Esther: An Honor-Shame Paraphrase by Jayson Georges

@audreycfrank

If you are new to reading the Bible through the lenses of honor and shame, the Old Testament book of Esther is a great place to start. Like a true fairy tale, the story of a beautiful orphan girl’s rise to the status of a queen is enchanting through any worldview.

In Esther: An Honor-Honor-Shame Paraphrase, Jayson Georges gives us a new pair of reading glasses equipped with super-powers. Through them we can see the colors and sounds of honor and shame shimmering throughout the book, making the familiar story enthralling and brand new. We find ourselves giving God a standing ovation at the closing scene as He faithfully brings His people from shame to honor in a dramatic status reversal.

An Honor-Shame Paraphrase highlights the three primary honor-shame motifs of food, social hierarchy, and status reversal in the book of Esther. A banquet (there are 10 in the whole book) becomes more than a feast; it is a demonstration of generosity, hospitality, and position of respect.

Queen Vashti’s refusal to appear before King Xerxes or Mordecai’s refusal to bow to Haman becomes publicly explosive, disrupting the social order of the entire nation. We begin to wonder if the King was not merely a self-centered chauvinist with an anger problem; maybe he was bent on protecting his status from complete destruction. Perhaps Haman was not just a stubborn and prideful leader who loved the idea of being bowed down to; he had a right to be honored because of the status given to him by the King.

Through honor-shame lenses, status reversal is no longer the good guys winning in the end. Esther’s rise from orphan to queen, Haman’s fall from most honored noble to death by public impalement, and Mordecai’s rise from royal official to second in command are suddenly understood to be miraculous journeys between the two paramount cultural destinations of honor and shame.

There are some attention-grabbing passages in George’s paraphrase. One I loved was Esther’s often-quoted declaration, “If I perish, I perish,” after her uncle Mordecai’s admonition, “And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (4:14, 16, NIV). An Honor-Shame Paraphrase illuminates Esther’s determined attitude with this sentence, “Without being greedy for honor, she was content to trust God for her future status” (Page 14). Wow. I had to let that sink in a while and then ask myself the same question.

Throughout the work, Georges offers helpful visuals and many other honor-shame motifs of which the reader should take note. The only thing I thought was missing was an opportunity to delve into the face-work Esther was doing in her three meals for the king, waiting to ask her favor until the second meal. I would like to learn more from Georges about the honor-shame dynamic at play in these scenes.

If you wish you better understood the less-obvious cultural assumptions of the Bible, I recommend you get a copy of Esther: An Honor-Shame Paraphrase by Jayson Georges. #honorshame Click To Tweet

The author deciphers how original audiences heard the message through the worldview of honor and shame while helping modern readers overcome their own cultural blindness.

Jayson Georges reminds readers: “Please do not equate this Honor-Shame Paraphrase with the actual Bible. This paraphrase is a socio-cultural exposition that seeks to illuminate (not translate) the Bible. The genre of paraphrase weaves together commentary and application to capture the message of the Bible in a fresh way (akin to Eugene Peterson’s The Message). In this way, we make academic research about biblical cultures accessible and informative for people today” (page 7).

This nifty little work brings into sharp relief the fact that the book of Esther narrates a popular Old Testament theme: God vindicates his people from shame, giving them honor instead. Get your copy here.