Esther

Overview

Esther is set in the Persian Empire during the reign of King Ahasuerus (usually identified with Xerxes I, 486–465 BC), in the citadel of Susa. Unlike Ezra and Nehemiah, which follow the exiles who went home to Judah, Esther tells the story of Jews who stayed scattered across the empire. Its author is unknown; it was probably written in the Persian or early Hellenistic period.

The book is a tightly built court drama full of reversals: banquets, decrees, a sleepless king and a lot that is cast and then overturned. Famously, the Hebrew text never mentions God by name, yet the story is shaped by striking "coincidences" that readers have long understood as the hidden providence of God. It explains the origin of the Jewish festival of Purim.

The book falls into four parts: Esther becomes queen (chapters 1–2); Haman's plot (3–5); the great reversal (6–8); and victory and the feast of Purim (9–10).

Part 1 — A Jewish Queen in Persia (chapters 1–2)

The king's banquets (1). Ahasuerus rules 127 provinces "from India to Cush". In his third year he shows off his wealth to his nobles for 180 days, then holds a seven-day feast for all the people of Susa. On the seventh day, merry with wine, he orders Queen Vashti to appear wearing her crown to display her beauty. Vashti deposed (1). Vashti refuses. The king's advisers warn that wives throughout the empire will despise their husbands, so a decree removes Vashti and her position is to be given to another. Esther chosen (2). Young women are gathered to Susa. Among them is Hadassah, called Esther, an orphan raised by her cousin Mordecai, a Benjamite whose family was exiled from Jerusalem with King Jeconiah. Esther wins favour with everyone, and in the king's seventh year she is made queen. On Mordecai's advice she keeps her Jewish identity secret. A plot uncovered (2). Sitting at the king's gate, Mordecai learns that two doorkeepers, Bigthan and Teresh, plan to assassinate the king. Esther reports it in Mordecai's name; the men are hanged, and the event is recorded in the royal chronicles — but Mordecai is not rewarded.

Part 2 — Haman's Plot (chapters 3–5)

Mordecai refuses to bow (3). The king promotes Haman the Agagite above all his officials. (The name recalls Agag, the Amalekite king of 1 Samuel 15, Israel's ancient enemy, while Mordecai, like Saul, is a Benjamite son of Kish.) Everyone bows to Haman except Mordecai, who explains that he is a Jew. The lot is cast (3). Haman decides to destroy not only Mordecai but all the Jews in the empire. He casts pur, the lot, to choose a date, and it falls on the thirteenth of Adar, eleven months away. He tells the king of "a certain people scattered abroad" whose laws differ, and offers ten thousand talents of silver. The king hands over his signet ring. Couriers carry the decree to every province; "the king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city Shushan was perplexed" (3:15). Mourning and a challenge (4). Mordecai puts on sackcloth and ashes, and Jews across the provinces fast and weep. Esther learns of it through her servant Hathach. She explains that anyone who approaches the king without being summoned dies unless he extends his golden sceptre, and she has not been called for thirty days. Mordecai replies that she will not escape in the palace, that deliverance will "arise from another place" if she is silent, and asks: "who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (4:14). "If I perish, I perish" (4). Esther asks all the Jews of Susa to fast for her three days, as she and her maids will, and resolves to go to the king. The first banquet (5). On the third day she stands in the inner court in her royal robes. The king extends the sceptre and offers her "even to the half of the kingdom". She invites the king and Haman to a banquet, and there invites them to a second one the next day. The gallows (5). Haman leaves elated but is enraged again when Mordecai will not rise for him. On the advice of his wife Zeresh and his friends he has a gallows (or stake) fifty cubits high built for Mordecai.

Part 3 — The Great Reversal (chapters 6–8)

A sleepless night (6). That night the king cannot sleep and has the chronicles read to him. He hears how Mordecai saved his life and learns nothing was done to honour him. Haman honours Mordecai (6). At that moment Haman arrives to ask for Mordecai's execution. The king asks him, "What shall be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour?" Assuming he is the man, Haman proposes royal robes, the king's horse and a public proclamation. The king tells him to do exactly that for Mordecai. Haman leads Mordecai through the city square, then goes home in grief; Zeresh warns that he will surely fall before him. The second banquet (7). Esther reveals her request: her life and her people's lives, for "we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed". When the king asks who has done this, she answers, "The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman." Haman's fall (7). The king storms into the garden. Returning, he finds Haman fallen on Esther's couch begging for mercy. The servant Harbona mentions the gallows built for Mordecai, and Haman is hanged on it. A counter-decree (8). The king gives Haman's estate to Esther, and Mordecai receives the signet ring. But a Persian law sealed with the king's ring cannot be revoked. Esther weeps at the king's feet, and Mordecai is allowed to write a new decree permitting Jews everywhere to assemble and defend themselves on the thirteenth of Adar. Mordecai goes out in royal robes of blue and white with a golden crown; the Jews have "light, and gladness, and joy, and honour", and many people declare themselves Jews.

Part 4 — Victory and the Feast of Purim (chapters 9–10)

The thirteenth of Adar (9). On the day their enemies hoped to overpower them, "it was turned to the contrary". The Jews defend themselves and strike down their attackers: five hundred men and Haman's ten sons in Susa, a further three hundred there the next day, and seventy-five thousand in the provinces. Three times the text notes that they did not take any plunder. Purim instituted (9). The Jews rest and feast on the fourteenth (in Susa, the fifteenth), sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor. Mordecai writes to establish the days as an annual festival, named Purim after the pur Haman cast. Esther confirms it with a second letter of full authority. Mordecai's greatness (10). The book closes with Mordecai second in rank to the king, "great among the Jews", seeking the good of his people and speaking peace to all his descendants.

Key themes, and the bridge to Job

• Hidden providence. God is never named, yet the timing of Esther's rise, the king's insomnia and Haman's early arrival suggest an unseen hand at work.
• Reversal. The whole story turns on reversals: the honoured is humbled, the gallows is used on its builder, the day of destruction becomes a day of rescue, and mourning becomes feasting.
• Courage and identity. Esther moves from hiding her identity to risking her life for her people; Mordecai's refusal to bow sets the crisis in motion.
• Life in exile. Esther shows God's people surviving and even thriving as a minority in a foreign empire, under laws they did not write.
• Remembrance. Purim is still celebrated, with the reading of the scroll (the Megillah), feasting and gifts to the poor.

Esther ends with the people safe and the festival established, but still living under a Persian king rather than in a restored kingdom. It closes the historical books of the Old Testament. The next book, Job, steps out of history altogether into the wisdom and poetry books, and turns from a story where God is silent but active to a story where a suffering man demands that God speak.