Esther 

(/ˈɛstər/; Hebrew: ‫אֶ סְ ֵּת ר‬, Modern Ester Tiberian ʼEstēr), born Hadassah, is the eponymous

heroine of the Biblical Book of Esther.
According to the Bible, she was a Jewish queen of the Persian king Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus is
traditionally identified with Xerxes I during the time of the Achaemenid empire. Her story is the basis
for the celebration of Purim in Jewish tradition. However, there have yet to be any non-biblical
accounts to verify her existence.

Biblical story
Main article: Book of Esther
King Ahasuerus held a 180-day feast in Susa (Shoushan). While in "high spirits" from the wine, he
ordered his queen, Vashti, to appear before him and his guests to display her beauty. But when the
attendants delivered the king's command to Queen Vashti, she refused to come. Furious at her
refusal to obey, the king asked his wise men what should be done. One of them said that all the
women in the empire would hear that "The King Ahasuerus commanded Vashti the queen to be
brought in before him, but she came not." Then the women of the empire would despise their
husbands. And this would cause many problems in the kingdom. Therefore it would be good to
depose her.
To find a new queen suitable to the King, it was decreed that beautiful young virgins be gathered to
the palace from every province of his kingdom. Each woman underwent twelve months of
beautification in his harem, after which she would go to the king. When the woman's turn came, she
was given anything she wanted to take with her from the harem to the king's palace. She would then
go to the king in the evening, and in the morning go to the harem where the concubines stayed. She
would not return to the king unless he was pleased enough with her to summon her again by name.
For his queen, the King chose Esther, an orphan raised by her cousin, Mordecai, to replace the
recalcitrant Queen Vashti. Esther was originally named Hadassah, meaning myrtle.
Esther 2:7: "And he brought up Hadassah, that is, Esther, his uncle's daughter: for she had neither
father nor mother, and the maid was fair and beautiful; whom Mordecai, when her father and mother
were dead, took for his own daughter." Esther was the daughter of a Benjamite, Abihail.
When Cyrus gave permission for the exiles to return unto Jerusalem she stayed with Mordecai.
Shortly, when Mordecai was sitting at the king's gates, he overheard two of the king's officers
guarding the gates plotting to assassinate the king. Mordecai let Esther know, and she warned the
king about it, and Mordecai was given credit. The two conspirators were hanged on a gallows.
Soon after this, King Ahasuerus granted Haman the Agagite, one of the most prominent princes of
the realm, special honours. All the people were to bow down to Haman when he rode his horse
through the streets. All complied except for Mordecai, a Jew, who would bow to no one but his God.
This enraged Haman, who, with his wife and advisers, plotted against the Jews, making a plan to kill
and extirpate all Jews throughout the Persian empire, selecting the date for this act by the drawing of
lots (Esther 3:7). After laying charges of sedition against the Jews, Haman gained the king's approval
to write a decree for their destruction; offering ten thousand silver talents to the king for approval of
this plan (Esther 3:9-11).
Mordecai tore his robes and put ash on his head (signs of mourning or grieving) on hearing this news.
When Esther was told of this, she was grieved and sent Mordecai fresh robes, since none could
"enter into the king’s gate clothed with sackcloth." He refused and Esther sent "Hatach, one of the
king’s chamberlains" appointed to wait on her, to ask Mordecai the cause of his mourning and why he
refused the clothes. Mordecai sent back a reply explaining about Haman and the decree, sending her
a copy of it, and the charge "that she should go in unto the king, to make supplication unto him, and
to make request before him for her people." Esther replied that there was a law that anyone who
came unto the king uncalled by him should be put to death, "except such to whom the king shall hold
out the golden sceptre, that he may live: but I have not been called to come in unto the king these
thirty days." (Esth. 4:11, KJV) Esther was terrified for her life if she did as Mordecai said.
Mordecai was told Esther's reply, and he sent back a message that Esther should not think that she
would escape the genocide because she was in the king's house, any more than all the other Jews.
And further, that, if she held her peace at this time, deliverance would arise from somewhere else, but
she and her father's house would be destroyed. He ended his message with these consoling words:
"Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esth. 4:13-14, KJV.)
Upon hearing Mordecai's message, Esther exhibited her resolution by seeking spiritual strength for
her before she went uncalled unto the king—that she might steadfast, whether to perhaps find favor
in the king's sight and be the means of deliverance for their people, or else to die in the attempt—in
returning to Mordecai this answer: "Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and
fast ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day: I also and my maidens will fast
likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish."
(Esther 4:16 KJV.)
Mordecai followed her instructions. So she and her maid-servants and all the Jews present in
Shushan, fasted earnestly for three days as part of a supplication to God on behalf of Esther. At the
end of the three days, Esther dressed in her royal apparel (Esther 5:1) and bravely went before the
king, standing in the inner court where he sat upon his throne. When the king saw "Esther the queen
standing in the court," (Esth. 5:2 KJV), he was pleased with her and held out his scepter to her, thus
saving her from death (Esth. 4:11) and indicating that he accepted her visit. She came forward and
touched his scepter. The king then asked Esther her will, and what her petition and request of him
was, promising to grant even up to half his kingdom should she ask it. Esther humbly requested that
the king and Haman come to a banquet she had prepared for the king. No one else was invited,
which filled Haman with pride. During the banquet, Queen Esther requested of the king another
banquet with him and Haman on the following day.

