Introduction

ON FEBRUARY 25, 1994, newspapers reported that fifty-five Palestinians had been killed and 170 more wounded at the mosque at Abraham’s tomb in Hebron, Israel.1 The assailant, Baruch Goldstein, was beaten to death by an angry mob immediately after the attack. Goldstein was an American physician who had emigrated to Israel in 1982. According to the newspaper, friends had seen him only hours before his assault on the Palestinians in his synagogue celebrating Purim, listening to the annual reading of the book of Esther. The book of Esther, which explains the reason for the Jewish holiday of Purim, has been read annually in the synagogue on Purim for more than two thousand years. The story tells how the Jewish people were themselves saved from annihilation, but killed 75,800 of their enemies in the Persian empire.

The Goldstein incident is only one recent example of why interpreters throughout history have found the book of Esther to be a somewhat troubling presence within the canon of the Old Testament. This book has next to nothing to commend it as a religious text, much less the inspired Word of God for the Christian church. The only textual link it has to the rest of the Old Testament is that the story it tells involves the Jewish people. If one went through the text and replaced every occurrence of the word “Jews” with the name of some other ethnic group, there would be no reason to think the story had anything at all to do with the Bible.

Other than the fact that the story is about the Jewish people, there is nothing Jewish about it in the religious sense. It contains neither the divine name Yahweh nor ʾelohim, the Hebrew noun meaning God. Although the events it records take place after the decree of Cyrus in 539 B.C., which allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylonia, there is no mention of Jerusalem or the temple. Unlike the book of Daniel, which is also set in the court of a pagan king, no one prays in the book of Esther. No one has an apocalyptic vision in the Hebrew book of Esther. There is no apparent concern for the law. And in this book there is not even one tiny miracle.

Beyond the fact that the book of Esther is conspicuously nonreligious, the two main characters, Esther and Mordecai, do not seem to reflect the character of other great biblical heroes and heroines. Unlike Daniel and his friends, Esther shows no concern for the dietary laws when she is taken into the court of a pagan king. Instead of protesting, she conceals her Jewish identity and plays to win the new-queen beauty contest. Esther loses her virginity in the bed of an uncircumcised Gentile to whom she is not married, and she pleases him in that one night better than all the other virgins of the harem. When Esther risks her life by going to the king, she does so only after Mordecai points out that she herself will not escape harm even if she refuses to act. Furthermore, Esther displays a surprising attitude of brutality. When she hears that the Jews have killed five hundred people in Susa, she asks that the massacre be permitted for yet another day and that the bodies of Haman’s ten sons be impaled on the city gate. As a result, three hundred more Gentiles died.

And what about Mordecai? Mordecai is often described as a wise and insightful man who knew how to turn disaster into victory. He is celebrated among the Jews as a beloved national hero. But note that Mordecai was the one who insisted that Esther conceal her Jewish identity, even though it would mean compromising whatever faith she possessed and violating the Torah. Mordecai allowed his refusal to give Haman the due respect of his office to escalate into the political incident that jeopardized the entire Jewish people. When Mordecai told Esther that if she did not act to save her people, she herself would not escape harm even though she was in the palace, was he threatening to reveal her Jewish identity, or even worse?

The text is strangely silent about the motives and thoughts of Esther and Mordecai. We don’t know what Esther thought about being taken into the king’s harem or why Mordecai refused to bow to Haman. The author neither exonerates nor condemns Esther and Mordecai, and never evaluates their behavior as good or bad in the eyes of the Lord. The author’s reticence to reveal their thoughts, motives, attitudes, and intentions may be frustrating to readers accustomed to modern techniques of characterization, where inner thoughts are usually described in detail. However, biblical authors stand in the literary tradition of Mesopotamia and Syro-Palestine, which was typically laconic in its description of characters.2 In Hebrew narrative, character is often revealed only through action and speech, leaving the reader to draw inferences about motives and intentions. True to Hebrew narrative style, in the book of Esther the outward, observable events are stated without explanation or comment. The astute reader sees a disquieting moral ambiguity, at best, in the way Esther and Mordecai are portrayed.

Because of the absence of religious values and the presence of sensuality and brutality, the book of Esther has posed a problem for interpreters throughout its history. For the first seven centuries of the Christian church, not one commentary was produced on this book. As far as we know, John Calvin never preached from Esther nor did he include it among his commentaries. Martin Luther denounced this book together with the apocryphal 2 Maccabees, saying of them, “I am so great an enemy to the second book of the Maccabees, and to Esther, that I wish they had not come to us at all, for they have too many heathen unnaturalities.”3

On the other hand, some Jewish rabbis have held the book in highest esteem. Among them, Moses Maimonides, the twelfth-century Jewish philosopher, ranked it equal to the Pentateuch: “When Messiah comes, the other books [of the Hebrew Bible] may pass away, but the Torah and Esther will abide forever.”4 Such sentiments may have been rooted in the eschatological hope that Jewish interpreters have found in Esther that the Jewish nation will survive any and all assaults throughout history. Just as God’s law (i.e., Torah) stands forever, God’s promise to deliver his people, illustrated so powerfully by the story of Esther, is everlasting.

In spite of the problems the book raises, the evangelical doctrine of Scripture does not permit us to dismiss any book of the canon as unworthy of our reverent attention. And Esther is undeniably a part of the canon for both synagogue and church. Although God himself is not mentioned in the story, because the book is in the Bible, in a sense God is telling us the story. He has inspired the biblical writer to narrate events for subsequent generations. As the apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:4, “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Thus, we can pick up the book of Esther with the assurance that, despite first appearances, God has here given us bread and not a stone.

Historical Issues

IN ORDER TO understand the message of the book of Esther, we must locate its place within biblical and world history. The Jews of Judah and Jerusalem were carried into exile by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar when he sacked the city and burnt the temple in 586 B.C. This historical event had spiritual significance when viewed in light of Deuteronomy 28:15, 36, 64:

The destruction of Jerusalem was the fulfillment of the covenant curse for the disobedience and sin of the people. God’s people did not obey the precepts of the covenant that set them apart as God’s nation, but followed the same idolatrous and sinful practices as the pagan nations. Because of this, he scattered them among those nations. It was during this time of exile that God’s people came to be called Jews, taken from the name of their homeland, Judah.

