The Book of Esther is a perfect story, written by the perfect author: God. He is famously not noted in the pages of the book — some would say in order to teach us to read between the lines and learn to see God behind the scenes in all areas of life. We are also not given the name of the person who committed to the story to parchment, but we are given some clues.

Divine deliverance and comeuppance

The scroll of Esther is one of five scrolls (Esther, Song of Songs, Job, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes) in the Hebrew cannon, and the entire thing is read from beginning to end in synagogues for the Feast of Purim in Spring. Purim is the plural of the word “pur”, which means “lots,” after the fate of the Jewish people appeared to be determined by the casting of lots but in the end of course, God saved the day, if invisibly, by putting Esther in the palace to speak up for her people to the king. The tables were ultimately turned on the wicked Haman, a descendent of Amalek, who tried to annihilate the Jewish people but ended up hung on his own gallows.

Though the king couldn’t reverse the decree allowing those who hated the Jews to attack them on that fateful day the pur landed upon, he could grant the Jewish people the right to defend themselves. What proceeded to happen is not dissimilar to the carnage we’ve seen since October 7. Israel’s enemies were decimated, and in very large numbers. What followed next was peace.

And in every province and in every city, wherever the king’s command and his edict reached, there was gladness and joy among the Jews, a feast and a holiday. And many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews, for fear of the Jews had fallen on them. (Esther 8:17b)

It ends with perfect poetic justice.

The deliverance did not come easy — there was a lot of trepidation, pain and death involved. However, the result was joy and peace.

It’s often the way that in order to deal with a problem, that there’s an exchange. A trivial example of the principle is the way a cloth gets dirty when wiping a surface. The clean cloth becomes dirty, the dirty surface becomes clean. Bad things don’t magically disappear: there is a cost, an exchange.

We see this most clearly in the cross. Yeshua took our sin and gave us His righteousness. His death killed the power of death. In the story of Esther, the murderous hatred of the Jews is dealt with by killing the murderers, but the removal of genocidal hatred is good all round, for everyone.

Now in the twelfth month, which is the month of Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king’s command and edict were about to be carried out, on the very day when the enemies of the Jews hoped to gain the mastery over them, the reverse occurred: the Jews gained mastery over those who hated them.

The Jews gathered in their cities throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus to lay hands on those who sought their harm. And no one could stand against them, for the fear of them had fallen on all peoples. All the officials of the provinces and the satraps and the governors and the royal agents also helped the Jews, for the fear of Mordecai had fallen on them. (Esther 9:1-3)

What was the result of all this fear and killing? There was “light and gladness, joy and honor” (Esther 8:16). There was peace.

It’s like that saying, “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” These were brutal times, these were strong men, and it all served to create good times.

After the victory of the Jews, we read that letters were sent in “words of peace and truth” throughout the 127 provinces of the Persian empire, obligating them to celebrate Purim from that time forth (Esther 9:30-31)

And Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, obliging them to keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same, year by year, as the days on which the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor. (Esther 9:20-22)

The word “gladness” recurs six times in the last few chapters after the terrible events were reversed. The massacre of Israel’s enemies brought about peace for everyone.

Mordecai the Jew was second in rank to King Ahasuerus, and he was great among the Jews and popular with the multitude of his brothers, for he sought the welfare of his people and spoke peace to all his people (Esther 10:3).

What happened after the end, and who wrote it all down?

The story ultimately ties up in a very satisfying bow, but what happened next?

At the time Esther was written, the people of Israel had already been given the go ahead to return and rebuild the temple. A few had gone with Zerubbabel, but more would follow later when Nehemiah and Ezra were to go back to the Land and oversee the restoration of Jerusalem. Esther and Mordechai were contemporaries of Ezra and Nehemiah, but still living in exile while some Jewish people had already gone back home. Esther’s King Ahasuerus is identified with Xerxes I (486-465/64 B.C.) and he came after King Cyrus (539–530 B.C) who gave the decree to rebuild the temple in 538 B.C., with King Artaxerxes later authorizing the rebuilding of the city in 444 B.C.

