Purim, Persia, and the War We’re Living In

The Bible opens with two creation stories that are not competing myths, but two lenses on one reality.

In Genesis 1 through 2:4a, we’re given a cosmic‑centric view. God doesn’t start with a garden; He starts with time and space. He speaks light into existence, sets boundaries for the seas, appoints the sun, moon, and stars to govern days and seasons. This is the sovereign Lord of history bringing order and opportunity out of chaos, declaring creation “very good,” and seeing the end from the beginning even as He allows it to unfold in real time.

Only then, in Genesis 2:4b–3, does the camera zoom in. We move from cosmic architecture to earth‑centric intimacy: a garden, a man, a woman, a tree, a serpent. The God who orders galaxies also walks “in the cool of the day.” Both lenses are essential. He is the One who “sets up kings and deposes them” (Daniel 2:21), yet also wrestles with Jacob, hears Hagar, and counts Esther’s sleepless nights.

That double vision—cosmic sovereignty and gritty particularity—sits at the heart of my new conversation with Dr. Jennifer Rosner, a theologian, writer, and teacher whose work lives right at the intersection of Judaism and Christianity. Jen’s whole vocation is about holding those two lenses together: the God of Israel who rules history, and the Jewish people who live that history out in real time.

And that is exactly why we cannot talk about Purim, or the current Israel–US–Iran war, without both lenses on the table.

Purim: A Feast in the Shadow of Empire

Purim commemorates a story most of us know in outline: a Jewish orphan, Esther; a Persian king; an ambitious official named Haman; and an edict of annihilation. The book of Esther never once names God explicitly, and yet the whole story crackles with providence between the lines.

As Jen put it in our conversation, “Esther is what it feels like to be a Jew when your destiny is in someone else’s hands—when the empire’s paperwork can determine whether you live or die.” It is a story of a Jewish minority living under a foreign superpower—Persia, the historical ancestor of modern Iran—scattered, vulnerable, and at the mercy of court intrigues they cannot control.

Purim is about what it means to be a covenant people in the shadow of empire. It is also about the way the cosmic God of Genesis 1 works in a Genesis 3 world:

The gallows built for Mordecai become Haman’s own noose.
The day decreed for Jewish destruction becomes the day of their deliverance.
God’s apparent hiddenness becomes the stage on which His purposes quietly unfold.

Or, as Jen said, “Purim teaches us to see God’s hand precisely when God is not named. That’s a profoundly Jewish way of reading history—and Christians desperately need to recover it.”

Persia Then, Persia Now

Any time you say “Esther” and “Persia” in 2026, minds in the know go straight to Iran. Commentators across the spectrum have drawn the parallels:

A regime that explicitly calls for Israel’s destruction.
A long, complicated history between Jews and that land.
A global power struggle with the United States now entangled in direct conflict.

Our aim in this episode was not to play armchair general. It was to ask: What does it mean, theologically, that the biblical Persia and the modern Persian power are back on the stage—and the Jewish people are once again in the crosshairs of a plot that openly fantasizes about wiping them out?

Here the Genesis 1 lens matters. The God who set the stars in place and marked out times and seasons is not surprised by:

Revolutionary Iran’s ideology.
Israel’s rebirth and survival.
America’s uneasy, often incoherent role in all of this.

Scripture shows a God who “declares the end from the beginning” (Isaiah 46:10), who uses empires as instruments and then judges those same empires for their arrogance. The Persian Empire that tried to erase the Jews in Esther’s day did not survive. The Jewish people did. That pattern is not an accident.

Esther Between Judaism and Christianity

One of Jen’s recurring themes is simple and devastating: “Christians cannot understand their own faith if they detach it from the ongoing story of the Jewish people.”

Too often, Christian readings of Esther either:

Reduce it to a children’s tale about personal courage, or
Allegorize it into a generic moral about “God working behind the scenes.”

But Esther is Jewish history, Jewish trauma, Jewish survival.

In our discussion we explored how:

For Judaism, Purim is a deeply embodied memory: “They tried to kill us; God turned it around; let’s feast.” It is a liturgy of vigilance. As Jen noted, “Every generation has its Haman. Purim is how we remember that we’re still here—even when the odds say we shouldn’t be.”
For Christianity, Esther is a mirror. It confronts us with the fact that our Messiah is a Jew whose people have more often been hunted than honored in Christian-majority cultures. It forces us to ask whether, in a world of new Hamans, we are standing with Mordecai—or drifting toward the comfort of the palace.

Jen’s work presses Christians to see that Jesus is not the erasure of Israel’s story but its intensification. To follow Him is to be permanently implicated in what happens to His people.