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of the Exile and Restoration in shaping Judaism. The destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of its people was a break in a long and glorious history of a nation that had begun many centuries before when God called his people out of Egypt, entered into a covenant with them, and settled them in their own land. The magnificent temple in Jerusalem, conceived by King David and built by his son Solomon, symbolized the zenith of Israel’s glory. All of God’s promises to his people flourished in that time unequaled in Israel’s history.

The destruction of the temple and Jerusalem and the subjugation of God’s people to a pagan power signaled the end of the glory that was ancient Israel. Without the temple, the sacrifices, the priesthood, and the monarchy, God’s people could not function as he had commanded. New religious practices, begun in the Exile, replaced those that had disappeared with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Exilic Judaism centered on the study of the Torah, for the sacred scrolls could go wherever God’s people found themselves. Modern Judaism, which also continues without the temple, the sacrifices, the priesthood, and the monarchy, stands in the same tradition as postexilic Judaism. The Exile was thus a turning point in biblical history that forever changed the character of Judaism.

But the punishment of God’s chosen people was not without remedy. Before sending them into exile, he gave them his promise through the prophets that a remnant would one day return to Jerusalem. In one such oracle, the Lord said through Jeremiah: “ ‘The days are coming . . . when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess,’ says the Lord” (Jer. 30:3). Such prophecy was fulfilled through a pagan king, Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Jews’ conquerors and set them free to return to their homeland.

Cyrus II (the Great) ruled in the succession of Achaemenid kings, whose lands met the northern and eastern borders of Babylonia.5 He conquered the Babylonian empire without a battle when his army entered Babylon by wading up the Euphrates river and through the canals of the city on the night of October 12, 539 B.C. According to both Daniel 5 and the Greek historian Herodotus (ca. 450 B.C.), the Babylonian king Belshazzar was engaged in drunken revelry when his city was attacked and defeated. Cyrus was welcomed as a liberator by the inhabitants of Babylon, and the vast lands previously ruled by the Babylonian kings, including Jerusalem and Judah, became part of the expanding Persian empire. Nine years later, Cyrus died in battle at the age of seventy.

Cyrus ruled as perhaps the greatest king of the Achaemenid dynasty and was the founder of the Persian empire, which eventually stretched from what is modern Pakistan in the east to modern Turkey and the coastal islands of Greece in the west to northern Sudan in Africa. The Persian empire maintained its powerful hold over the ancient east for two hundred years, beginning with Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon in 539 B.C. and ending when Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 330 B.C. at the battle of Issus.

Although he was a pagan king, Cyrus played an important role in biblical history. When he entered Babylon, the Jews of Judah had been living in exile in Babylon for forty-seven years. They were waiting for the time they would be allowed to return to their homeland, as predicted by the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In 539 B.C., Cyrus issued a decree that the Jews be allowed to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple, using the resources of Persia. The biblical account of his decree is found in Ezra 1:1–4:

This biblical account of the return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem is one example of Cyrus’s broader policy, documented in a sixth-century clay cylinder, inscribed with cuneiform, and currently housed in the British Museum.6 The Cyrus Cylinder contains the annals of Cyrus’s rule. According to it, he released many people groups held captive by the Babylonian kings, and he organized and financed their return to their homelands. In it he states, “I (also) gathered their former inhabitants and returned (to them) their habitations.”7 In addition to the temple at Jerusalem, Cyrus restored and repaired pagan temples in Uruk, Ur, and Babylon.

Cyrus’s motives were probably not entirely altruistic. He presumably adopted the policy to send exiles back to their homelands in order to strengthen his authority in those remote parts of his empire. By financing the rebuilding of ruined cities, such as Jerusalem, he established administrative centers throughout the empire from which Persian officials governed and through which taxes could be collected.

Nevertheless, because of his liberation of God’s people, Cyrus is the only pagan king in the Bible to receive the title “my anointed,” the same title used to refer to the Messiah. Through Isaiah the Lord announces the restoration of Jerusalem (Isa. 44:24–45:2):

Because of Cyrus’s decree, first Zerubbabel and then Ezra traveled to Jerusalem with a remnant of the people to restore the temple and the city. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the reestablishment of the Jews in their homeland. Ezra interpreted the beneficence of the Persian kings, starting with Cyrus, as kindness extended by God himself so that his people might have new life (Ezra 9:9). However, most of the Jews did not return, and Babylon continued to be a thriving center of Judaism for centuries thereafter. The situation today is similar to that of the postexilic period, in that the majority of Jews live outside of Israel, though they can immigrate if they wish. This fact creates certain tensions and dependencies in the relationship between the Jews who have chosen to return to the homeland and those who, for various reasons, have not.

The books of Ezra and Nehemiah show how the Jewish people who returned to the land were dependent on the resources of Persia. They rebuilt Jerusalem and reoccupied the land through hardship and toil, while for their compatriots who remained in Babylonia, life continued undisrupted. The book of Esther tells a story of the Jewish people who, about fifty years after Cyrus’s decree, apparently had chosen not to return to the homeland.

The Bible focuses our attention during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. on the rebuilding of the temple and the city of Jerusalem, but these events were not the center of attention in the rest of the world at that time. In fact, these events would seem relatively insignificant within the larger context of world history. While the Jews were pondering their relationship to God in light of Cyrus’s decree, the Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 B.C.) was born in the Far East. To the west of Palestine, Greece was reaching its Golden Age. While Ezra and Nehemiah were busy rebuilding Jerusalem, Pericles (ca. 495–429 B.C.) was shaping a political system in Athens that would become the basis of modern democracy. Under his leadership, Athens reached the height of its cultural and intellectual influence. Among Pericles’s close associates were Sophocles the playwright, Herodotus the historian, and Protagoras the philosopher. Sophocles wrote plays still considered masterpieces today, such as Oedipus Rex, Electra, and Antigone. Aristophanes, who wrote the great Greek comedies, lived at the same time. The historian Thucydides, who also wrote about the Greek-Persian conflict, was a contemporary of Pericles.