So my question then is who wrote the Book of Esther? Traditionally it’s been assumed that either Mordecai or Nehemiah wrote it.

There are problems with these suggestions, but there is one character that seems to fit the bill that no one is talking about…

The Talmud says the scroll of Esther was written by the men of the Great Synagogue — the Great Assembly (Baba Bathra 15a). According to Maimonides, the Great Assembly included a few names you might recognize: Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Ezra, Nehemiah, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, Zerubbabel, and last but not least, Mordechai. That Mordecai wrote it has been an accepted line in rabbinic Judaism. Josephus agrees (Antiquities XI.6.1) but there are a few difficulties with this idea.

1. The first issue is that the story of Esther is extremely complimentary about both Esther and Mordechai. It seems unlikely that our spiritual hero would write such lovely platitudes about himself.

2. Secondly, the writer evidently has intricate knowledge of every detail in the palace. It seems to have been written by someone very familiar with it, someone who has spent a great deal of time there, not by an outsider.

3. Thirdly, and I have not found any other source picking up on this, Mordechai is referred to as “Mordechai the Jew”. Why on earth would Mordachai refer to himself as a Jew?

Some suggest Nehemiah as the author, since he was familiar with the inside of the palace due to his job as the king’s wine bearer. He was literate and had access to royal archives. But again, why would any Jewish person refer to the Mordechai as being a Jew? In a book written for the Jewish people, it seems a very odd designation.

A radical new theory

The one who committed the story of Esther to writing was clearly very much on the side on the Jewish people in the story, but it seems more likely it was written someone who is not a Jew.

Here’s an idea: What if the author wasn’t Jewish, at least to start with.

What if the author was one of the palace eunuchs who joined the house of Israel?

The author could have been one of the eunuchs caring for Esther, as she was prepared in the palace for the king. Was he one of the “many from the peoples of the country” who “declared themselves Jews,” (Esther 8:17)?

It happened many times in Israel’s history that God’s judgement on Israel’s enemies leads some among those enemies to join the house of Israel. Consider Rahab, for example. She told the two Israelite spies that great fear had fallen upon the people of Jericho as they had heard the wonders God did for Israel coming out of Egypt, and giving them victory over their enemies (Joshua 2:9-13). There was also a mixed multitude of Egyptians who joined the house of Israel for the same reason: it became blinding clear that it’s better to be on the right side of the God of Israel.

From the evidence we have, it appears the person who wrote down the story of Esther was a resident of Persia, someone intimately acquainted with the inside of the palace — not Jewish, yet very much on the side of the Jews. They must have had access to records and archives, and they evidently thought very highly of both Esther and Mordechai.

An additional supporting reason for this theory is the listing of the names of eunuchs in the story. They never feature again — why are they there? Why would Mordechai — much less Nehemiah — make mention of them?

The whole deal with eunuchs in the ancient world is very distressing. In order to serve in the palace of an egotistical king, all men had to be emasculated in order to present no threat or competition around the women. Daniel the prophet was almost certainly made a eunuch, and the violation of such an operation hardly bears thinking about. As well as being on a par with rape, the idea of your line, your name, being cut off and forgotten forever is part and parcel of the horror. I think that by writing the names of his fellow eunuchs in that scroll, the author was giving them a memorial that would not be cut off.

By joining the people of Israel after the extraordinary Purim deliverance, people of the Persian empire were choosing to follow the Author of Life. Not only have they been transcribed in a book that transcended the ages, but by joining themselves to the Lord they have been inscribed in the Book of Life. They will have everlasting life, and will never be cut off.

Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say,
    “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”;
and let not the eunuch say,
    “Behold, I am a dry tree.”

For thus says the Lord:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
    who choose the things that please me
    and hold fast my covenant,
I will give in my house and within my walls
    a monument and a name
    better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
    that shall not be cut off.
(Isaiah 56:3-5)

Pray for a mixed multitude join Israel and fear God today