A Divided Christianity, a Divided Judaism

When we turn to the present war, it’s crucial not to flatten the landscape.

There are Christians and Jews who strongly support Israel’s actions, sometimes to the point of confusing the modern state with the Kingdom of God. There are Christians and Jews who are fiercely anti‑Zionist, aligning (explicitly or implicitly) with Islamist narratives, or with broad coalitions that mix anti‑Israel activism with LGBTQ+ advocacy, anti‑racism, decolonization rhetoric, and a sweeping indictment of “Western, white, Christian” civilization.

In other words: the divide does not run neatly between “Jews and Christians on one side, and Islam on the other.” It runs through Christianity, through Judaism, and through the West itself.

On one extreme, you have voices (Christian and Jewish) that baptize every Israeli action as beyond critique, as if the modern state and the Kingdom of God were coterminous. On another, you have a rising chorus (also Christian and Jewish, alongside secular and Muslim voices) that paints Israel as the new Pharaoh and movements like Hamas or Iran’s proxies as the oppressed.

Both sides are eager to cast today’s headlines as Exodus redux or Esther redux, but they do so too often without the Genesis 1 God squarely in view—the God who is not a tribal mascot but the Lord of history, who disciplines His own people and judges their enemies, who weaves judgment and mercy together in ways that make everyone uncomfortable.

As Jen reminded us, “Once God ties His name to a particular people, it doesn’t mean that people is always right. It means God’s reputation is bound up with how He deals with them in history—through mercy and through judgment.” That cuts in every direction.

War, Providence, and the Dangerous Comfort of Easy Narratives

So what do we do with a war in which Israel, backed and opposed in different ways by the United States, finds itself facing the modern heir of Persia?

We tried in this episode to sit with several hard truths at once:

There are real injustices and real sufferings on all sides of this conflict.
There is also real genocidal intent in some of Israel’s enemies’ rhetoric and actions.
Christians and Jews are found on both sides of the political argument, and too often we enlist Scripture not to challenge our side but to baptize it.

Purim does not give us permission to cheer anyone’s annihilation. It gives us eyes to see how frighteningly easy it is for the machinery of a powerful state to turn a minority into a target—and how urgently the people of God (church and synagogue alike) must learn to read that moment together, not against each other.

Jen and I talked about what it means for Christians to say we worship the God of Israel and yet join crowds who chant for Israel’s erasure; and what it means for Jews to celebrate survival while wrestling honestly with the ethical weight of wielding state power in a dangerous neighborhood. These are not abstract questions; they’re existential.

A Sneak Peek at the Conversation

In the episode with Jennifer Rosner, we drill into questions like:

How does Purim form Jewish consciousness about enemies, survival, and God’s hiddenness?
What does it mean for Christians to confess Jesus as Israel’s Messiah while standing in solidarity with a people still surrounded by “Hamans” old and new?
How should we think about Iran—as a geopolitical actor, as an heir of biblical Persia, and as a symbol in contemporary prophetic imagination?
What does Esther teach us about courageous faithfulness from the margins of power, and how might that shape Jewish and Christian responses today?

At one point Jen said, “If Christians want to understand what’s happening in Israel and Iran, they can’t start with cable news. They have to start with Scripture—and they have to listen to how Jews have read that Scripture for millennia.” That, in a sentence, is why this conversation matters.

Why This Episode Matters Now

We live in a time when every war is sold as the final conflict, every leader as either Haman or Mordecai, every headline as Armageddon. The noise is deafening.

What we tried to do with this Purim episode is step back—Genesis 1 back—and remember that:

God is not guessing how this ends.
He has been telling this story from the start.
He has not abandoned the people of Esther, of Jesus, of Paul.
And He is calling both church and synagogue to reckon with one another again, not as museum pieces, but as co‑participants in His unfolding purposes.

Purim is not a quaint festival. It is a mirror. It forces us to ask, in a world where Persia is once again on the march and the Jewish people are once again in the crosshairs:

Where do we stand when the edicts are written, the plots are hatched, and the future of the Jewish people is debated in our streets, our legislatures, and our churches and synagogues?

If that question troubles you—as it should—I invite you to listen in.

This episode with Dr. Jennifer Rosner is more than a theology lecture. It’s an invitation to see creation, covenant, and conflict through a lens wide enough for Genesis 1 and close enough for Esther’s tears. In a world tilting toward another “such a time as this,” we need that kind of vision more than ever.

Join in on the full discussion on the Created in the Image of God show on April 7 at 8:00 PM Central