During the same century Esther lived, Socrates was born (ca. 470 B.C.). This great thinker left a legacy that early Christian apologists admired and defended. Pythagoras not only established a school of religion and philosophy about the time Cyrus issued his decree, but also formulated some of the foundational theorems in mathematics. The Pythagorean theorem is still one of the first equations learned by students of algebra and geometry today.

The Olympic games we enjoy today had their roots in ancient Greece. At the time the Jews returned from the Exile, the Olympian games already had a two-hundred year history. In 520 B.C., about the time Zerubbabel returned to Jerusalem, a new event was added, the footrace for men in armor. The heritage of our Western culture—its political systems, philosophies, mathematics, sports, art, and literature—had its origins in Athens of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. To the educated person today, the names Pericles, Socrates, and Pythagoras are no doubt more familiar than those of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. Nevertheless, it was in Jerusalem, not in Athens, that events of eternal significance were unfolding. God seems to work in unlikely places through seemingly insignificant events.

After Cyrus had encouraged the Jews to return to Judah, they began to recognize that perhaps the time of their punishment was indeed ending, as predicted by Yahweh’s prophets. If so, what about the covenant that their ancestors had enjoyed with God while living in the land? What of the temple sacrifices, the law, and the feasts? Were the Jews returning to Jerusalem still bound to the ancient covenant with its blessings and curses? Would those Jews who decided not to return to the homeland nevertheless have a covenantal relationship with God?

During this postexilic period, the big theological question for God’s people was their status with respect to the covenant they had broken. It was, after all, not a prophet of Yahweh who commanded the temple be rebuilt, but a pagan king. Furthermore, he was motivated not by reverence for Yahweh but by his own political agenda. This no doubt gave the Jews pause. How should they relate their relationship to God to the political situation in which they found themselves? The postexilic books of 1 and 2 Chronicles, Haggai, and Zechariah were written to encourage the remnant who had returned to the land, reconfirming Yahweh’s covenant with his people. Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the rebuilding process and how the temple sacrifices required by the covenant were reinstituted with God’s blessing. The book of Esther subtly addresses the question of the covenant from the perspective of those who did not, for whatever reason, return to Jerusalem.

The story of this book is set in Susa (located in modern Iran), in the court of the Persian king Ahasuerus, whose Greek name was Xerxes I. Because of the Greek historian Herodotus, who wrote his History of the Persian Wars only twenty-five years after the reign of Xerxes, we know a great deal about this Persian king (who ruled from 486–465 B.C.).8 History remembers Xerxes as the Persian king who unsuccessfully led a major invasion of Greece.9 Throughout its history, Persia was perennially at war with the Greek city-states. Despite repeated attempts, Persia never conquered the mainland of Greece, though they came threateningly close on several occasions.

It was during this period of struggle between Persia and Greece that the postexilic Jews reclaimed their homeland. Although the struggle between these two great powers dominated world history for centuries, the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther not once mention this great conflict. Almost all that we know about the history of the Persian-Greek wars comes from Herodotus, who considered Xerxes to be one of the three most formidable Persian kings. (The other two were his father, Darius, and his son, Artaxerxes.)10 His reign ended when he was assassinated in his bedroom by close advisors. Herodotus characterizes Xerxes, the tallest and most handsome of the Persian kings, as an ambitious and ruthless ruler, a brilliant warrior, and a jealous lover.

Authorship and Date

THE BOOK OF Esther makes no claim about the identity of its author or the date of its composition, both of which remain unknown. According to the Jewish Talmud (Baba Bathra 15a) it was written by “the men of the Great Synagogue,” who are believed to be anonymous teachers who lived in the period between the last prophets and the later rabbinical scholars. Josephus, the Jewish historian, and Clement of Alexandria, an early church father, claimed that Mordecai himself wrote the book. It was almost certainly written by a Jew who lived outside of Palestine under Persian rule and who was familiar with Susa and the Persian court.

The author writes from a temporal vantage point somewhat removed from the events he is recounting. The book opens with the phrase (1:1), “This is what happened during the time of Xerxes,” suggesting that it was written long after Xerxes had been king. The phrase in apposition, “the Xerxes who ruled over 127 provinces,” seems intended to distinguish Xerxes I of the Esther story from another king of the same name. The only other king with that name was his grandson, Xerxes II, who ruled for only forty-five days in 424 B.C. If the appositional phrase was included to distinguish Xerxes I from Xerxes II, it must have been written after 424 B.C. That phrase, however, may have simply been an oblique way of identifying Xerxes as a Persian king by specifying the extent of his empire. A modern author might pen a similar expression to describe Franklin D. Roosevelt as the man “who governed the forty-eight states from Maine to California.” Such an expression would identify Roosevelt as an American president and situate him at a particular historical moment when there were only forty-eight states. But it would give no clue as to when the statement itself was written.

There is a wide range of opinion about when the book of Esther was written. Some scholars, such as Joyce Baldwin, date its writing in the latter half of the fifth or early in the fourth century B.C., not more than a hundred years or so after the events it records.11 Baldwin gives several reasons for her conclusion. (1) The author’s familiar knowledge of the geography of Susa and the palace is consistent with archaeological evidence. (2) There are many Persian loanwords in the text but few, if any, Greek words. This suggests that the book was written sometime before Greek became the lingua franca at the time Alexander the Great conquered Persia (ca. 323 B.C.). (3) The Hebrew in which the text of Esther is written is similar to that of 1 and 2 Chronicles, which are also dated to the two-hundred-year Persian period (539–323 B.C.).

