The Book of Esther - Lent Study Course
Esther, like Ezra and Nehemiah, lived during the period when the Persians dominated all of western Asia and Egypt and imposed a high degree of organisation on their vast empire. Cyrus, their great empire-builder, had permitted exiled Jews to return to Jerusalem from Babylon in 539 BC (Ezr 1:1-4) and from then on exiles did go back to rebuild, first their homes, then the temple and later, under Nehemiah, the walls of Jerusalem. They were a minority, however, and large numbers of Jews remained, scattered throughout the area we now know as Iran and Iraq.
At the time of Esther, Susa, the Persian royal city (modern Shush in SW Iran) was enjoying its heyday under King Xerxes, known in Hebrew as Ahasuerus, who came to the throne in 486 BC. He enjoyed the lavish buildings put up during the reign of his father, Darius (521-486). Little remains of them, but Shiite Muslims visit the village to venerate the alleged tomb of the prophet Daniel. Archaelogical excavation of the ancient city in the mid nineteenth century identified the main features of the palace, including the throne room, the harem and the ‘enclosed garden’ mentioned in 1:5.
The book of Esther tells of the favourite of King Xerxes, the courtier Haman, who had a grudge against a Jew called Mordecai. For this reason he plotted to kill all Jews living within the Persian empire. Such was the extent of the empire at that time that virtually the whole race would have been wiped out if he had been successful. Providential intervention came through Esther, the Jewish girl who had been chosen by the monarch as his queen. Circumstances so worked out that Haman became the victim of his own plot, whereas the Jews escaped. Their enemies were liquidated and Mordecai replaced Haman as the king’s right-hand man. Such a remarkable role-reversal provided a gripping theme for the story-teller. For the Jews, whose history was to include many tragic incidents, the book became a source of hope, and the events it records are celebrated annually in the festival of Purim. Throughout the centuries the public reading of this book at Purim has kept alive nationalistic expectations. Even today, every time Haman’s name is mentioned in the Purim liturgy congregations respond with loud banging, shouting and stamping of feet, and ‘Haman’s’ hats (triangular cakes) are eaten during the celebrations. Not surprisingly the story of Esther is better known to the ordinary Jew than any other part of the Old Testament.