Though His presence is not obvious, the Lord acts in a wonderful way to deliver the nation from harm.ġ) What does the king of Persia do, as the story opens (1:5)?Ģ) On the final day of feasting, what does the drunken king command (1:10-11)?ģ) What response does this receive from the queen (1:12)? In Esther, we see the Lord working behind the scenes to rescue them. But although this was so, the Lord had not ceased to love His people. When the Jews went into captivity, it was because they had turned their backs on God, and had departed from His ways. (Quite the contrary!) He has done it by design, as a kind of literary device, suggesting a God who was hidden but at work. This is not because the writer did not believe in God. On the surface it seems like a totally secular story. No one is ever specifically said to be praising Him, or praying to Him. God is not mentioned once in the entire book. There is a most unusual fact about the book of Esther–one which might not be noticed with a casual reading of it. The king of Persia at the time was a man named Xerxes, called Ahasuerus in the King James Version. One of these was young Esther, an orphan whose cousin, Mordecai, raised her as his own daughter. The book of Esther concerns those Jews who remained in Babylon (or Persia). However, during the 70 years of captivity many others had settled down in Babylon and preferred to stay there. The Jews had been given permission to return to their homeland to rebuild, and thousands did so, led by a man named Zerubbabel.
By that time Babylon had been taken over by the Persians. They actually fit historically between Chapters 6 and 7 of the book of Ezra. The events of the book of Esther occurred between 483 and 473 BC.
“Esther” (a Persian word meaning Star) is the more familiar name of a Jewish girl named Hadassah (which is Hebrew for Myrtle). The story of Esther is one of the most exciting and inspiring in all the Word of God.
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