Now, if you back up and look at the book as a whole, you can see how precisely the story has been designed. The story is full of many moments of ironic reversal, but notice how the entire book is structured as one large reversal, right down to the details.
The king’s splendor, feasts, and decrees in chapter 1 correspond to Mordecai’s splendor, feasts, and decrees in chapter 10. Esther and Mordecai first saved the king in chapter 2, and in the end they saved all the Jewish people in chapter 9. Haman’s elevation, edicts, and banquet with the king in chapter 3 are reversed by Mordecai’s elevation, edict, and banquet in chapter 8.
Also notice how Esther and Mordecai’s two planning scenes (chs. 4 and 8) and Esther’s two special banquets (chs. 5 and 7) form a frame around the greatest reversal in the whole story—Haman’s humiliation and Mordecai’s exaltation (ch. 6).
Another fascinating feature of the book is the moral ambiguity of the characters. There is a lot of drinking, anger, sex, and murder, and Mordecai and Esther participate in at least some of it. Also notable is their violation of many commands in the Torah (like marrying Gentiles or eating impure food). And so the story doesn’t seem to put them forward as impeccable moral examples, nor does it endorse all of their behavior. However, they are presented as models of trust and hope in the midst of terrifying circ*mstances.
In fact, this focus on Mordecai and Esther’s hope brings us all the way back to the curious feature of this book, that God is never mentioned. When God’s people are in exile, unable to obey the Torah perfectly, and when God seems absent, does this mean God is done with Israel? Has he abandoned his promises?
The book of Esther says no.
The story invites us to see that God can and does work in the mess and moral ambiguity of human history, using the faithfulness of even morally compromised people to accomplish his purposes.
The book of Esther asks us to trust in God’s providence even when we can’t see it working. That requires a posture of hope, to believe that, no matter how horrible things get, God is committed to redeeming his good world and overcoming evil. That’s what the story of Esther is all about.
