Was Vashti A Submissive Wife? by Pastor Kevin Feder

In our first sermon in our series on Esther we covered chapter 1 and the tremendous party King Xerxes threw. The party lasted six months for his army and officials and governors. After this period of 180 days was over Xerxes threw a party for seven more days that the entire city of Susa was invited to. Xerxes was showing off his wealth and showing off his glory to everyone far and wide. This “showing off” climaxed when, in his drunken state, decided to summon his beautiful wife who was also Queen Vashti so that he could impress his guests with her beauty. 

You are probably familiar with the story as it unfolds. Vashti isn’t impressed. She isn’t flattered that her husband is still attracted to her, even after all these years. She refuses him and it brings him great embarrassment when the King isn’t able to parade his catch in front of the drunken crowd that is hungry for some entertainment. So it seems to beg the question, should she have submitted to the king or was she justified in refusing him. Let me say two things.

First, it is essentially the wrong question. The first thing we should point out is that Esther 1 isn’t concerned with Ephesians 5:22 where we hear of Paul’s command: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.” In the story Vashti and Xerxes are not referred to as husband and wife so it tells us their marriage relationship wasn’t what the author was drawing our attention to. Ephesians 5:22 had not been issued yet and even if it was, they were a pagan couple whose marital dynamics were very different to that of a Christian couple raising a family in the suburbs of Minneapolis. Thus, this passage has to do with the way the kingdom was altered because of Vashti’s refusal, it isn’t meant to be a test case on headship and submission. I am making this first point to help you learn a lesson on reading Old Testament narrative. We must always take the text on it’s own terms and we must always crawl inside the story as much as we can to discern the author’s intent. 

Second, having said that, I know you still want an answer. Looking back on that story with our Christian lenses we can wrestle with the question, what would submission that honors Christ look like in this situation? I am running out of space so I won’t be able to flesh out everything that needs to be said...I know you are relieved by that. So to put it real straight, I think Vashti was free to follow her conscience in this situation. We know that a wife’s submission to her husband must never violate her submission to God. Thus, anytime a wife is asked by her husband to do anything that would violate something God is asking her to do or not do she is free to refuse and she is not under the obligation of Ephesians 5:22. A husband’s authority is derivative from God’s authority and a wife might unwittingly be reinforcing her husband's abuse of authority and his own sin if she supports his leadership in this. 

However, in the story of Vashti and Xerxes it isn’t clear exactly what the immediate expectations were on her. We don’t know if sin was inevitable for Vashti or if there was indeed a way for her to obey Xerxes and avoid sinning. Depending on the nature of what she was going to do in front of the men and what percentage of her body would be covered by clothing and what would have been culturally appropriate at the time and what her threshold of comfort was in it all makes this an issue of conscience. If you are asking for my personal opinion I would say sin was unavoidable and if a Christian woman was in the same situation she would be right to refuse.