When my oldest daughter was born close to 30 years ago, I wanted to name her Vashti. Luckily for me, her mother vetoed that plan. Admittedly, part of the reason I have affection for this name is that my parents named our cat Vashti when I was little. But the other reason is that I’ve always felt that Vashti gets a bad rap.
This is certainly the case in rabbinic midrash, where she is tarred with the claim that she tortured Jewish women or that she was exceedingly ugly and had a tail. Many regular readers also see her as little more than the person who needs to be removed to give Esther, the Jewish female protagonist, the opportunity to become queen. But there’s a lot more to Vashti in context.
During the third year of his reign, King Ahasuerus holds a six-month banquet for the various governors and noblemen of Persia’s 127 provinces. After this ends, Ahasuerus holds a seven-day banquet open to all the men living in Shushan, during which the king gets drunk.
Meanwhile, in another part of the palace, Vashti is holding a parallel banquet for the women of Shushan. On the final day, seven of her husband’s eunuchs appear at her door with a command from the king: “To bring Queen Vashti before the king wearing a royal crown, to display her beauty to the peoples and the officials; for she was a beautiful woman.”
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Vashti refuses.
Jewish interpretation has long upped the ante on the king’s command, claiming that Vashti was to be wearing the crown and nothing else — i.e., to appear nude. This interpretation makes the king’s request more grotesque and Vashti’s refusal more understandable. What self-respecting woman, not to mention a queen, would agree to such a thing? And yet, the simple meaning of the text is that Vashti should come as she was dressed, but with the addition of the crown to make it clear to the onlookers who she was. Yet she still refused.
The story continues with Memuchan, one of Ahasuerus’ advisors, warning him that he will be the laughing-stock of his empire if he doesn’t respond. Every wife will now disobey her husband and defend herself by saying that if the king’s own wife doesn’t listen to her husband, why should she? So threatening was this specter of an empire-wide feminist revolution that Memuchan suggests Vashti be removed from her position and a more pliant woman be made queen.
It’s widely assumed that Vashti is executed over her disobedience, an interpretation that would, yet again, make Ahasuerus more monstrous. But it also raises the question of why Vashti refuses if the stakes are so high. She may not have liked being ogled by commoners while her drunken husband brags about her beauty, but is it something to die for? This makes the simple reading of the text the more plausible one: Vashti is never in mortal danger — only her position is threatened.
The phrasing of Vashti’s refusal holds an important clue to its meaning in the story and the Bible as a whole: “Queen Vashti refused to come at the king’s command conveyed by the eunuchs.” The Hebrew word for refused, tema’en, also appears in Genesis, when Potiphar’s wife attempts to seduce Joseph, but he refuses. This enrages Potiphar’s wife, who accuses Joseph of attempted rape, and her husband has him thrown into a dungeon. There, Joseph interprets the dream of the wine steward, which gives him the opportunity to interpret Pharaoh’s dream two years later, leading to his appointment as vizier. The message in Genesis is that God will ensure everything comes out right in the end if only one acts properly.
In the Esther story, in contrast, God is never mentioned. The only king is Ahasuerus, and he is a foolish, impulsive drunkard. As Rabbi David Silber points out, the Megillah opens with a king who gets rid of his wife at the coaxing of his advisor and ends with the same king getting rid of his advisor at the coaxing of his wife. It is a world which makes little sense, in which all is subject to the whims of the powers that be. In this world, the people who make it are those who are savvy and know how to read the king. Vashti is plain-spoken. She simply knows what is proper and sticks to it, like Joseph in Potiphar’s house.
In the human world, the forthrightness of a Joseph or Vashti does not necessarily lead to success. Joseph offers Potiphar’s wife an entire speech explaining why an affair would be unethical. She responds by framing him. It is only God’s protection that saves Joseph from spending the rest of his days in prison.
Vashti has no such protection. Ahasuerus wants to treat her like a possession, to show her off as his number one toy, and she refuses to be presented in such a manner. If that meant losing her throne, so be it.
Unlike Joseph, Vashti disappears for good, probably to some corner of the harem; she is forgotten entirely for the rest of the story. Such a fate may well await any one of us who pits our self respect against the twisted and abusive desires of those with power over us. Even so, I have come to respect Vashti’s message, which is that sometimes, it’s still worth it.
This article initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on March 15, 2025. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here.
