Bible Commentary - Esther 9

In this chapter, the Jews execute the king’s decree, wipe out their enemies, and inaugurate the festival of Purim.

We are now drawing near to the conclusion of Esther; while there is one chapter left after this one, it is a very short chapter of only three verses, so for all intents and purposes we can treat chapter 9 as the conclusion of Esther.

Verse 1 opens the chapter by referring once again to a “reversal of fortunes”, which I have been writing about so often.  I personally interpret this verse as the author’s summary of Esther almost in its entirety.

In verses 3-4 we see Mordecai’s continued ascendancy into power.  In the previous chapter we saw Mordecai honored by the king with the signet ring and purple robes (purple being a royal color).  In this chapter, we see the bureaucrats and courtesans of the empire fearfully assisting the Jews, anxious to avoid Mordecai’s wrath.  One can imagine they saw the destruction wreaked upon Haman’s household and did not want to share his fate.  As we see in verses 7-10, Haman did not die alone: the Jews also killed all of his sons, partly as an act of vengeance against Haman and partly to prevent Haman’s family from retaliating in the future.  Perhaps to make an example, as well.

In verse 12, the king asks Esther for a third time what she wants, which is a bit strange because in this case the book doesn’t report Esther approaching the king or petitioning him in advance.  Perhaps it is implied because in verse 13 she does make a request of the king, asking permission to continue the massacre into the following day.

In the end, it tells us the number of people who died was around 76,000, which is a lot but comparable or perhaps less than the number of Jews who would have died if the decree hadn’t been reversed.  Then in verses 18-19 it uses the nuance of the “second day” in Susa to explain why rural Jews and urban Jews celebrated the festival on different days.

Verse 22 explains once again the reversal of fortune theme in Esther, with sorrow turning into gladness and mourning turned into a holiday.  Verse 25 continues the theme with Haman’s “wicked scheme… returning on his own head”.

Verses 24-26 offers an etymology for the name of the festival, Purim, and explains that it is because of the “pur” or lot that Haman had cast to choose the date on which they would be destroyed.  The remainder of the chapter is just repeated confirmation that Purim should continue to be celebrated as a perpetual memorial to their deliverance.

Taking all these things together, there are two obvious themes to this chapter.  The first is that the author wants to repeatedly demonstrate the “reversal of fortune” theme, that everything meant for evil turned to good, sorrow turned to joy, etc., etc.  I’ve identified at least three examples of that (v. 1, 22, 25).  The second obvious theme is the establishment of the Purim festival as a memorial and celebration of this specific deliverance.  The writer of Esther goes at length to explain on what day the festival is celebrated, why it’s different between the city and the countryside, why it is called Purim, and to affirm that the festival was duly instituted by the authority of Esther and Mordecai themselves.

From my point of view, I think it’s clear that the author of Esther is writing from some later time period, possibly from a later generation, when the Purim festival was celebrated but the people of his time might not know how Purim came about or why it was celebrated.  The way that this chapter closes with so much detail about the festival and its assocation with the Esther story is a fairly transparent attempt to tie the Esther story in with the Purim festival.

The way I imagine it going is like this: Purim is celebrated every year by the Jews, and every holiday is a memorial to something, so children would naturally ask what event Purim was supposed to commemorate.  The father in the household (and it would almost always be the father) would then recite the story of Esther and conclude, “therefore, this is why we celebrate Purim, why it’s called Purim and why it’s on these particular days”.  That is, I imagine the author of Esther as someone who was almost working from Purim backwards to Esther, because Purim was the occasion when the story of Esther would have been recited.  To put it another way, we can imagine the entire book of Esther is an answer to the question, “why do we celebrate Purim?”  After the whole story is finished, the author concludes, “therefore this is why we celebrate Purim” and that is an answer to “the question” that prompted the book, as well as a few Frequently Asked Questions like “why is it called Purim”, and so forth.  I think this also helps to explain the formal style of Esther and heavy use of chiasmus, because it was written after the fact as a poetic recapitulation of the story and not e.g. a historical record like Kings or Chronicles (which tend to have a much more prosaic style).

Meanwhile, “reversal of fortune” is something like the payload or the moral of the story, because it reminds the Jews that if they are ever suffering hardships or sorrow of any kind, that God can reverse their problem and turn it into a blessing through some kind of miracle.

In any case, we have one last short chapter in Esther and then we move on to the book of Job.