CHAPTER V
The Additions to the Book of Esther

I. The Nature and Object of the Additions

In the canonical Book of Esther the story is told of how Ahasuerus, king of Persia, dismissed his queen, Vashti, because she refused to obey his commandment to come and show her beauty to his assembled guests at a festival. In her place the king chose Esther, a Jewish maiden belonging to the tribe of Benjamin, to be his queen. Esther was of the Jewish exiles living in Persia, and was under the protection of her cousin Mordecai; but she “had not showed (it to) her people, nor her kindred; for Mordecai had charged her that she should not show it.” In consequence of the position now occupied by his cousin, Mordecai came to court every day in order to watch over her interests. On one occasion he was the means of saving the king, all unconscious, from assassination; this was duly told to the king by Esther. But Mordecai had the misfortune to offend Haman, the king’s chamberlain; in consequence of this Haman represented the Jews to the king as a turbulent and disloyal people. The result was that the king issued a proclamation according to which the Jews were to be plundered and massacred. The day for this Haman fixed by lot (“they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from day to day,” iii. 7). Esther, persuaded by Mordecai, resolves to save her people. She invites the king and Haman to a banquet. On the night preceding the banquet, the king, being unable to sleep, orders the national records to be brought to him; in reading these he comes across the account of Mordecai’s service in saving the king from assassination; this the king had presumably forgotten, for Mordecai had never been rewarded. In the meantime, Haman, secure of favour, resolves upon the immediate death of Mordecai; he has a gallows made, fifty cubits high, on which he intends to hang Mordecai, and he goes to the king at once to get permission to do so. On entering into the king’s presence, Ahasuerus says to him: “What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour?” Haman, thinking that the king has him in mind, says that such a man should have royal apparel, and the king’s horse to ride upon, and should ride through the city, attended by one of the great nobles, to receive the people’s homage. Thereupon the king orders Haman to attend upon Mordecai in such a procession; this he has perforce to do. The next day Esther gives her banquet; Ahasuerus and Haman hear for the first time that she is a Jewess. She then asks the king that Haman may be hanged on the gallows he has prepared for Mordecai; her request is granted, and Mordecai becomes the king’s chamberlain in his stead. The king issues another proclamation, at Esther’s request, in which power is granted to the Jews to pillage and slay their enemies. Finally the feast of Purim is instituted “because Haman ... the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them....” (ix. 24-32).

It has been necessary to give this outline of the contents of the canonical Book of Esther in order to show the point of the additions in the Septuagint; for as found in the English Apocrypha the additions are taken together and treated as one whole; but by being thus separated from their contexts their raison d’être is not seen. In the Septuagint the additions form elaborations of certain passages of the canonical Esther; so that in order to see the object of the additions each must be considered from the point of view of its original position.[425]

(1) The first addition is given in the English Apocrypha as xi. 2-xii. 6; in the Septuagint it precedes chapter i., and takes the form of an introduction to the whole story. It tells of how Mordecai had a dream, which he interpreted as a revelation of the fact that an attempt was going to be made upon the king’s life (see ii. 21-23 in the canonical Esther). He tells the king of the threatened danger; he watches those whom the dream has revealed as the culprits, and overhears them while making their plans; he then denounces them to the king, and the conspirators, having confessed their guilt, are executed. Mordecai is promoted to a place of honour at court.

The object of this addition is, therefore, to show how Mordecai first got advancement at the court of Artaxerxes (Ahasuerus).

(2) The second addition is given in the English Apocrypha as xiii. 1-7, which in the Septuagint comes between verses 13 and 14 of chapter iii. This purports to give verbatim the letter sent by Artaxerxes to the governor of the provinces commanding the massacre of the Jews. In the canonical Esther iii. 13 runs: “And the letters were sent by post unto all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to slay, to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey”; then follows the addition of the Septuagint. In the letter the king tells of how it had been his wish ever since he came to the throne to see his people living in quietude and peacefulness; but that, according to information he has received from Haman, this has not been possible of attainment because of “a certain malignant people, that had laws contrary to all nations, and continually set aside the commandments of kings, so as the uniting of our kingdoms, honourably intended by us, cannot go forward.” The command is then given to exterminate these people in order that the affairs of the kingdom can be settled.

