For such a short work, my customary ten minutes of research on the book of Esther prior to writing this review produced a disproportionate quantity of content and controversy. Unlike the other biblical books so far, which feature significant commentary but usually some level of consensus on major questions, scholars of Esther appear to still hold conflicting opinions on everything from which Achaemenid king Ahasueras represents to how the book’s contents ought to be interpreted through a lens of historicity. Even the translations are more tangled than usual, with modern translations sometimes coming from the Greek Septuagint, sometimes from the Latin Vulgate, and sometimes from older Hebrew texts, all of which come with different content, in some cases amounting to an additional six chapters, beyond the usual uncertainties and discretions inevitable in translations. Nor are these controversies new; some of them date back to the first appearance of the Septuagint in the third century BC, probably less than two hundred years after Esther was first written.
As usual, I am not a biblical scholar, and I have no intention of weighing in with my uninformed opinion on these varied controversies. I will say, though, that Esther feels a bit out of place. Besides being a narrative presentation and sometimes described as a historical fiction novella, it reads in a rather secular fashion that is not merely the lack of divine smiting. Rather than being a story about the Jewish people, their state, or their relationship with their deity, it’s more of a story which, in a certain regard, should resonate with modern times: a minority identity group being persecuted by the ruling class. Of course, back then persecution involved a lot more enslavement, torture, and legalized murder, and in this case it was alleviated thanks to Esther…being a part of the royal harem and catching the king’s eye.
She doesn’t make for the most active heroine, but she does use her position as the king’s new wife to improve things for the Jewish people. The main nobleman subjugating them is hanged on the gallows he himself constructed for the king, then his sons are also hanged. Then, the king issues a decree permitted the Jews to kill those who oppressed them, which leads to (according to the book, at least – these sorts of numbers are usually highly unrealistic) about 75,000 deaths, though the text is careful to emphasize the Jews did not loot any of the people they killed. All this because the king, who may have been a Xerxes, an Ataxerxes, a Cambyses, or someone else entirely, happened to choose Esther out of the harem as a replacement for his previous wife. It’s not out of line compared to other stories coming from the same region and time period, but it doesn’t feel like it fits in with its fellow religious texts because not once are the Jews’ miseries or successes ascribed in any way to divine influence or punishment. One commentator says Esther is supposed to be about how God works in mysterious ways even when seeming completely absent, which is clever, but feels like a stretch to me.
There’s also a lot of commentary on how Esther may be a representation of attitudes towards both philosemitism and antisemitism in the Achaemenid Persian Empire. All this commentary and controversy probably comes about less because Esther is so replete with nuggets of insight and compelling ideas, and more because it lacks such hooks. Much of the uncertainty and debate would probably be resolved if it were longer, providing scholars with more context by which to date it and otherwise place it in its historical and religious context. Since it’s not, we’re obliged to fill in the gaps with whatever pet theories we happen to favor based on our selected relevant evidence. Alternatively, we could treat it as it is, without worrying too much about what we cannot know about it, and read Esther as a brief chronicle of a peculiar incident in the history of the relationship between the Jews and the Achaemenids.
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