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Is the Name of God Really Never Mentioned in the Book of Esther?
We dive deeper into the Scriptures and see whether this is so
We had just embarked on the book of Esther in our bible study of the Old Testament.
While acknowledging that there is a portion of the Book of Esther separately compiled with other books called the Apocrypha (hidden) or Deuterocanonicals (belonging to the second canon) as called in the Roman Catholic Bible versions, this article focuses on the book of Esther recognized and included as the 17th book in most Christian bibles.
A brief introduction to this book from Wikipedia states:
The Book of Esther (Hebrew: מְגִלַּת אֶסְתֵּר, romanized: Megillat Esther), also known in Hebrew as “the Scroll” (“the Megillah”), is a book in the third section (Ketuvim, כְּתוּבִים “Writings”) of the Jewish Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible). It is one of the five Scrolls (Megillot) in the Hebrew Bible and later became part of the Christian Old Testament.
One popular teaching we encounter from various Bible commentaries is that this book never mentioned the name of God or even the word “God.”
Wikipedia describes this point in its interpretation section:
In the Book of Esther, the Tetragrammaton does not appear, but some argue it is present, in hidden form, in four complex acrostics in Hebrew: the initial or last letters of four consecutive words, either forwards or backward comprise YHWH. These letters were distinguished in at least three ancient Hebrew manuscripts in red.
Christine Hayes contrasts the Book of Esther with apocalyptic writings, the Book of Daniel in particular: both Esther and Daniel depict an existential threat to the Jewish people, but while Daniel commands the Jews to wait faithfully for God to resolve the crisis, in Esther the crisis is resolved entirely through human action and national solidarity. God, in fact, is not mentioned…
Sadly, most theologians and Bible expositors agree with that assumption and continue to teach that. However, as you will see in this article, God, in fact, is mentioned.
Returning to the question…
