, two, one, go. The go between, between Esther and Mordecai is the guy who's in

charge of the harem. Now, Queen Esther, you could define her as being technically on the fringes

of the harem or maybe the better way to put it would be that the harem would be all the concubines,

but in the Persian palace, there was also a collection of wives. We know of at least two at this

time, a mistress and Esther, and it looks like maybe the management of all of that, the wives,

their attendance, the concubines, maybe that was all under the purview of one particular

Unix. In this case, the man named Hathach, who goes on behalf of Esther to talk to Mordecai,

then comes back to Esther with Mordecai's message here in the middle of Esther chapter four.

There's a pretty dramatic moment here that includes this Unix when Mordecai reveals to someone

very casually, by the way, for the first time that Esther is a Jew. Now, this Hathach guy,

...