The Additions to Esther: Putting God Back In

At a Glance

Who wrote it: Several unknown Jewish writers. They added six passages, about a hundred verses, to the Greek translation of the book of Esther.

When: Probably the 100s BC. A note at the end says the Greek Esther was brought to Egypt in the fourth year of a King Ptolemy and a Queen Cleopatra, most likely 114 or 78 BC.

Where it fits: Set at the Persian court in Susa, in the days of King Ahasuerus, usually identified with Xerxes I (486–465 BC). The story is told in the Hebrew book of Esther, which these passages expand.

Which Bibles keep it: Catholic and Orthodox Bibles print Esther with the additions. Protestant Bibles print the Hebrew Esther, and moved the additions to the Apocrypha.

Where you hear it in your Bible: The story is your book of Esther. The added passages are never quoted.

How close it stays to me: Close in refusing to bow to a man. Far in hating the stranger’s bed and table.

If you only read three chapters: In the translation quoted here, Greek Esther 1, 4 and 5. In most Bibles, chapters 11, 13 and 14 and chapter 15.

Words to Know

Purim — the festival that remembers how the Jews of Persia were saved from Haman’s plot. Its name comes from pur, a lot cast to choose the day.

Haman — the king’s chief minister, who plots to destroy every Jew in the empire.

Mordecai — Esther’s cousin, who raised her, and who refuses to bow to Haman.

Septuagint — the Greek translation of my people’s scriptures, made in Egypt in the centuries before my birth. The additions come from it.

The Book in Brief

The additions are six passages, set at different points in the story of Esther. In most Bibles they are labeled A to F, or printed together as chapters 10 to 16.

A opens the book. Mordecai, a Jew in the palace at Susa, dreams of two great dragons ready to fight, a day of darkness for a righteous nation, and a little spring that becomes a great river. He also uncovers a plot by two eunuchs to kill the king.

B gives the text of the king’s decree, written by Haman, ordering every Jew in the empire to be killed on one day, women and children with them.

C gives two prayers. Mordecai explains that he refused to bow to Haman so as not to put a man’s glory above God’s. Esther puts on mourning, covers her head with ashes, and begs God for help, saying she hates her royal crown and has never eaten at Haman’s table.

D tells how Esther, splendidly dressed but afraid, goes in to the king uninvited. He looks at her in anger and she faints, and God changes the king’s heart. He leaps from his throne, holds her, and tells her she will not die.

E gives the text of the king’s second decree, which calls Haman a traitor and lets the Jews defend themselves.

F closes the book. Mordecai explains his dream: the river is Esther, the two dragons are he and Haman. A last note says who brought the Greek Esther to Egypt.

Read the book of Esther in your Bible, all ten chapters, and count how many times God is named. The answer is none. Not once.

Esther fasts, and the Jews fast with her. Mordecai tells her that if she stays silent, help will come to the Jews from another place (Esther 4:14), which many readers take as a hint at God. But the word is never said. Except for the Song of Songs, it is the only book of the Hebrew Bible where God is not named, and it is the only one, or almost the only one, of which no piece has been found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.¹

Someone found that hard to bear. When the book was translated into Greek, six passages were added, about a hundred verses. In them, Mordecai prays, Esther prays, God changes the king’s heart, and Mordecai ends the book saying, These things have been done of God (Greek Esther 10:3). The name of God appears more than fifty times.¹

These additions are what this chapter is about.

Go deeperWas there a Queen Esther?

The book of Esther is set at the court of a Persian king the Hebrew calls Ahasuerus. Most scholars identify him with Xerxes I, who ruled from 486 to 465 BC and is well known from Greek writers, above all Herodotus, who wrote within a generation of him.

Herodotus names Xerxes’ queen. She was Amestris, the daughter of a Persian noble, and she was still queen in the years when the book of Esther would have Vashti deposed and Esther crowned. Persian law, as far as we know it, required the king to take his queen from one of seven noble Persian families. No Persian or Greek source mentions a Jewish queen, a Queen Vashti, or a decree to destroy the Jews of the empire.²

The book also has the things a good court story has: a feast that lasts half a year, a beauty contest for a bride, a gallows fifty cubits high, a villain hanged on the gallows he built, and a reversal on the very day set for the slaughter. That is why most scholars read Esther, like Tobit and Judith, as a story, a tale of the Jews of the dispersion living under a foreign king, and not as a record of events.

That does not make it false in the way that matters. It was written for people who really did live at the mercy of foreign kings, and who knew that a single minister with a grudge could write their deaths into law. It taught them to stay faithful, stay clever, and stay together.

Two prayers

The heart of the additions is two prayers, from the night before Esther goes in to the king.

Mordecai explains why he would not bow down to Haman. It was not pride, he says. For I would gladly have kissed the soles of his feet for the safety of Israel. But I have done this, that I might not set the glory of man above the glory of God (Greek Esther 4:17).

