What is the book of Esther all about? 

“If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?’ (Esther 4:14)

The book of Esther is an oddity in the Bible – the only book that does not mention God even once. But God’s sovereign, providential fingerprints are all over it. So where do we see God in the story of Esther? And what can we learn from it?

What do we need to know to read Esther?

The big storyline

Esther is a Jewish exile in the time of Persian emperor Xerxes. After his wife Queen Vashti publicly humiliates him, Xerxes orders his courtiers to find him a new queen. So they begin an empire-wide ‘beauty contest’ in order to find a woman attractive enough to be Xerxes’ new ‘trophy wife’. Esther is chosen, and taken out of her life of insignificance into the imperial palace.
At the same time there is a feud brewing between Haman, a top imperial official, and Esther’s uncle Mordecai. Haman’s hostility escalates until he is determined to commit an act of genocide against all the Jewish people across the Persian empire. Mordecai must persuade Esther to use her position of privilege to prevent this atrocity.
The book ends happily, with God’s people safe, Haman’s plans frustrated and Haman himself receiving his come-uppance. And a new Jewish festival is instituted – Purim – to commemorate this act of deliverance.


The fingerprints of God

Although God is never mentioned nor overtly referenced in any of Esther’s 10 chapters, His presence is felt all over the story. Without God’s involvement, there are just too many coincidences:

• Vashti being replaced as imperial queen by a young Jewish woman who fears God (chapters 1-2)
• Mordecai just happening to overhear and foil a plot against the emperor, and having his name recorded in the imperial records as a hero (2:19-23)
• Xerxes suffering from insomnia one night and asking for the imperial records to be read to him – and Mordecai’s story just happening to come up (chapter 6)
• Esther being in the unique position of being able to appeal to Xerxes to save her people from Haman’s plot – and then Haman unfortunately happening to fall on her in a way that looks compromising and angers Xerxes (chapter 7)

The frustration and overthrow of evil

Throughout the book Haman is portrayed almost as a comic-book villain: totally evil, and continually frustrated. At just the moment when he thinks he’s going to be given a royal parade in his honour, he has to organise that very thing he desires for his worst enemy – an awful humiliation (6:6-13)! Eventually Haman’s evil plan is turned around on him, and he is executed by being impaled on a pole that he had set up to impale Mordecai (7:9-10).
There is also an extra bit of backstory with Haman’s feud against Mordecai. Back in 1 Samuel we read of how God instructed King Saul to destroy the Amalekites, who had been rebelling against Him and attacking His people for centuries (see 1 Samuel 15). Haman is an Agagite, a descendent of Agag the king of the Amalekites, who Samuel puts to death. Mordecai, on the other hand, is a descendent of Kish (Saul’s father), of the tribe of Benjamin. This is the reigniting of a centuries-old fight, and God proves His determination and His ability to finish it.

Is the book of Esther worth a read? Yes! It’s a great story of danger and deliverance, and of God silently orchestrating things such that a rescuer is raised up at just the right time, in just the right place. And this is a pattern that continues on into the New Testament, with the arrival of the ultimate Saviour, the Lord Jesus.