Widely praised as a seminal contribution to the study of the Old Testament when it first appeared, Michael V. Fox's Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther is now available in a second edition, complete with an up-to-date critical review of recent Esther scholarship. Fox's commentary, based on his own translation of the Hebrew text, captures the meaning and artistry of Esther's inspiring story. After laying out the background information essential for properly reading Esther, Fox offers commentary on the text that clearly unpacks its message and relevance. Fox also looks in depth at each character in the story of Esther, showing how they were carefully shaped by the book's author to teach readers a new view of how to live as Jews in foreign lands.

"In a counterfactual world resembling the 1930s, the state of Khazaria, an isolated nation of warriors Jews, is under attack by the Germanii. Esther, the precocious daughter of Khazaria's chief policy advisor, sets out on a quest to ensure the survival of her homeland"--

Although the book of Esther contains no direct references to God, his fingerprints can be found all over it. In God Behind the Scenes, Wayne K. Barkhuizen helps us trace the unseen hand of God throughout the Esther narrative, while pointing out how the book is still relevant today. As we walk through the book, we’ll see how God was indeed active in preserving the people through whom the Messiah, Jesus Christ, would one day come.

This book situates the book of Esther in the intellectual history of Ancient Judaism and provides a new understanding of its purpose.

A GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK For fans of The Hours and Fates and Furies, a bold, kaleidoscopic novel intertwining the lives of three women across three centuries as their stories of sex, power, and desire finally converge in the present day. Lily is a mother and a daughter. And a second wife. And a writer, maybe? Or she was going to be, before she had children. Now, in her rented Brooklyn apartment she’s grappling with her sexual and intellectual desires, while also trying to manage her roles as a mother and a wife in 2016. Vivian Barr seems to be the perfect political wife, dedicated to helping her charismatic and ambitious husband find success in Watergate-era Washington D.C. But one night he demands a humiliating favor, and her refusal to obey changes the course of her life—along with the lives of others. Esther is a fiercely independent young woman in ancient Persia, where she and her uncle’s tribe live a tenuous existence outside the palace walls. When an innocent mistake results in devastating consequences for her people, she is offered up as a sacrifice to please the King, in the hopes that she will save them all. In Anna Solomon's The Book of V., these three characters' riveting stories overlap and ultimately collide, illuminating how women’s lives have and have not changed over thousands of years.

Using narrative devices such as allusions and free associations, multivalent expressions, and irony, the author of Esther wrote a story that is about a Jewish woman, Esther, during the time of the Persian exile of Yehudites, and the Persian king, Ahasuerus, who was in power at the time. At various junctures, the author also used secret writing, or we could say that he conveys mixed messages: one is a surface message, but another, often conflicting message lies beneath the surface. For instance, the outer portrayal of the king as one of the main protagonists is an ironic strategy used by the author to highlight the king's impotent, indecisive, "antihero" status. He may wield authority-as symbolized by his twice-delegated signet ring-but he remains powerless. Among all the concealments in the story, the concealment of God stands out as the most prominent and influential example. A growing number of scholars regard the book of Esther as a "comic diversion," the function and intention of which are to entertain the reader. However, Grossman is more convinced by Mikhail Bakhtin's approach, and he labels his application of this approach to the reading of Esther as "theological carnivalesque." Bakhtin viewed the carnival (or the carnivalesque genre) as a challenge by the masses to the governing establishment and to accepted social conventions. He described the carnival as an eruption of ever-present but suppressed popular sentiments. The connection between the story of Esther and Bakhtin's characterization of the carnivalesque in narrative is evident especially in the book of Esther's use of the motifs of "reversal" and "transformation." For example, the young girl Esther is transformed from an exiled Jewess into a queen in one of the turnabouts that characterize the narrative. Many more examples are provided in this analysis of one of the Bible's most fascinating books.