New Esther Commentary

The latest offering from the Bible Speaks Today series published by InterVarsity Press is The Message of Esther by David G. Firth. I hope to share some additional insights from the book in the near future, but for now here is the publisher’s description and table of contents (I really like some of the clever titles).

Description:  

By any assessment, Esther is a rather strange book to find in the Bible. Not only is it, along with Daniel, the only book of the Bible to be set entirely outside of the Promised Land, it also shows no interest in that land. More than that, Esther is the only book in the Bible which definitely does not mention God. None of this should be taken as meaning that the book has no theological intention––on the contrary it has a developed theology, but it is a theology which operates precisely because it does not mention God directly. In this volume in the Bible Speaks Today commentary series, David Firth explores this paradoxically important book and its implications for our own contemporary context, where the reality of God’s presence is experienced against a backdrop of God’s relative anonymity and seeming absence.

Table of Contents:

General preface
Author's preface
Chief abbreviations
Bibliography

Introduction
1. Some Parties and Their Aftermath (1:1–22)
2. Providence in the Passive Voice (2:1–23)
3. Power and Corruption in High Places (3:1–15)
4. Risking All (4:1–17)
5. A Tale of Two Banquets (5:1–14)
6. A Funny Thing Happened (6:1–13)
7. An Awkward Dinner (6:14–7:10)
8. Revoking the Irrevocable (8:1–17)
9. Days of Deliverance (9:1–19)
10. Remembering Deliverance (9:20–10:3)

Much thanks to IVP for the review copy.