Most modern commentaries, however, put the composition of the book in the fourth or even third century B.C. Based on linguistic features of the Hebrew, Michael Fox dates the book in the third century B.C.12 Because of the book’s positive attitude toward a Gentile king, which Jon Levenson sees as unlikely during and after the Seleucid period (i.e., ca. 198 B.C.), he dates the book to the fourth or third century B.C.13 Frederic Bush considers the story as it now exists to be the result of a redactional process that he dates to the fourth century B.C.14

An ancient Greek translation of the book was made in Jerusalem either in 114 or 78 B.C., which means the Hebrew text must have existed and have been highly esteemed by that time. A previous Greek version may have existed even earlier in the Hellenistic period.15 All things considered, it is currently impossible to date the book more specifically than between the late fifth through third centuries B.C., that is, late in the Persian period or early in the Hellenistic.

Historicity of Esther

THE AUTHOR OF Esther opens the book with the same Hebrew formula (wyhy) that opens the historical books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel, as well as the book of Ezekiel. The author apparently intends his readers to think of the story he is about to tell as events that really happened. Nothing in this book has been shown to be historically untrue, though a number of questions have been raised concerning its historical accuracy. Several problems usually raised against the book are the following:16

None of these problems is beyond explanation (see respective places in the commentary below), and some may result from the legitimate use of poetic license. Even when taken together they do not compel the conclusion that the story is entirely fiction.

Like other stories in the Bible, the book of Esther portrays history with all of the artistry of great literature. Some who wish to guard the historicity of the book are reluctant to acknowledge, much less appreciate, its literary qualities. Others argue that because it is literature, it does not matter if it really happened because like all great literature, its significance and value transcend the mundane facts of history.

Pitting literary achievement against historicity not only creates a false polarity, it also fails to resolve the question of what really happened.17 Whether an event actually happened is independent of the style and genre in which an author chooses to write, although wise authors usually choose a genre appropriate to their subject. If we question whether a particular literary style and genre is appropriate to represent events that really happened, we end up judging ancient writing by modern expectations. Even if the biblical narratives were written in the most straightforward, “factual” style of modern journalism familiar to us, we would still have to ask, “Did this really happen?” The answer one is willing to accept to the question of the historicity of Esther depends on one’s attitude toward the Bible and ancient historiography in general, on one’s understanding of the nature (or even possibility) of divine revelation, and perhaps most important, on one’s own personal relationship to God.

While it is true that biblical narrative does not read like modern history, the style used by historians of our day is not found among any ancient writings. The writing of history as we know it simply did not exist back then. The conventions used by ancient writers for recounting history seem to be based on values different from those we have learned to appreciate in Western culture. When reading “history,” our taste for the facts, and nothing but the facts, raises expectations that are sometimes disappointed by the ancient genres found in Scripture. The problem lies with our reading strategy, not with the ancient text. But to say simply that we possibly misread the text with modern expectations does not adequately address the issue of how biblical narrative is related to the events it describes.

Ancient Storytelling and the Book of Esther

TELLING HISTORY IN the form of story may be an unfamiliar approach by modern standards, but it is perhaps a particularly appropriate way for biblical truth to be told. The narrative form of a story is a natural and primary form of human thought. It has been observed that we “dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticize, construct, gossip, learn, hate, and live by narrative.”18 From our earliest attempts to communicate using language, we tell stories about ourselves and others. When children first learn to read, they read stories, and only much later do they acquire the skills of abstraction required to read, for instance, a textbook in philosophy. Therefore, because narrative is a form of communication accessible to the most people, it is appropriate that God has revealed himself to us in stories.

Moreover, storytelling has two effects even apart from the story’s content. Storytelling defines and builds relationship and has the power to change others’ lives as they identify with the story. When we are getting to know someone, we ask, “Tell me about yourself.” We expect to hear a story that narrates what that person considers to be significant events and characteristic experiences of his or her life. When our spouse or child comes home at the end of the day, we often ask, “How was your day?” expecting to hear a narrative of selected highlights of the day’s events. Story is one way we use language to build relationships by getting to know another. Therefore, biblical stories written under God’s inspiration tell us about God and his relationship with his people. We read biblical narratives with the implied request, “God, tell us your story.”

Storytelling also defines community. The book of Esther was the story that resulted when someone reflected on the experiences and events that explained how Purim came to be celebrated. Those experiences of a previous generation had significance to subsequent generations. Those later generations who accepted Purim and the book of Esther as significant for themselves were thereby defined as a distinct group of people who shared ownership of the story.

Every family, society, or culture is defined, at least in part, by the stories of past experiences it shares. Families share common experiences unique to that group of persons, and their stories often have significance only for themselves. Americans share stories, such as those of George Washington, the Civil War, Pearl Harbor, and Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon. By accepting these stories as our story, we are defined as a people, the American people. We may learn about others’ stories, such as the Bolshevik revolution or Evita’s role in Argentina’s history, without identifying with them as our story. It is therefore appropriate that God gave us a Bible containing stories that both draw us into relationship with him and define us as God’s people when we accept them as ours.

Narrative is particularly appropriate to the story of God’s redemptive work in history culminating in Christ, because for those living after the events occurred, all knowledge of them is based on witness. Those who saw what actually happened told others about it. That witness resulted in the biblical writings. In his book Models for Scripture, John Goldingay extensively discusses the character of the Bible as narrative and its implications for knowing truth. As he points out, “witness characteristically takes the form of narrative” as the biblical authors attempt to draw readers into an understanding of reality where God promises to bless and redeem and overcomes all obstacles to fulfill his promise.19 The resulting stories are much more than a statement of bare facts.

The biblical narratives that result from witness are “exercises in interpretation before they are objects of interpretation.”20 When we read the Esther narrative, we must understand it not as if it were a newspaper account from ancient Persia, but as an interpretation of the significance of what happened. Such interpretation must not be thought of as a bad thing that distorts the truth; to the contrary, the interpretive element introduced by the biblical authors, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, explains the true significance of events and makes demands on the reader. For example, history writes, “Jesus, called the Christ, died on the cross,” whereas Scripture writes, “Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins.” Both are true statements, but the second makes a demand on the reader that the first does not. It is precisely the divinely inspired interpretation of what happened that distinguishes Scripture writing from history writing.

