ESTHER OVERVIEW

1. ESTHER OVERVIEW 58 years EZRA 6 EZRA 7 Esther covers 20 years starting at 483 B.C.

2. Key Words: Providence and protection

3. Key Verses: Esther 4:14 "For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" 15 Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai: 16 "Go, gather all the Jews who are present in Shushan, and fast for me; neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. My maids and I will fast likewise. And so I will go to the king, which is against the law; and if I perish, I perish!"

4. Esther 8:17 And in every province and city, wherever the king's command and decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness, a feast and a holiday. Then many of the people of the land became Jews, because fear of the Jews fell upon them.

5. Key Phrase: For such a time as this.

6. "...if God had been specifically mentioned in the story, or, still more, if the story had been specifically explained, in so many words, that it was God who was bringing about all those happenings which are recorded, the dramatic force and moral impact of the story would have been reduced; for, above all, we are meant to see, in the natural outworking of events, how, without violating human free will, and without interrupting the ordinary ongoing of human affairs, a hidden Power unsuspectedly but infallibly controls all things."

7. Job 12:23 He makes nations great, and destroys them; He enlarges nations, and guides them.

8. "This is the king who ordered a bridge to be built over the Hellespont, and who, on learning that the bridge had been destroyed by a tempest, just after its completion, was so blindly enraged that he commanded three hundred strokes of the scourge to be inflicted on the sea ... and then had the unhappy builders of the bridge beheaded. This is the king who, on being offered a sum equivalent to five and a half millions sterling by Pythias, the Lydian, toward the expenses of a military expedition, was so enraptured of such loyalty that he returned the money, accompanied by a handsome present; and then, on being requested by this same Pythias, shortly afterwards, to spare him just one of his sons -- the eldest -- from the expedition, as the sole support for his declining years, furiously ordered the son to be cut into two pieces, and the army to march between them.

9. This is the king who dishonored the remains of the heroic Spartan, Leonidus. This is the king who drowned the humiliation of his inglorious defeat in such a plunge of sensuality that he publicly offered a prize for the invention of some new indulgence ... Herodotus tells us that among the myriads gathered for the expeditions against Greece, Ahasuerus was the fairest in personal beauty and stately bearing. But morally he was a mixture of passionate extremes. He is just the despot to dethrone queen Vashti for refusing to expose herself before his tipsy guests. He is just the one to consign a people Like the Jews to be massacred, and then to swing over to the opposite extreme of sanctioning Jewish vengeance on thousands of his other subjects."

11. 1. The feast of Ahasuerus, which covers chapters 1 and 2. The following events occur: • The king has a feast for 180 days for the princes, officials, and servants. • Then he has a seven day feast for all the people in Shusha. • Queen Vashti refuses to parade herself before these men. • Esther is chosen and she becomes the new queen. • Mordecai saves the life of the king.

12. 2. The feast of Esther covers events leading up to the feast and its outcome in chapter 3 – 7. The following events occur: • The king promotes Haman as his ambassador and Mordecai refuses to bow down to him. • Haman gets the king to sign a decree to destroy all the Jews on the 13 day of 12 month of Adar, which is the later part of our February and the beginning of our March. • The Jews mourn when they hear about this. • Mordecai encourages Esther to go before the king and she does. • Esther invites the king and Haman to her feast. • Haman plots to hang Mordecai, but the king honors him and Haman has to participate. • At Esther’s banquet, she revealed Haman’s plot to kill her people and Haman gets hung on his own gallows he built for Mordecai.

13. 3. The feast of Purim covers the events that bring this feast to life in chapters 8 – 10. The following events occur: • The king honors Esther and Mordecai. • At Ethers request, the king authorizes the Jews to defend themselves when the Persians came to kill them. • When the day came, the Jews killed more than 75,000 of their enemies including the 10 sons of Haman. • The feast of Purim is instituted. • The exaltation of Mordecai is given.

14. This feast commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people from destruction by an evil schemer named Haman during the days of their captivity by the Persians. It took its name from the Babylonian word put, meaning lot, because Haman cast lots to determine when he would carry out his plot against the Jews. The Feast of Purim took place on the 14th and 15th of Adar, and during it celebration the Book of Esther is read as a reminder of their deliverance. A happy ceremony, Purim is accompanied with the giving of gifts and much celebration.

15. Romans 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.