That is a man who would humble himself to the floor to save his people, but would not worship a man. In my time, the emperors of Rome claimed honors that belonged to God, and my people refused them, and paid for it. When they asked me about the tax to Caesar, I said: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s (Mark 12:17). Mordecai drew the same line.

Then Esther prays. She takes off her royal clothes, puts on mourning, and fills her hair with ashes and dung. O my Lord, you alone are our king: help me who am destitute, and have no helper but you (Greek Esther 4:17).

A queen, calling herself destitute. She says she hates her crown, the symbol of my proud station, and does not wear it when she is alone (Greek Esther 4:17). That is the right way for the powerful to pray.

The queen who fainted

The Hebrew Esther says only that the queen went in, the king held out his golden sceptre, and she was safe. The Greek tells it differently.

She goes in, blooming in the perfection of her beauty, with her face cheerful but her heart was straitened for fear. The king, covered in gold and jewels, looks up at her in fury, and she faints against her maid (Greek Esther 5:1).

But God changed the spirit of the king (Greek Esther 5:1). He jumps from his throne, takes her in his arms, and tells her: What is the matter, Esther? I am your brother; be of good cheer, you shall not die.

In the Hebrew, Esther is brave and clever, and wins by her own wits. In the Greek, she is terrified, and God saves her. The two books are telling you two different things about how deliverance comes. Your Bible has kept the first, and the Catholic and Orthodox Bibles have kept both.

Go deeperChapters 10 to 16, or A to F

If you look up the Additions to Esther in two different Bibles, you may think you have two different books. The numbering is a mess, and Jerome is to blame.

When Jerome translated Esther into Latin, around the year 400, he translated the Hebrew. Then, rather than leave out the Greek additions, he collected them and put them all at the end, after chapter 10, with notes saying where each one belonged in the story. Later copyists numbered them as if they were chapters 10 to 16.³

So in the King James Apocrypha, The Rest of Esther begins in the middle of chapter 10 and runs to chapter 16. Mordecai’s dream, which belongs at the very beginning of the story, is chapter 11. The prayers, which belong in chapter 4, are chapters 13 and 14. Read in that order, the book makes no sense.

Modern scholars label the six additions with letters, A to F, and many modern Bibles print them in their proper places with those letters. The translation quoted in this chapter goes further still: it prints the whole Greek Esther in order and folds the additions into a few very long verses, at 1:1, 3:13, 4:17, 5:1–2, 8:13 and 10:3. That is why the references in this chapter look strange. They are the same passages that your Bible might call 11:2, 13:1 or C:1.

A decree against a people

Addition B gives the text of Haman’s decree, in the king’s name, ordering the death of every Jew in the empire. Listen to how it describes them.

A certain ill-disposed people is mixed up with all the tribes throughout the world, opposed in their law to every other nation, and continually neglecting the commands of the king (Greek Esther 3:13).

It orders them destroyed with their wives and children … without pitying or sparing any, so that the state may be well constituted and quiet (Greek Esther 3:13).

That is the oldest lie told about my people, written down more than two thousand years ago: that they are scattered among everyone, live by their own law, are loyal to no one, and that the country would be peaceful without them. It would be told again and again, in Alexandria and Rome, in the cities of Europe, and in the twentieth century, until a state tried to do exactly what Haman’s decree commands. The writer of this addition knew the voice of that lie because he had heard it.⁴

Where Esther and I part

There is a line in Esther’s prayer that I must not pass over.

I abhor the couch of the uncircumcised, and of every stranger, she says, and she is proud that she has not eaten at the table of Haman (Greek Esther 4:17).

I understand it. She is a captive queen in a foreign palace, married to a man who could have her killed, keeping herself apart in the only ways left to her. But her prayer makes a virtue of hating the stranger’s bed and refusing the stranger’s table, and I made a habit of eating at exactly the tables my own people thought unclean. I ate with tax collectors who worked for Rome. I let a Samaritan be the hero of my story. I said that on the last day the King would say, I was a stranger, and you took me in (Matthew 25:35).

And the book ends with the Jews, now allowed to defend themselves, killing seventy-five thousand of those who hated them (Esther 9:16). The Greek gives a smaller number, fifteen thousand, and adds prayers and God, but it still ends in slaughter.

Check It Yourself

Look up: the book of Esther in your own Bible, and search it for the word God.

You will find: nothing. Then read Mordecai’s prayer and Esther’s in the Additions (Greek Esther 4:17, or chapters 13 and 14 in most Bibles).

Then read Haman’s decree (Greek Esther 3:13, or chapter 13:1–7) and listen for how often you have heard its words since.

The Short Version

• The Hebrew Esther, the one in your Bible, never names God, and it is the one book of the Hebrew Bible most clearly missing at Qumran.
• The Greek Esther adds six passages and names God more than fifty times.
• Mordecai will not bow to Haman so as not to set the glory of man above the glory of God. Esther calls herself destitute and says she hates her crown.
• Haman’s decree describes my people in the words of the oldest lie told about them.
• Its prayer hates the stranger’s bed and table, and its book still ends in slaughter.