The authors of Scripture introduce interpretation into biblical stories first by being selective in what they tell, and second by presenting their material through rhetorically powerful literary techniques common in their ancient culture. This is simply the nature of writing stories. No author tells all the facts, just those that are significant for his or her purpose. By selecting what to tell, the author has made an interpretive decision. (Just think of how tedious it would be if your spouse decided to tell you every tiny detail of his or her day, including things like inserting the key into the car’s ignition and opening the door to the office!)

An author also interprets by arranging and emphasizing the selected material in such a way as to make a point. This may mean telling events out of the order in which they occurred, or placing two events side by side for contrast that did not actually happen one right after the other. Such interpretation is necessary for good, effective communication, for stories are unintelligible if they are a stream-of-consciousness account of the passing of time. The biblical writers do not just report the bare facts of what happened; rather, by selecting and arranging their material, they provide the divinely inspired, and therefore true, interpretation of its significance intended to evoke faith in the readers and draw them into right relationship with God. The author of Esther chooses the events he tells and then arranges them in such a way as to draw the reader to identify with one side of the conflict or the other, and by implication, to share in that ultimate destiny.

Literary genre and style are chosen by an author according to the degree of interpretation intended. Good journalism states only the facts without comment because it is intentionally noninterpretive (although even journalism is never completely uninfluenced by the reporter’s interpretive bias). One method of interpretation is through employing literary artistry. Skillfully crafted narrative structure, repeated motifs, wordplays, and such literary techniques are effective methods for interpreting the significance of events. In contrast to journalism, poetry—perhaps the most artistic genre of written language—is also arguably the most interpretive.

Contrast and compare, for example: “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him” (Ps. 103:11), to the equivalent statement, “God very much loves those who fear him.” The integrity of truth is not compromised when it is expressed in poetic form. No one reads this verse and then asks, “How many miles (or kilometers) are there between the heavens and the earth?” Nor does one conclude that because we cannot actually measure the distance between the heavens and earth, God therefore does not love those who fear him. In other words, evangelical Christians have no trouble accepting and appreciating truth expressed in the form of divinely inspired poetry.

Similarly, the use of poetic license in biblical narrative to interpret the significance of the events told does not compromise the integrity of Scripture. Thus, some of the questions we have and “problems” we see with the book of Esther arise because we value historical accuracy and precision where the author valued poetic license for the purpose of interpretation. We who rightly insist on the historicity of biblical events must also fully appreciate the literary genre and the author’s use of poetic license, and not press the story historically where the author did not intend his readers to do so.

Until recently, evangelical biblical scholars have tended to protect zealously the historicity of the biblical stories at the expense of fully appreciating the literary qualities of the ancient way of telling what happened. This zeal has usually been expressed in attempts to harmonize, or to explain, every detail of the text with historical information from other sources, especially when the two disagree. The results of such harmonization are sometimes more problematic than the problem they attempt to solve, and would no doubt make the original author laugh at how we have so misconstrued his intent and misread his literary devices.

Some of the apparent discrepancies that have been identified as historical problems by some, and that motivated harmonization by others, may instead be the legitimate literary use of poetic license in order to interpret the significance of what happened. In other words, some expressions in the story may have been intended for literary effect, not for historical accuracy as we define it today. This need not undermine the historical integrity of the book. For instance, the names of the characters in Esther have been questioned as historically problematic because they seem inconsistent with the names that would be expected, given the extrabiblical sources. Such problems have led some to conclude that the story is fiction. However, this may be one example of poetic license employed in the naming of characters, names that possibly have been assigned by the author to characterize the role each plays in the story.

For instance, Vashti’s name is said to sound similar to the Old Persian expression for beautiful woman or beloved.21 The Hebrew form of Xerxes’ name (pronounced Ahashwerosh) sounds comical when pronounced in Hebrew and “would correspond to something like King Headache in English.”22 The name “Esther” sounds similar to Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love and war (see comments on 2:7). Haman’s name pronounced in Hebrew sounds similar to the Hebrew word meaning “wrath.” Of course, these phonetic wordplays do not come across in English translation. Instead of being the actual name of the historical person, these names may have been chosen or created by the author to characterize the people who nonetheless did actually exist in history with other names.

The relationship between biblical narrative and history is probably one of the most important issues in evangelical hermeneutics today. This is because Christianity and its parent, Judaism, consciously rest on the concept that God has in fact worked in history through events that really happened. Judaism and Christianity rest not on the inward, mystical journey of the mind and soul of the individual, but on events in history through which the Creator-Redeemer God revealed himself to his people. Biblical narratives such as Esther are the record of those events in the form of story. Purim would be a hollow religious celebration if the Jews of Persia had not truly been delivered from destruction. In the New Testament, the apostle Paul says that the Easter story would be a cruel farce if Jesus was not really raised from the grave (1 Cor. 15:19). The biblical stories that witness to these events tell us, with varying degrees of literary artistry and poetic license, why what happened so long ago is significant for us today.

Rather than deciding whether the book of Esther is history or literature, the real question is how to understand it as both. When reading the Esther story, it would be a shame to allow ourselves to be so distracted by the historical “problems” it raises that we completely miss the point of this wonderful book. Similarly, it would be a mistake to be so impressed by its literary qualities that we dismiss the book as pious fiction. This commentary will attempt to show how the literary artistry of the book is the key to understanding, and applying to life today, the divinely inspired message of what happened to God’s people in Persia so long ago.

Literary Structure

THE ESTHER STORY is a literary delight told with irony, satire, and humor. Because the story is in the sacred canon of both the synagogue and the church, it must also be, in some sense, theology told with irony, satire, and humor. In order to appreciate fully the theological message of the book of Esther, its literary form and qualities must not be overlooked.

The book of Esther is a story that, like a parable, makes its point as a whole unit. Because parables are relatively self-contained and short, they make congenial preaching texts. Because Esther is much longer than a parable, the point it makes is multifaceted and invites deeper reflection. This also makes it difficult to preach Esther because when a manageable-sized portion of text is selected, the story as a unit recedes from view, and the part tends to lose its connection to the whole. For this reason, it is probably best to not try to preach or teach through Esther chapter by chapter. Instead, choose one of the book’s major points for the sermon or teaching topic. Select as the sermon text a passage that illustrates or exemplifies that point and give a brief synopsis of the story, relating the selected passage to the meaning of the whole.

