MAJOR QUESTIONS REGARDING THE BOOK OF ESTHER

The Book of Esther is filled with puzzles and controversies. Two of the main questions facing the reader are (a) the complete absence of God's name and overt religious observances and, most disturbingly, (b) confusion over the major theme of the book. In fact, both of this issues are related and both can be clarified through a consideration of the overall literary organization of Esther.

The Book's Major Theme

Most disturbing is the confusion over the major theme of the book. As Howard, Jr. puts it, “It is difficult to discern the author’s purpose with any degree of certainty.” Nonetheless, the following themes, and many more, have been proposed:

    1. The majority of critical commentators feel that the book is an after-the-fact attempt to authenticate the Feast of Purim. However, this is not a universally held theory. (Hubbard)

    2. Pratt sees the book of Esther to be intended as “a model for living in fidelity to God outside of the land.”

    3. Also prominent in this story are the universal themes of good triumphing over evil (Ryken) and the relationship between the principles of law and justice. (Tucker)

    4. Many scholars stress the hidden nature of God as a major theological concept underlying this narrative.

As I have attempted to demonstrate many times in this blog, the main theme of a biblical book can usually be identified by examination of the way in which it is organized. In the present case, my post “Esther: Introduction to the Literary Structure” indicates that the exact center of this work occurs at Esther 6:1-11 where a set of “random” circumstances causes the plot to begin shifting in favor of the Jews. And this contention finds support elsewhere:

a. The NIV Study Bible states that verse 6:1 “marks the literary center of the narrative.” Radday’s seven-membered, chiastic scheme also has as its center element the single verse 6:1. However, in a later work he proposes a fifteen-part modified structure in which 6:1-3 is the center.

    b. Levensen’s loosely structured fifteen-part chiasm for the book centers at ch. 6.

    c. The first section of the book has an approximate inclusio formed by two appearances of a “royal crown,” which is possessed by Vashti in 1:11 and given to Esther in 2:17. The only other appearance of this word in the book is at 6:8 where it is Haman who is expecting to receive this same honor. The reversal of fortune that will soon follow is thus prefigured by the events in the first chapters.

    e. The Persian annals mentioned in 6:1 and 10:2 serve as a set of bookends for the second half of the book.

    f. Jobes notes that feasts feature prominently at the start, end and center of the book with the episode of the king's sleepless night marking the tipping point of the plot.

    g. Quite interestingly, in another story of the trials of a faithful Jew in a Persian court (namely Daniel in the Lions' Den – Daniel 6), the story is structured as a symmetrical organization in which the center point of emphasis is an episode in which the king has a sleepless night (see “Daniel: Introduction to the Literary Structure”).

Perhaps the strongest independent confirmation of the importance of chapter 6 to the overall book is that of David Dorsey. He persuasively demonstrates that an alternative way of looking at the book’s organization is as two interlocking seven-part chiasms having a shared, and thus central, element: Esther 6:1-14. Unfortunately, Dorsey also attempts to demonstrate that these same thirteen sections can be recast as a simple chiasm, with less than convincing results. His resulting chiasm has virtually no similarities with that one I deduced. However, the central point of both organizations is the same in both.

Thus, far from the beginning of Esther 6 being a mere interlude in the flow of events (Bos), “a first-rate example of rude comedy” (Sasson), or a “complicating incident” (Hubbard), the episode of the king's sleeplessness on the eve of Esther's crucial second feast completely turns around the direction of the plot up to that point.

The Absence of God’s Name

The total absence of God's name in this narrative is explained by some as not being germane to the story, which is more concerned with the origins of a basically secular feast. The book of Esther can also be viewed as a wisdom tale. Wisdom, in turn, can be considered as the “lowest form” of the three sources of truth: the law, the prophets and wisdom (see Jeremiah 18:18). It is that truth available to all peoples apart from any specific revelation from God. The absence of religious trappings is also appropriate to a book taking place far from the Promised Land where the Jews must work out their destiny alone and removed from the temple cultus. One spokesman for the more extreme form of this approach declares that “the development of events is viewed as the interaction of human wills with chance or destiny (and the latter is not a hidden reference to the will of God...).” (Tucker)

Various other reasons have been proposed for the curious fact that neither God's name nor any description of a specifically religious activity (with the possible exception of fasting) is mentioned in the Book of Esther. After all, if God's sovereignty is indeed the major theme of the book, as proposed above, shouldn't the major Protagonist of the narrative at least be mentioned once?

One common explanation is that all such references in the original manuscript were purposely removed once the Feast of Purim began to be celebrated with almost drunken abandon by later generations. There was the fear that a reveler reciting the story might accidentally desecrate the name of the LORD. A somewhat related, but less plausible, explanation involves the fear by the original author (living in Persia during the exile) that the story would somehow be appropriated by the surrounding culture and used to glorify a pagan deity whose name would be substituted for Yahweh. Yet another proposal reasons that the original author wanted to purposely distance God from the immoral behavior of all the major protagonists in the story. (Howard)

One interesting observation recognized centuries ago is that the sacred tetragrammaton YHWH actually does occur four times in the Hebrew text of Esther, with the letters present as the following acrostics:

    Hy' Wkl Hnsym Ytnw (1:20)

    Ybw' Hmlk Whmn Hywm (5:4)

    zH 'ynnW swH lY (5:13)

    kY kltH 'lW hr'H (7:7)

There is no discernible significance to the actual words that compose these acrostics; the greatest meaning to this phenomenon, assuming it was purposeful, is to emphasize the hidden hand of God in the events portrayed in the book. Interestingly, Howard discounts all of these acrostics as being accidental except for the one at 5:4, partly because of its appropriateness in showing God’s reassuring presence at a point in the story near the central time of crisis. One could even make the same claim for Esther 5:13. However, I have found in other biblical works that hidden word patterns rarely coincide with key points in the overall structure.

Kaiser notes other subtle indications of God's directing the action including “help from another quarter” in 4:14, the passive verb in 9:22, and the question “Who knows?” in 4:14.

Rachel Sabua sees another possible instance of the “hand of God” literally portrayed in the Book of Esther. Six times in the Hebrew text the word for Jews, y'hudim, is misspelled with a double yod in place of one. Since the letter yod also means “hand” in Hebrew and the tetragrammaton YHWH is often abbreviated in Jewish prayer books by a double yod, this provides, in her mind, additional evidence that the intent is to show God's hidden direction behind the Jews' deliverance.

Whether the instances above are accidental or not, the literary effect of being confronted with a sacred narrative having no overt mention of the sacred is to, paradoxically, cause readers to search the text more carefully and “turn our eyes to God who determines the destinies of men and nations.” (E.J. Young)

Jobes similarly remarks, “The complete absence of God is the genius of the book from which hope and encouragement flow.”