Esther
Esther is a story of hidden providence told with narrative brilliance, and it never mentions God by name. In the Persian court of Xerxes, a Jewish orphan becomes queen just as Haman, the king's vizier, engineers a decree to annihilate her people. Her cousin Mordecai poses the question that echoes through the book: who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Through fasting, courage, and a chain of exquisite reversals, banquets, sleepless nights, gallows turned back on their builder, the Jews are delivered, and the feast of Purim is born.
Anonymous; written by someone well acquainted with the Persian court.
Events c. 483–473 BC; written in the Persian period.
Jews of the Persian diaspora, living far from Jerusalem.
To show God's unseen providence preserving his scattered people, and to explain the origin of the feast of Purim.