Strange Story: Esther 2 Why Did Mordecai Sit at the King’s Gate?

There have been several reasons suggested for why Mordecai was sitting at the king’s gate, however, I think the most likely suggestion is that Mordecai was a judge. According to a historian named Xenophon, King Cyrus had issued a decree that those serving as judges of the people must station themselves at the king’s gate and the people who needed a judge would go there to find them. This was a change from the norm where judges and other city officials sat in a city gate. By having the judges sit at the king’s gate, instead of at the city gate, the king was sending a clear signal that all the judicial rulings of these judges should be seen as rulings of the king because these judges served him and judged according to his will and purpose. We can rightly assume that there was a place at the palace gate designated for each one and it was well organized. The historian Herodotus informs us that this practice was continued after Cyrus was gone.

During the Babylonian era, each people group was allowed to live together, and they had some of their own people ruling over them as puppets of the ruling king. Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah (known more commonly by their Babylonian names Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego) seem to have served in this capacity. The Persian empire, in which the story of Esther takes place, appears to have used the same system and that is why the book of Esther says several times that each of the king’s edicts went out in the language of each people group represented in the kingdom.

Thus we may assume that Mordecai was likely a judge who represented the king before the Jewish people, and to a lesser degree, represented the Jewish people before the king. It worked out well for Mordecai to spend his time at the gate of the palace because there he could hear information from or about Esther.