1. The Book of Esther is one of the writings of the Rabbinical Canon. In the Hellenistic Canon, it is placed after the Apocryphal pieces of fiction, Tobit and Judith, as if recognized to be of the same type. The style of Esther is dramatic and rapid in its development of incident. Scene after scene springs into place, until the climax of difficulty is reached, and the knot is tied so that it seems impossible to escape. Then it is untied with wondrous dexterity. All this is the art of the story-teller, and not the method of the historian. The things which interest the historian are not in the book. Esther is a didactic story, like Ruth and Jonah, Judith and Tobit, and raises more historical difficulties than can easily be removed. The monarch seems to be Xerxes, the voluptuous and absolute ruler of the Persian Empire. The story is one of court intrigue, in which Esther, the favourite wife, and her uncle, Mordecai, prevail over Haman, the prime minister.
The book is connected with the Purim festival, and is supposed to give the historical account of its origin. It was probably on this account that it was admitted into the Canon. The deliverance of the Jews from massacre was thought to be worthy of commemoration in a festival; but without an historical document, giving a clear account of its origin, it would have inevitably become an unmeaning celebration. It seems that the Book of Esther is still read in the synagogue at the annual feast. It is a monument of the specifically Jewish spirit, as that spirit was gradually formed under the pressure of foreign rule in post-Exilic times. Doubtless it reflects the fierce passions awakened by the Maccabean struggle, and so far, in the vindictive spirit which characterizes it, the story serves the purpose of practically illustrating a leading defect of the Old Testament discipline.
Let us honestly acknowledge that Old Testament saints exhibit not a little of the spirit of vengeance. It jars upon our better feelings in many a beautiful psalm, and it has made many ask the question whether such songs should be embraced in the portions of the psalter sung in the Christian Church. We shall not enter upon the thorny subject of the imprecatory psalms further than to say that it is only upon such enemies as exhibit downright wickedness that the psalmists ask God's vengeance, and that in every case the motive seems to spring from a sense of duty and desire for God's honour. These sacred odes are not the outcome of private passion, but the psalmist identifies himself with God, and believes that God's majesty and glory are bound up with the overwhelming of His foes. Yet when all these considerations have been taken into account, we have to admit that this fiery hatred towards enemies could find no place in a code of Christian ethics. In the words of Dr. Maclaren, “They express a stage of feeling far beneath the Christian, and the attempt to slur over the contrast is in danger of hiding the glory of midday, for fear of not doing justice to the beauty of morning twilight.” It was impossible to live under the pedagogic training of the Law without receiving some of its harshness into one's blood; but it was the only possible way by which in those times God could train men to be heroes and saints. When we remember that in Christian England, only three centuries ago, leaders of religion in this country-men of undoubted zeal for God, as they conceived of Him and His Kingdom-could burn their fellow-Christians at the stake, or drown them in the rushing flood, or torture them with thumbscrews for the good of their souls-when we remember these things, and see how the accepted standards of those times are now rejected by the present century, we may get help in understanding at how low a stage God had to commence the moral education of a people like Israel.1 [Note: W. S. Bruce, The Ethics of the Old Testament, 285, 281.]
2. Surprise has commonly been expressed at the reticence of the Book of Esther. No allusion is made to the hand of God guiding the complication of interests and aims to an issue favourable to the Jews. Patriotism is indeed more evident than religion in this book. To turn to it after the fervours of prophets and the continual recognition of God in history which marks the other historical books, is, as Ewald says, like coming down from heaven to earth. But that difference in tone probably represents accurately the difference between the saints and heroes of an earlier age and the Jews in Persia, in whom national feeling was stronger than devotion. The picture of their characteristics deducible from this book shows many of the traits which have marked them ever since-accommodating flexibility, strangely united with unbending tenacity; a capacity for securing the favour of influential people, and willingness to stretch conscience in securing it; reticence and diplomacy; and, beneath all, unquenchable devotion to Israel, which burns alike in the politic Mordecai and in the lovely Esther.
If patriotism is a virtue, and belongs to good morals in the Jewish and Christian systems, then the book has its place in the Bible, as teaching this virtue, even if everything else be absent. No book is so patriotic as the Book of Esther. Esther is the heroine of patriotic devotion. She is the incarnation of Jewish nationality, and thus is the appropriate theme of the great national festival of the Jews. And in all the Christian centuries Esther has been an inspiration to heroic women and an incentive to deeds of daring for heroic men.
There is no harm, there is much good, in patriotism taken by itself. The love of one's country is next to the love of one's home, and there is never any harm in true love wherever it makes its habitation. There is nothing but good where this love finds expression in labouring for one's country, in seeking the best things for it, in striving to lift it to its highest, in suffering for it with heroism and quenchless hope when its hour is darkest. But there are forms of patriotism which are survivals, with, happily, nothing but decay before them. That is the patriotism which, of old, taught the Greeks to call all outsiders barbarians, to whom no justice need be observed, no mercy shown. It is the patriotism which to-day exhibits itself in hatred and contempt of the foreigner; which calls for armaments to overawe or crush him; which refuses to acknowledge any excellence, any wisdom which is not insular; which would raise the wall of hostile tariffs as high as the wall of its own prejudice; a patriotism born of hatred rather than of love. But that, we say again, is a survival that will not live. It is contrary to the spiritual consciousness, to the laws of the soul. The patriotism that will survive is the patriotism that, beginning in love, will go on in love; that will raise its own country that thereby it may the better help other countries; that will seek its own best, that it may thereby procure the best for every creature.1 [Note: J. Brierley, Religion and To-Day, 285.]
3. But though the inclusion of the Book of Esther in the Canon was perhaps designed for instruction rather than spiritual edification, it is by no means altogether wanting in religious characteristics. The LXX translation seems to bring out more clearly than the Hebrew the belief of the writer in God's providential guidance; and other lessons may be derived from it: the “deep sense of personal vocation to do God's work, faith in self-sacrificing intercession,” courage, patriotism, and a steadfast adherence to the true faith even amid heathen surroundings.
The authorship and date of the book are wholly unknown. Its scene is laid in the Persian empire, and its theme is God's care for those of His people who did not return from captivity, but were dispersed over the vast dominions of Xerxes, or Ahasuerus the Mighty, as he is called in the book.