The major theological point of Esther is that throughout history God fulfills his covenant promises through his providence. The contemporary significance of this for application today is that God’s will for an individual’s life is unfolded through divine providence day by day. Some of the interweaving themes of the book of Esther include:

To help the reader better understand the relationship of the parts to the whole, the overall literary structure of Esther that shapes the theological message of the book will be presented here. Within the commentary, the relationship of each scene to the larger structure will be explained. Often the contemporary significance of a given scene will be found in its contribution to the overall theme rather than being a direct application of the portion of text at hand.

To study any particular passage, the reader is encouraged to read through the entire book of Esther, preferably at one sitting, before using this commentary. The parts of the story can be understood only as they relate to the integrity of the whole literary structure, and, conversely, the point of the story in all of its complexity can be best understood by pondering the significance of each part.

Chapters 1 and 2 set the opulent stage in the Persian palace where Queen Vashti defies her husband and king, where all the beautiful virgins of the empire are gathered into the harem, where Esther alone pleases the king with her sensuous beauty, and where Mordecai foils an assassination plot against the king’s life. Chapters 3 through 8 recount how the personal conflict between Mordecai and Haman escalates into the threat of genocide for the Jewish people, how Esther dares to seek an uninvited audience with the king at the risk of her life, how she entertains the king and Haman at two banquets, how Mordecai is honored after the king’s sleepless night, and finally how Haman’s plot is turned against him. The Jews are not only delivered from annihilation but are empowered. Chapters 9 and 10 explain how this great deliverance is commemorated by Purim, one of the two Jewish feasts not commanded by the Pentateuch.23

The book of Esther is treated as a literary unity in this commentary. If the author wrote much later after the reign of Xerxes, he obviously must have acquired his information from somewhere, unless one wishes to argue it is a fiction drawn completely from his imagination. His source(s) may have been written, such as the “annals of the kings of Media and Persia” (10:2), or oral, if the Esther story was repeatedly recited through the years before taking on written form. Some scholars see as many as three sources in the book—a Vashti source, a Mordecai source, and an Esther source.24 Other scholars seek a preliterary source in Babylonian mythology.

Most theories of prior sources from which the book of Esther was composed are based on observing doublets in the story, such as the two banquets given by Esther (5:4–6; 7:1–2) and the two gatherings of virgins (2:2, 19). Source critics take this as evidence that originally two or more stories, each containing one occurrence of the doublet, were simply woven together to achieve the final form of the story. An alternate explanation is found by literary critics, who attribute such doublets to the deliberate intention of the author to use doublets as a literary device. Given the literary integrity of the book as it stands in its canonical form, it was carefully crafted by the author/redactor, regardless of how he came by his material.

The literary structure of this story is shaped by a dominant motif that is repeated throughout.25 This motif is the “banquet” (Heb., mišteh), a term most often used to refer to eating and drinking on special occasions. This Hebrew word, usually translated “banquet” in the NIV, occurs twenty times in the book of Esther and only twenty-four times in the rest of the Old Testament.

This dominant motif of the banquet, or feast, is especially apt, since the Esther story explains the origin of Purim, a feast celebrated still today by the Jews.26 Although this book explains the reason for the feast of Purim, Purim is not the theme of the book. The book tells a story that has its own literary form and message. The theme of the story is given by the author as the reason to celebrate Purim. Purim does not commemorate any one of the events found within the story, but the theme embodied by the story as a whole, which is the reversal of destiny. It is both implied by the literary structure of the book and stated explicitly by the author:

This theme of the reversal of destiny is also built into the literary structure of the story, which is characterized by peripety. Peripety is a literary term used to refer to a sudden turn of events that reverses the expected outcome of a story.27 In Esther the recurrence of the motif of the mišteh focuses the reader’s attention on the surprising event from which the great reversal of fortune proceeds (see comments on ch. 6).

The Esther story is about an event intended to harm the Jews, which, against all expectation, actually results in the opposite. Instead of being destroyed, the Jews are not only delivered but empowered through the agency of Esther and Mordecai. The empowered destroyer, Haman, not only loses his power but is himself destroyed. This structure of reversal operates at many levels throughout the story. The feast of Purim in the month of Adar celebrates this grand reversal—a “month when [the Jews’] sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration” (9:22).

The use of peripety in Esther is not simply a literary device to produce an aesthetically pleasing story. This book is an example of how form and content mutually interact in a text. The structure of peripety deeply reflects the worldview of the author, and it provides the framework within which we can understand the theological implications of this story. The author is suggesting that beneath the surface of even seemingly insignificant human decisions and events, an unseen and uncontrollable power is at work that can be neither explained nor thwarted. Because this story is in the canon of the Jews, and subsequently the Christians, it is proper to construe that unseen power as God. What is the divinely inspired author of Esther trying to say to his readers about God?

The Theology of Esther

IT MAY SEEM inappropriate to speak of the “theology” of a book that does not mention God even once. It seems the author not only deliberately avoided mentioning God, but anything associated with religion as well (with the possible exception of fasting in 4:16). Christian theology, however, is concerned with the character of the unseen God, who manifests himself in the events of human history. The Esther story is an example of how at one crucial moment in history the covenant promises God had made were fulfilled, not by his miraculous intervention, but through completely ordinary events. Once the theological message of the book is understood, it is appropriate that God is not mentioned. In fact, the complete absence of God from the text is the genius of the book, from which its hope and encouragement flow to us today.

The appropriate application of the book is found in its theological message, which in turn is found in the historical setting of the book. For the Jews who returned to Jerusalem, the post-exilic books of Chronicles, Nehemiah, Ezra, Haggai and Zechariah explicitly answer in the affirmative the big theological question of that day: “Are we still God’s people in covenant relationship with him?” The author of Esther answers that same question in the affirmative for the Jews living in the Diaspora, where they had no temple, prophet, or city.

