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DAY 15 – ESTHER

Chronicles–Ezra–Nehemiah insisted that it was vital for the Jews, as a people subject to other nations, to preserve their distinctness by maintaining the purity of their worship. This included observing their annual religious festivals at precisely those times and in precisely those ways prescribed by the law of Moses. But in the Persian period, the Jews began celebrating an extra festival. This new holiday, Purim, didn’t even have a Hebrew name. And it was observed on one day in the countryside, but on the following day in the cities. Could such a festival really be added to the sacred calendar? The book of Esther explains why it could be and should be. Just as the law of Moses described how God’s mighty acts of deliverance lay behind holidays such as Passover, the book of Esther details how God intervened in the Persian period to save all the Jews in the empire and how this intervention was commemorated from then on in the feast of Purim. 

The book is a fast-moving narrative of events that took place during the reign of a Persian king, Xerxes (most likely Xerxes I, 486–465 BC). It relates the intrigues and adventures that took place in his court as a Jewish exile named Esther and her cousin/guardian Mordecai worked to rescue their people from a plot to destroy them. (The book may be based in large part on an account by Mordecai, who, it says, “recorded these events.”) As it tells its story, the book also accounts for why the festival took its name from a Persian word, pur, meaning a lot that is cast in decision making. While the story never mentions God by name, God’s providential hand can be detected just below the surface, in the timing and combination of events as they unfold. 

The book features numerous banquets, including two hosted by Xerxes at the beginning, two given by Esther in the middle, and two celebrated on successive days by the grateful Jews at the end. Since its story was likely to be told to subsequent generations during the feasting of Purim itself, these banquets actually place the audience right in the middle of the action. And so those who read or hear it can not only join in celebrating God’s deliverance, they can ask themselves, as Mordecai asked Esther, for what momentous purpose God may have brought them to their own position in life.

PRAYER: Lord, I celebrate the deliverance You have provided for us in Jesus.