Esther

About Esther

Esther tells how a Jewish orphan girl became queen of Persia and risked her life to stop a plot to wipe out her people. Famously, God is never named in the book — yet His care runs quietly through every so-called coincidence. In the Bible's big story, it shows God protecting His scattered people in exile, keeping alive the family through whom His promises would come, and it explains the joyful festival of Purim.

Written by

The author is unknown; suggestions have included Mordecai or another Jew living in Persia, but the book itself never says.

When

The story is set in Persia around 483 to 473 BC under King Xerxes, and the book was probably written sometime in the following century.

Themes

• God's hidden hand
• Courage for such a time as this
• Evil turned upside down
• God preserves His people

Key verses

• Esther 4:14For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows if perhaps you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
• Esther 6:1That night sleep escaped the king; so he ordered the Book of Records, the Chronicles, to be brought in and read to him.
• Esther 9:22as the days on which the Jews gained rest from their enemies and the month in which their sorrow turned to joy and their mourning into a holiday. He wrote that these were to be days of feasting and joy, of sending gifts to one another and to the poor.