"Ahasuerus and Haman at Esther's Feast," by Rembrandt

After the banquet Haman ran into Mordecai sitting in the king's gate. Haman was so incensed with
Mordecai for not deferring to him, that, on the advice of his wife and friends, he ordered a gallows
constructed, 75 feet (23 m) high, on which to hang Mordecai the next day, after obtaining the king's
consent. That night, the king couldn't sleep and so he had some histories read to him. From the
reading the king remembered that Mordecai had saved him from an assassination attempt, and had
received no reward in return. Early the next morning, Haman came to the king to ask permission to
hang Mordecai, but before he could do so, the king asked him: "What should be done for the man
whom the king delights to honor?" Haman thought the king meant himself, so he said that the man
should wear a royal robe and be led on one of the king's horses through the city streets proclaiming
before him, "This is what is done for the man the king delights to honor!" Pleased by this idea, the
king startled Haman by commanding Haman to lead none other than Mordecai through the streets in
this way, to honor him for previously telling the king of a plot against him. Haman obeyed then, while
Mordecai returned to his spot by the king's gate, Haman rushed home, grieving, and told his wise
men and wife everything. His wife said to him, "You will surely come to ruin!"
That evening during the banquet, King Ahasuerus again asked Esther what her petition was and
made her the same promise as before. Esther asked that her life be spared and the lives of her
people, the Jews of the Persian Empire, who were the people Haman had previously convinced the
king must be massacred (Esth. 3). In doing so, she declared her ethnicity. Haman's treachery so
inflamed the king that he left the banquet and went into the palace garden. Haman, seeing that his
situation was precarious, pled with Esther to save his life, ending up on her couch beside her as he
begged—which caused the king to jump to an obvious conclusion upon returning to the banquet from
the garden. Seeing Haman thus, the king's wrath knew no bounds, thinking that Haman was about to
molest Esther. He cried, "Will he force the queen also before me in the house?" (Esth. 5: 8, KJV.)
Whereupon, the king's chamberlains seized Haman, and one of them told the king of the gallows
Haman had constructed for Mordecai. The king told them: "Hang [Haman] thereon."
And so Haman was hung on the gallows he had built for Mordecai, and "the king's wrath pacified."
(Esth. 7:10, KJV.) The king then appointed Mordecai as his prime minister, after which Esther went
again before the king, and "fell down at his feet, and besought him with tears to put away the mischief
of Haman." Then, as before, the king held out the scepter toward Esther and she stood and pled with
him to "reverse the letters" of Haman against the Jews. In consequence, the king instructed Mordecai
to issue a decree giving the Jews the right to defend themselves. The second edict allowed the Jews
to arm themselves, and kill not only their enemies but also their enemies' wives and children, as well
as partake of the plunder (Esther 8:11). This precipitated a series of reprisals by the Jews against
their enemies. This fight began on the 13th of Adar, the date the Jews were originally slated to be
exterminated. Altogether eight hundred were killed in Susa alone, 75,000 in the rest of the empire.
The Jews took no plunder (Esther 9:10,9:15-16).
The Jews established an annual feast, the feast of Purim, in memory of their deliverance. According
to traditional rabbinic dating, this took place about fifty-two years after the start of the Babylonian
Exile.

Origin and meaning

According to Esther 2:7, Esther was originally named Hadassah. Hadassah means "myrtle"
in Hebrew. It has been conjectured that the name Esther is derived from a
reconstructed Median word astra meaning myrtle.
An alternative view is that Esther is derived from the theonym Ishtar. The Book of Daniel provides
accounts of Jews in exile being assigned names relating to Babylonian gods and "Mordecai" is
understood to mean servant of Marduk, a Babylonian god. "Esther" may have been a different
Hebrew interpretation from theProto-Semitic root "star/'morning/evening star'", which descended with
the /th/ into the Ugaritic Athtiratu and Arabian Athtar. The derivation must then have been secondary
for the initial ayin to be confused with analeph (both represented by vowels in Akkadian), and the
second consonant descended as a /s/ (like in theAramaic asthr "bright star"), rather than a /sh/ as in
Hebrew and most commonly in Akkadian.
Wilson, who identified Ahasuerus with Xerxes I and Vashti with Amestris, suggested that both
"Amestris" and "Esther" derived from Akkadian Ammi-Ishtar or Ummi-Ishtar. Hoschander alternatively
suggested Ishtar-udda-sha ("Ishtar is her light") as the origin with the possibility of -udda-sha being
connected with the similarly sounding Hebrew name Hadassah. These names however remain
unattested in sources, and come from the original Babylonian Empire from 2000 BCE, not
the Chaldean Empire or Persian Empire of the Book of Esther.
The Targum connects the name with the Persian word for "star", ‫ستاره‬ setareh, explaining that Esther
was so named for being as beautiful as the Morning Star. In the Talmud (Tractate Yoma 29a), Esther
is compared to the "morning star", and is considered the subject of Psalm 22, because its introduction
is a "song for the morning star".

Interpretations
Further information: Esther in rabbinic literature
Esther is also commemorated as a matriarch in the Calendar of Saints of the Lutheran Church -
Missouri Synod on May 24. She is also recognized as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Dianne Tidball argues that while Vashti is a "feminist icon", Esther is a post-feminist icon.
Abraham Kuyper notes some "disagreeable aspects" to her character — that she should not have
agreed to take Vashti's place, that she refrained from saving her nation until her own life was
threatened, and that she carries out bloodthirsty vengeance.

Persian culture

The Shrine of Esther and Mordechai in Hamedan, Iran

Tomb of Ester and Mordechai
Given the great historical link between Persian and Jewish history, modern day Persian Jews are
called "Esther's Children". A building known as theTomb of Esther and Mordechai is located
in Hamadan, Iran, although the village of Kfar Bar'am in northern Israel also claims to be the burial
place of Queen Esther.
Tomb of Esther and Mordecai