One of my most favorite characters in all of the Bible is Vashti, the Queen of Persia. In the great sweep of the narrative, she is a minor character, but her refusal to obey the summons of the king has reverberated through the ages and even into our own time.

Vashti’s Refusal

According to the book of Esther, Vashti was queen of the great Persian Empire and the wife of the king, Ahasuerus, whose ego was as big as his empire. Once Ahasuerus threw a great party for all the important people of the empire, lasting for an entire six months! During the party, Ahasuerus “showed off the awesome riches of his kingdom…as mirrors of how very great he was” (Esther 1:4).

At the end of six months, when the party was over and everyone had gone home, Ahasuerus decided to throw yet another party. This time, he invited all the people of the capital city of Susa for a party lasting another seven days. This party was divided by gender, with the King Ahasuerus hosting the men and Vashti hosting the women. For the king’s party, the rule about drinking was “No limits!” (1:8).

After a week of heavy drinking, King Ahasuerus called for Queen Vashti to come to his party wearing the royal crown so he could show off her beauty to his guests. The summons reduced Vashti to an object reflecting the king’s greatness—like the crowning jewel in the royal treasury.

But when the eunuchs summoned Vashti—she refused to come (1:12). At the culmination of six months of self-glorification, the king’s party ended in his very public humiliation.

The Patriarchy Responds

The king, angered by Vashti’s disobedience, called together his trusted advisers to ask what the law said he should do with Vashti. But the advisers responded not with relevant penal codes but with concern that Vashti’s act of defiance might empower the other women of the empire—including their own wives!—to do the same.

The king’s adviser Memucan says, “News of what the queen did will reach all women, making them look down on their husbands….The important women of Persia and Media who hear about the queen will tell the royal officials the same thing. There will be no end of put-downs and arguments” (1:16-18). Troubled by the possibility of a protofeminist consciousness emerging among the women of the empire, the king’s advisers tell the king to depose Vashti as queen and to pass a law saying that all women must obey their husbands (1:22).

Threatened and exposed, the patriarchy did what the patriarchy always does. If it cannot make itself seem like the natural order of things, it falls back to the next position, entrenching itself in the legal codes or in economic practices or in stereotypes about women in leadership. It uses its power to reinforce its power. A law went out into the land declaring that Vashti could no longer be queen and that “each husband should rule over his own house” (1:20).

Resisting the Patriarchy

Vashti’s act of refusal could be seen as a failure. Her strong, public act of defiance produced a strong, public response from the king and his advisers, reinforcing the patriarchal power structures and enshrining them in the legal code. Yet, even this is a victory of sorts. Ideologies love nothing more than to operate quietly in the background, seeming so “natural” as to be unquestionable. Vashti’s refusal exposed the patriarchal ideology, pulling it out of the background and forcing into the legal code where it can be seen, recognized, and challenged. This is a necessary step on the way to the liberation of all women.

I like to think that Vashti understood that her position as queen provided her a platform to advocate for the women of the empire, who needed the cover of someone more highly placed in order to find their own voices and assert their own dignity. Vashti risked her position—and ultimately her life—to take a stand for the inherent dignity and worth not only of herself, but of all women.

Her story invites each of us—women and men alike—to consider the ways we, too, might use our positions to expose the patriarchy and to create space for the full thriving of women in our communities.

We, too, can make the patriarchy tremble.

This post was adapted from my book The Forgotten Books of the Bible: Recovering the Five Scrolls for Today (Fortress Press, 2018).

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