In the two most famous Renaissance paintings depicting Queen Esther entering the throne room of King Achashverosh unbidden – one by Tintoretto and the other by the most famous female painter of the era, Artemisia Gentileschi – Esther is sumptuously dressed and swooning. In both canvases attendants are catching her so she does not fall to the ground. In each, the King is leaning forward with concern.
This is an odd depiction, since the Book of Esther contains no swooning. From verses 4:16 through 5:2, which Rachel just chanted, we might perceive Esther to be humble, cautious, determined, and aware of the danger she is in. But there is no fainting, there is no hand-to-brow posturing. She does not have to resort to Renaissance-style feminine stratagems. She is a queen who needs no gambit.
Because in addition to the obvious strength and courage that the story conveys, there is more to her than meets the eye. In verse 5:1, while Esther is preparing for this encounter, we find an unusual Hebrew phrase. The text says vatilbash Esther malkhut. “Esther wore Malkhut.”
Malkhut is the common Hebrew word for “kingdom” or “royalty” and translators invariably read the sentence as meaning “Esther wore royal garb.” But Hebrew has a word, many words, for all kinds of “garb” and none of them are used. No royal robe, no royal dress, no royal shmateh. The text simply says, “Esther wore malkhut.”
Our sages of antiquity also found this strange. In Talmud, Rabbi Chanina interprets malkhut in this verse to mean Ruach Hakodesh – the Holy Spirit. (BT Megillah 15a.) In other words, Esther is not wearing something royal connected to an earthly kingdom, but rather royal, in the sense of Divine Majesty itself. Esther walks into the room wrapped in the Divine.
This accords with our later mystical understandings of the word Malkhut. In our mystical tradition, Malkhut is the final station in the Ten Sefirot of our Tree of Life. For some of you that means something, and for many of you I suspect it means nothing. So here’s the nutshell.
Imagine that in the beginning there was only God – infinite and undifferentiated. All God. All the time. Nothing but.
Now we live in a world full of things and beings, a world of chopped-up separateness, made of more particles and waves than we could ever count.
Our mystics would say it is still all God. God is in all of it. God is the substance of all of it. This is Malkhut. The Divinity that saturates and looks like this world.
Our mystics would also equate Malkhut with Shekhinah, another way of expressing the Divine Presence around and in us. Shekhinah, which is also the Divine Feminine, and who is, one day a week, called Shabbat.
Vatilbash Esther Malkhut. But Esther was wearing it. She was wearing this Divine Presence. She was robed in Shekhinah. An earthly queen wearing the heavenly one. When she entered the throne room, there was no mistaking that Shekhinah entered with her. If the king leaned forward, it was not worry over a swooning Esther. It was because he was Shechinah-parched. He, like all of us, had been starved of the Divine and of the Divine Feminine, and here, at last, She swept right in the door.
Malkhut. So here’s a thing about Malkhut. A world in which everything is God looks the same as a world in which nothing is God. But they feel different. When our consciousness opens and we perceive the Divine in all – the beautiful and majestic as well as what we might find distasteful – then we are experiencing Malkhut. When we perceive the Divine in it all, then we can also move the Divine that is in it all. That is what Esther does. Priestess-like, she moves the Divine energy. She brings it to her purpose and her quest. The crime she is setting out to avert is a crime not only against her, it is a crime against God, against Creation.
It is therefore Divine authority she holds when she enters the throne room. Maybe the king is leaning forward in the paintings because Shekhinah is, invisibly, offering him her scepter, and he, now the supplicant, leans forward to touch it.
It is easy to feel cowed by the holy tasks ahead of us in this world, of healing the planet, of working for justice. It is easy to look at the road ahead and simply swoon. But in those moments, maybe we perceive Malkhut and wrap it around us as a garment.
Also see “Robed in Malkhut: The Hidden and Revealed in Esther (and Us)” in Evolve. Click here.