My wife and the other wimminfolk in our house church community are going to be reading Esther together. Jasmin asked me if I was aware of any high-caliber commentary on Esther; I reached for my mammoth Brueggemann tome Theology of the Old Testament only to find that, alas and alack, Bruggie Baby skips right over the godless book! The only thing I could think of was to commend her to Richard Elliot Friedman’s magisterial The Hidden Face of God (which deals quite deftly with why a theologian of Brueggemann’s caliber, or any person seeking to speak meaningfully about God, would omit a book like Esther from consideration), but this isn’t nearly to the point of focus on Esther itself.
And so I turn to you, my dear readers: Can you recommend me any exegesis, narrative, sacred geometry or slam poetry dealing with Esther from the Hebrew Bible? Lemme know in the comments below!
Mike,
Have you tried the Interpretation commentary by Carol Bechtel?
Hi Kevin,
I haven’t! Thanks for that.
You live right down the road from UNC and a half hour from Duke and Chapel Hill…and you’re asking people on the internet for commentaries?
Crap, down the road from NC State, whatever.
Well sir, believe it or not, with one car and a little child, making a trip out to the local academic library isn’t always the height of feasibility! So, Mr. Judaic Studies scholar, dost thou have any recommendations? 🙂
Ah, Jubie can fend for herself. 🙂
I’ve gone through a few books on Persian Judaism, but nothing on Esther proper. Jon Levenson’s commentary (available through WJK) might be a place to look. If you do find yourself able to go to a school library, check out the Anchor Bible commentary on it.
Unfortunately, unless you want a book on how Esther has contributed to Jewish violence, I really don’t have anything here worth borrowing. And there are certainly a large number of studies on it, though I’m not quite sure what exactly you’re looking for in all this…
My wife (who has significant Bible credentials of her own) says to tell your wife that her very own favorite on Esther is the version by Veggie Tales…
Members of the WordPress community may like to see some truly ancient sacred geometry:
http://sarsen56.wordpress.com/solve-this/