Esther Continued, Chapters 11 & 12

Way back in the Old Testament, there was a story about a very stupid Babylonian king named Ashureus who tried to get his wife to take off her clothes in front of some of his important guests. When she refused, he had her killed and found her replacement through a beauty pageant. The winner was Esther, one of the enslaved Israelites. Esther happens to have an idiotic uncle named Mordecai who refuses to bow down to some bigwig, which nearly starts a genocide of all the Israelites, but luckily Esther is nearly as hot as Judith and is able to intervene and save her people, then asks for an order to exterminate all their would-be genocidaires, which ends in 75 000 deaths and a Jewish holiday. Now the book bizarrely picks back up with some extra verses at the end of chapter 10 about a guy named Mardocheus who has a dream about a river that represents Esther. There are two dragons in the dream that stand for the countries that tried to destroy Israel. He also remembers the dice, or pur that were cast in the first part of the book that were supposed to determine which Israelites would die first, but god saved the people and the holiday became Purim.

Chapter 11

We get a blessedly brief genealogy of Mardocheus that tells us absolutely nothing. It turns out he's a slave at the king's court. We get another account of his dream about dragons and war and a fountain that floods and the sun and some weak people who rise up and defeat the strong. When he wakes up, he tries to remember the dream but doesn't write it in his dream journal.

Chapter 12

Mardocheus usually hangs out with two eunuchs named Gabatha and Tharra, plus some other slaves. He mostly saves up gossip so he can use it against people in the future. One day the eunuchs tell him about their plot to kill the king to avenge their balls and he notifies the king about the plot. The eunuchs are strangled and Mardocheus earns himself a promotion to court slave. He promptly gains an enemy in Aman, who was friends with the two dead eunuchs.