Page 7 - Issue 21

Exile and Monarchy in

the Book of Esther

By Dr. Yiftah Goldman

The Book of Esther is perhaps the strangest text in the
Old Testament. What is this story? A folktale? Tragedy or
comedy? (Or perhaps a farce?). Who is its hero? Perhaps
the Court Jew pimping out his beautiful niece in the king’s
harem? Or perhaps the niece [1] herself, carrying out a
calculated plan of temptation, deception and destruction?
And what shall we say of the plot? An odd collection of
coincidental, semi-arbitrary circumstances that carry an
absurd tale beginning and ending at a feast, during which
take place a beauty pageant, provocations in the palace
court, a thwarted plan of annihilation, and to top it all off –
a massacre.

The most difficult question of all is of course: How and
why did this text find its way into the Bible? I will not
answer this question here. I do not know who wrote the
book, who decided to sanctify it and for what reasons. But
I will try to say something about the importance of this
story. I shall try to illustrate that the book speaks to us in
a language different from that of the rest of the Bible’s
books; that it is perhaps the text closest, most relevant to
us as people of the modern era [2].

They are godless

A well-known fact, that the ancients had already
considered, is that the Book of Esther makes no mention
of the name of G-d, not even once. Hence, the sages of the