The reversal so prominent in the literary structure of Esther is driven by the conflict between Haman the Agagite and Mordecai the Jew. The tiny detail that identifies Haman as an “Agagite” is the key that links the Jews of the Diaspora to the ancient covenant God made with their ancestors at Sinai, reassuring them of its continuing efficacy (see comments on ch. 3).

Agag was the king of the Amalekites at the time Saul was Israel’s first king (1 Sam. 15). The Amalekites had the dubious distinction of being the first people to attack God’s people and attempt to destroy the newly formed covenant nation just after the Exodus. As a result, God promised Moses that he would be at war with them from generation to generation until their memory was blotted out (Ex. 17:8–16; Deut. 25:17–19).

The Esther story is another episode of that ancient war between Israel and the Amalekites, and by every indication it looks as if God’s people will be destroyed. They have no king, no army, no prophet, no land, no temple, no priesthood, and no sacrifices. They are but a small, defenseless minority living at the mercy of a ruthless and powerful pagan monarchy. Moreover, they find themselves in this predicament because their sin has been just as bad as that of the pagan nations. They can expect only the worst. The reversal dethroning Haman and empowering Mordecai shows that, despite their sin and despite their location away from Jerusalem, God’s promise to Israel made at the beginning of their nation still stands. He will still destroy those who want to destroy his people, no matter where they are living. The book of Esther shows that the Jews living in the Persian empire are still under God’s covenantal care.

These Jews are still under that protection even though they are living outside of the borders of the place where God promised to live with his people. The explicit absence of God in this story is particularly appropriate for its historical moment, because this book focuses on those Jews who have not returned to Jerusalem, the place where Yahweh lives. Nevertheless, these Jews turn out to be the ones who protect and preserve those who have returned to the land in order to rebuild the temple. That remnant who returned are equally at risk of destruction under a decree of death that reaches to the farthest ends of the Persian empire.

The message of the book can also be considered from the viewpoint of systematic theology. The book of Esther is perhaps the most striking biblical statement of what systematic theologians call the providence of God. When we speak of God’s providence, we mean that God, in some invisible and inscrutable way, governs all creatures, actions, and circumstances through the normal and the ordinary course of human life, without the intervention of the miraculous.

The book of Esther is the most true-to-life biblical example of God’s providence precisely because God seems absent. Even in the most pagan corner of the world, God is ruling all things to the benefit of his people and to the glory of his name. Even when his own people, like Esther and Mordecai, make decisions that come from ambiguous motives at best, or perhaps even outright disobedience, God is still providentially working through those very things to fulfill his covenant. Surely Romans 8:28 is a New Testament summary of the theological message of Esther: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (emphasis added).

However, we can read a theological message of God’s providence in Esther only by interpreting Esther within the larger context of the biblical canon. Other biblical books teach us explicitly that God is the unseen power behind world history (e.g., Dan. 4:35). If we did not have the teaching of these other books, we would have no reason to see a statement of God’s providence in this story. We must be careful, then, to distinguish what we can learn from Esther by bringing other biblical concepts to our reading of it from what the author actually says, or (more to the point) he does not say within the book itself.

The author’s silence about God’s role in the Esther story should be allowed to stand and its significance carefully considered. The events in this book are deliberately left uninterpreted by the divinely inspired author, resulting in a purposeful ambiguity. That interpretive uncertainty is not a hermeneutical problem to be overcome; rather, it is itself an important part of the historical context in which the Jews of Susa lived and against which the events of the story should be viewed. Is God present or is he absent? From reading just Esther alone, we cannot be sure. Nor could the Jews of Susa who first experienced these events. This uncertainty aptly reflects the big question facing the Jews in the postexilic period: “Are we still the people of the covenant? Is God still with us or has he abandoned us to our sin and the judgment of exile?”

Looking back into history, we now know the answer, but those who lived through that time did not. The uncertainty can be resolved only by reading Esther within its larger canonical context. No amount of exegesis of the text apart from the rest of the canon can resolve the uncertainty since it is a deliberate part of what the author was trying to communicate.

The explicit absence of God in Esther, even though the book is divinely inspired, makes it difficult to interpret as we do other books of the Bible. But the uncertainty that results from his absence in the text teaches by example the most basic principle of biblical hermeneutics: Without divine revelation, the human experience is inherently ambiguous and cannot be rightly understood. Historical events can always be construed either for or against God’s existence and activity. Elsewhere the Bible interprets historical events as ultimately caused by God. For instance, the Cyrus Cylinder mentioned above documents Cyrus’s decree allowing the exiles of many nations to return to their homeland. The book of Ezra documents God’s involvement in that event and relates it specifically to his intentions for his people (see Ezra 1:1):

Without God’s own interpretive commentary on the events of history given to the other biblical authors, the whole Bible would read like the book of Esther, and we would have no certainty about God’s involvement in the events of Israel’s history or that of any people. In other words, God’s verbal, interpretive self-revelation is essential if we are to know him. We can read the present story for theology only because of its place in the biblical canon. When all is said and done, lack of God’s interpretive revelation in a book that is itself the Word of God is its genius. This book is a canonical example of how ambiguous life and history would be if God had only acted but had not also spoken.

Contemporary Significance

THE BOOK OF Esther is still treasured by Jews today and read annually in the synagogues on Purim because they find in it the reassurance that they will survive as a people against powers that want to destroy them. Its contemporary significance for the Jewish people is captured in the words of Robert Gordis,

Moreover, like the rest of the Hebrew Bible, the book of Esther has become the spiritual heritage of Christians, bequeathed to us by Jesus Christ (e.g., Luke 24:27, 44–45). The New Testament teaches that the Old Testament promises of future salvation were ultimately secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The deliverance of God’s people from Haman’s death decree assured the continuance of the Jewish nation from which their Messiah would come. That Messiah brought a deliverance from death not limited to escaping the holocausts of history, but a deliverance from the grave that inevitably awaits each of us, both Jew and Gentile alike.

The theme of the reversal of destiny takes the form of peripety in the book of Esther. However, the reversal of destiny is a major theme in biblical theology, spanning the entire Bible. God’s plan to redeem a people from death is a reversal of expected outcomes for those he saves. Therefore, the cross of Jesus Christ is the pivot point of a greater peripety that spans all of history.