The object of this addition is evidently to emphasize the peril in which the Jews were owing to the machinations of Haman. Another object may also have been to show the high favour which Haman enjoyed (he is spoken of as one “that excelled in wisdom among us, and was approved by his constant goodwill and steadfast fidelity”) in order to place his ignominious downfall in more pronounced relief.

(3) The next addition (xiii. 8-xiv. 19 in the English Apocrypha) comes after iv. 17 of the canonical Esther. It contains a prayer of Mordecai (xiii. 8-17), a prayer of Esther (xiv. 1-19), and one verse (xiii. 18) which says that all Israel also prayed to God; these are prayers for deliverance from the danger hanging over the people of Jehovah in view of the king’s letter. These prayers breathe a spirit of deep devotion and loyalty to God. The object of this addition is obvious; it is that the utter lack of religion in the canonical book[426] should be made good; as is well known, the name of God does not occur a single time in the canonical Esther.

(4) The fourth addition (xv. 1-16 in the English Apocrypha) follows immediately after the preceding one. This is an elaboration of v. 1, 2 of the canonical Esther, which verses are omitted in the Septuagint; it recounts in detail Esther’s appearance before the king for the purpose of inviting him to the banquet as mentioned in v. 3 ff. of the canonical book. The object of this addition is similar to that of the preceding; it is to show that the success of Esther’s interview with the king was due to “the all-seeing God and Saviour,” upon Whom she called before setting forth.

(5) This addition (xvi. 1-24 in the English Apocrypha) comes after viii. 12 of the canonical Esther; it purports to give the contents of the letter of Artaxerxes (see viii. 8 ff. of the canonical Esther) written to revoke the order given in the former one (see (2)). Here the object is twofold; in the first place it is, once more, to give a religious tone to the book; the king speaks of those who try to escape “the evil-hating justice of God”; he says that the Jews are the “children of the most high and most mighty living God, Who hath ordered the kingdom both unto us and to our progenitors in the most excellent manner”; and in other ways he gives due honour to God by what he says. Secondly, another object of the addition seems to be to mitigate the rather bloodthirsty spirit of the canonical Esther.

(6) The last addition (but first in position in the English Apocrypha, x. 4-xi. 1) comes at the end of the book in the Septuagint; x. 4-13 contain the interpretation of the dream given in addition which we have numbered (1). This last addition, too, has the object of giving a more religious tone to the book; “these things are of God,” is the way in which the interpretation of the dream is introduced; and the fact that the name of God is mentioned nine times in as many verses amply illustrates the purpose of the addition. xi. 1 is a note added to the last addition which is intended to explain how the “Letter of Purim” (by which is meant the whole book of Esther with the additions) was brought to Egypt; but, as Swete says: “the historical value of the book is more than doubtful.”[427]

II. Authorship and Date of the Additions

That the author, or, perhaps more probably, the authors of these additions were Hellenistic Jews is sufficiently clear from the whole tone of them; a striking example of detail is that Artaxerxes is made to say that both he and his forefathers had received their kingdom from God. As to the date at which the additions were made there is nothing in the additions themselves which offers any clue; but a book, such as the canonical Esther, in which a wonderful deliverance of the Jews is recorded, would be especially welcome to the people during a time of stress and anxiety; and if, at a time when such a book might well have been eagerly sought after, patriotic Jews should have enhanced its lesson of hope and encouragement by adding explanatory details, such a procedure would have been in the highest degree natural. There is but one period of stress and anxiety that can come into consideration here, and that is the time of the Maccabæan struggle; so we conclude that these additions must have been made during the latter half of the second century B.C.