Bible Survey: Esther

The name of God is not mentioned once in the book of Esther, and yet His hand is seen all the way through it. A. T. Pierson called it the romance of providence. God sees everything before it happens, and He prepares for what He sees.

Esther is the second book of the Bible named for a woman, and it makes a pair with Ruth: Ruth was a Gentile who married a Jew, and Esther a Jewess who became queen to a Gentile king. Her Hebrew name was Hadassah, and her cousin Mordecai had raised her as his own daughter. No one knows who wrote the book, though it was likely a Jew who knew the Persian court well.

Haman plotted to destroy every Jew in the empire. Had he succeeded, there would have been no line of David and no promised Messiah, and Satan has tried that same thing again and again. When the news came, God's people did what believers ought to do in a crisis. They fasted and prayed. Mordecai told Esther, who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? (Esther 4:14). If she would not speak, deliverance would still come from another place. God's purpose cannot fail.

There is no miracle in Esther, no fire from heaven. There is only God behind the scenes, as John Phillips put it, checkmating every move Haman made. Mordecai exposed a plot against the king and was never rewarded. Then, on the one night it mattered most, could not the king sleep (Esther 6:1), so he had the records read, and learned what Mordecai had done. Before that day was over, Haman had led Mordecai through the streets in the king's own robe, and was hanged on the very gallows he had built for him.

Sometimes we cannot see the hand of God. We can still trust that He is working, and that nothing escapes His notice.

Next in the series: Psalms.

Taught by Brother James Barker in Sunday School at Naples Independent Baptist Church, August 9, 2020. Watch the lesson.