Because of our sin, we, like the Jews in exile in Persia, should expect only death and destruction. Our fate was reversed by the seemingly insignificant death of one man, Jesus of Nazareth. Dragging a cross through the streets to his death was not the outcome one expected when the long-awaited Messiah finally appeared in Jerusalem. Such a destiny was so unexpected that it has precluded in many minds even the possibility that Jesus was the Messiah. While the world may see the birth and death of Jesus as ordinary events, through that one man God was fulfilling the promises of his life-giving covenant. Against all human expectation, Jesus Christ took the death that was our destiny so that we could have the life that was his.

Christ’s resurrection from the grave is the ultimate reversal of expected outcomes. Because of this great peripety, we who could expect only death have been given life, a life that is imperishable and eternal. There is no power that can wrest it from us. The episode in Israel’s history from the Persian period is an illustration of the reversal of an expected outcome in history that resulted in life instead of death for God’s people. Moreover, this deliverance from death was itself a necessary link in the chain of events that led centuries later to the ultimate peripety accomplished on the cross of Jesus Christ.

The major theological point of the book of Esther is that God fulfills his covenant promises through his providence. The major point of contemporary significance is that God unfolds his will for individual lives through that same providence. God continues to work through providence, through seemingly insignificant events, to call people in every age to himself. How did you come to know Christ? Perhaps someone invited you to a church service, or by chance you heard a radio program, or you picked up an evangelistic tract. God sovereignly controls events of history and flawed human decisions to fulfill his promise to save for himself a people. Once in Christ, God promises that we will “be conformed to the likeness of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). He uses the ordinary events of life, some happy, some quite tragic, to form Christ in us.

I remember being almost obsessed with trying to find God’s will for my life when I became a Christian twenty-five years ago. I and my other recently converted Christian friends in college talked endlessly about how we would know God’s will, whether we could possibly miss God’s will, and what would happen to us if we did. God’s will is, of course, important to the Christian seeking seriously to live for Christ. But as a young and uninformed Christian I had a flawed understanding of how to know God’s will for my life. I was looking for something to happen, for some sign, that would clearly tell me where God wanted me to be and what he wanted me to be doing. I was sure (but wrong) that God would test my commitment to Christ through something like sending an angel to tell me to do something I dreaded in a place I would not want to go. I failed to realize that God’s will for my life was being revealed day by day in the unfolding of ordinary events.

The true test is living for Christ at this present moment, in the place where one happens to be, in whatever situation one finds herself or himself. As I tried to search out God’s will and plan to change my life accordingly, God was leading me silently, yet inexorably, from decision to decision, from situation to situation. One thing leads to another in the chain of unbreakable time. As the saying goes, “Life is what happens while you’re making other plans.” Although I never did get that certain “sign” of God’s will I sought as a new Christian, God has undeniably worked in the ordinary moments of my life to take me from being a babe in Christ who had never read the Bible to a professor of New Testament studies twenty-five years later. And some of the ordinary moments along the way were, in fact, quite extraordinary.

However, all this is not to say that we can look at circumstances at any moment and know exactly what God is up to. When we look at current events in the world—and more personally, events in our own lives—we often find their meaning ambiguous. A given event in our life might be good or it might be bad, and it is most often a mixed blessing. Often we cannot evaluate the significance of an event until years later, if ever. To confuse us further, bad decisions may nevertheless produce good things, and what start out as good intentions may end up in heartbreak. That’s peripety in operation! So often our carefully laid plans are frustrated and we are forced to admit that we are not in control of our lives, no matter how hard we try to be.

Even when we are the most confused, life goes on and we have to make decisions. The irony and the ambiguity of the story of Esther are so true to life. Esther must decide to risk her life by going to the king, unsummoned or not. She had no word from God, she had no prophetic vision. She had no promise of Scripture that she could claim for her personal safety. She was responsible for making a decision with serious consequences. In other words, she was just like us. She couldn’t see the happy ending of the story from the frightening middle. What a picture of the interplay between God’s omnipotent providence and human responsibility!

The role of “coincidence” is prominent in the plot of Esther. By coincidence Mordecai learns of the assassination plot. By coincidence the king’s timely insomnia results in Mordecai’s exaltation on the day we expect Mordecai’s death. Is this not how God providentially directs the course of human events? The story of Esther illustrates that human action is essential to divine providence, yet God’s triumph in history ultimately does not depend on what we do, but on what he does. It depends not on our character, but on his character.

Therefore, the story of Esther is of great relevance to Christians, particularly Christians living after the end of the apostolic age. For we live, like Esther and Mordecai, in a completely pagan world. Like the Jews of Persia, we have no earthly king, no earthly prophet, and no earthly kingdom. Like them, we live in an age where we cannot depend on miracles.

Like Esther and Mordecai, we face difficult ethical and religious questions in a highly political world, one that is hostile to our most fundamental Christian convictions. We struggle to respond wisely and faithfully to difficult circumstances that come our way and over which we sometimes seem to have little or no control. Like Esther and Mordecai, we Christians are also a morally ambiguous people at our best. Our motives are mixed; our hearts are not always devoted to covenant obedience. Because of our sin, we are not living in the Garden of Eden, where the Lord walks and talks with us in the coolness of the day. We live in the exile of history, in a world where God is unseen.

We should expect nothing but death from such a world, but we have seen the ultimate peripety, the ultimate reversal of expected ends, in the cross of Jesus Christ. God has guaranteed Christians life even though we face certain death. He reverses our lot, not because of the merit of anything we do, but because he has chosen us in Christ. God is working providentially, in the completely secular and ungodly course of human events, to save his people against all expectation and to bring all of history to culmination in Christ. There is no plot, no plan that can thwart God’s purposes that stretch from Genesis to Revelation. Esther lies between the two.

The great paradox of Esther is that God is omnipotently present even where God is most conspicuously absent. Jesus’ last words were, “Go and make disciples of all nations. . . . And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:19–20). And then, ironically, he left! Nevertheless, our Lord is omnipotently present even where he is most conspicuously absent.