Where Is God in the Book of Esther?

As biblical scholar Michael Rydelnik writes, God is not mentioned explicitly in the book of Esther. So, how are we supposed to find Him there? Here are some ways to look for (and find) God in the book of Esther.

Finding God in Hiding

The Mosaic Foundation

As is well known, Esther is the only book of the Bible in which there is no explicit mention of God—either by name or title/common noun. Rather than a “drawback,” however, this may well be an intentional reflection of one of the book’s central points. This omission should be understood as a device meant to underscore God’s faithfulness in fulfilling His promise (i.e., threat) to hide His presence (“face,” panim) in the place of Israel’s exile (cf. Dt 31:17; Is 59:2). Moreover, excluding God’s name is a literary strategy used to demonstrate that, even when Israel forgot their God (hence the exclusion of His name), God did not forget Israel, and acted covertly through His providence to show His covenant faithfulness.

The Terminological Allusion

This theme of God hiding His “presence” is borne out on a terminological level by the unmistakable similarity between the name of the book’s central protagonist—’ester (“Esther”)—and the phrase by which God expressed His threat—’astir (“I will hide”; Dt 31:18; cf. Ezk 39:23-24). Moreover, the Hebrew consonants of these two terms makes them almost identical, as the name “Esther” was ’str and the phrase “I will hide,” ’styr. This similarity, as a reminder that God (both in name and in deed) is meant to be hidden in the book, was recognized and affirmed early in Jewish interpretive history, as attested in the Babylonian Talmud Chullin 139b.

Finding God in Israel’s Deliverance

The Abrahamic Foundation

The book’s central narrative event of the deliverance of the Jewish people from complete annihilation by Haman’s decree (3:13) is itself a testimony to God’s active involvement in the events described. The divine orchestration of Israel’s deliverance in Esther is also borne out by the clear, compelling, and unquestionably intentional parallels between the various elements, both textual and historical, surrounding that deliverance and those surrounding God’s first covenant-motivated deliverance of the nation as recorded in the book of Exodus.

The Exodus Connection

The book of Esther has clear signs that it is meant to be viewed as a parallel to the deliverance narrative in Exodus.

The close parallels between Esther and the Exodus narrative show that the two were meant to be juxtaposed. Parallels are seen in content (including phraseology), and in the festal commemoration of the narrative events. Content parallels include the following:

• Both narratives concern the comprehensive deliverance of the entire Jewish people, set outside the promised land.
• In both narratives the deliverance comes through a specific Jewish individual strategically placed in the Gentile king’s own family (Moses and Esther) with the assistance of an immediate family member (Aaron and Mordecai).
• In both narratives the key protagonist is initially hesitant to mediate the deliverance (Ex 3:11; 4:13; Est 4:11-14).
• Both narratives are peppered throughout with references to either the key protagonist or Israel as a whole enjoying “favor” (hen) or “grace” (chesed) with the king, key officials, or the Gentiles at large—with the consistent difference that in Exodus God is explicitly identified as the one “granting” (natan) that favor (Ex 3:21; 11:3; 12:36), whereas in Esther it is always “found” (naśa’ or masa’) by the benefactor (Est 2:9, 15, 17; 5:2; 8:5).
• In both narratives the “turning point” from affliction to deliverance is initiated in the same month, apparently on the same day of that month (i.e., Nisan 14, underscoring as well the uniquely shared typology of these two events.
• In both narratives the deliverance of the Jewish people results in the large-scale evangelism and/or proselytism of Gentiles to faith in the true God (Ex 12:38; Est 8:17).

Festal parallels include the following:

• The feasts elaborated by the two narratives—i.e., Passover (Unleavened Bread) and Purim—are the only yearly feasts (of eight in the Hebrew Bible) commemorating past events of deliverance of the Jewish people.
• Passover (Unleavened Bread) and Purim are the only yearly feasts celebrated in the months of Nisan and Adar, which are juxtaposed by virtue of their being the first and last (12th) months, respectively.
• Passover and Purim are the only yearly feasts that are celebrated on the 14th day of any month (see Ex 12:18; Est 9:19).

Thus linked, the two feasts may be seen as “mirrored bookends,” occurring as they do on the same day in the first and last month of the Jewish calendar, at opposite ends of Israelite biblical history (and of the traditional Jewish canon). In this way they call attention to the year-round—and hence “circular” or unending—faithfulness of God toward the people He has sworn eternally to preserve.

Finding God in Queen Esther

The Typological Starting Point

There is no direct messianic prophecy in Esther, which is consistent with God’s promise/threat to “hide” His presence through a prophet or supernatural phenomena. This does not mean, however, that Esther has no contribution to the presentation of the Messiah in the Hebrew Bible. In fact it must have something to say about the Messiah, as is clear in Lk 24:27, that “He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (italics added). Since the Scriptures of Jesus’ day included Esther, it logically follows from this statement that there is something “concerning Himself ” in the book of Esther. If it is not in the form of direct, or verbatim, prophecy, then it must be in the form of indirect or non-verbatim prophecy—what is designated by the expressions “shadows” (Heb 10:1) or “types” (Heb 11:19). The specific presence of such “shadows” or “types” in Esther is further indicated by Paul’s statement in Col 2:16–17 regarding all of Israel’s holy days: “Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to . . . a festival [heortes] or a new moon or a Sabbath day—things which are a mere shadow [skia] of what is to come, but the substance [soma; lit., “body”] belongs to Christ.” Since Purim is one of Israel’s eight yearly “festivals” (to which the Gk. term heorte is clearly applied in the LXX, cf. Lv 23) so must the events underlying that feast as described in Esther contain prophetic “shadows” that outline the “substance” belonging to Messiah.

The Typology

The “shadows” or “types” in the book of Esther that center on the protagonist herself may be summarily presented in the following seven pairs of “shadow” and “substance” (all of which, except the first pair, are discussed in detail by the present writer in Bibliotheca Sacra 154 [1997], 275–84).