Esther

Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Dec 2006 by Caesar, Lael O

Esther. By Linda M. Day. Abingdon Old Testament Commentaries. Nashville: Abingdon, 2005, xi 177 pp., $24.00 paper.

This monograph by Linda Day continues the Abingdon OT Commentaries series and is as much as anything else a book about discrimination and its ambiguities. Day's Esther is a world divided against itself, where ambitious bigotry momentarily and menacingly intersects with the jaded callousness of royal apathy. Minority survival is for her a "primary issue" in Esther (p. 2). The book's characters must also make multiple and crucial decisions about their own self-identification, showing the work to be "relevant to the concerns of the homosexual community" (p. 3).

Day's work follows the series' four-part structure of (1) introduction; (2) literary analysis; (3) exegetical analysis; and (4) theological analysis. Series general editor Patrick Miller's disclaimer is that this last section is "not aimed primarily at contemporary issues of faith and life" (p. ix). Nevertheless, Day's section 4 often displays a penchant consistent with Athalya Brenner's sense that feminist biblical criticism has now moved beyond sex- and gender-specific matters to applications to contemporary life (see Brenner, Ruth and Esther: A Feminist Companion to the Bible [Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993-96] 14). Day repeatedly reaches out with ethical articulation that integrates textual event (e.g. Vashti's independence, Esther's "coming out") into contemporary social discussion (feminism, biracialism, gay and lesbian identity).

Day reads the book as humorous throughout despite its interest in such serious issues as genocide and arbitrary vengeance (on Haman's sons). Its sense is largely lost if readers miss how many elements are incongruous and even funny. Day may be aware of the absurd exaggerations of Ahasuerus's grand feasting, indecision, and looseness with his ring. But "funny" is probably not the most appropriate term. Klara Butting's "Esther: A New Interpretation of the Joseph Story in the Fight Against Anti-Semitism and Sexism" (in Brenner, Ruth & Esther 239-48) senses that the rule of Ahasuerus and his "wise men," frightened by strong-willed Vashti, is "not a natural order, but an order established again and again by force" (ibid. 242). The book of Esther thus features absurdities, but no jokes.

The book's concluding section (Esth 9:20-10:3) is sometimes considered extraneous because it clearly differs stylistically from what goes before. These differences Day explains as a change from fluid narration to "summarization" (p. 157), a new feature that begins at the start of Esther 9 (p. 143). Mordecai's initial establishment of Purim (Esth 9:20-23) is followed by a second admonition to observe the festival (Esth 9:2528). The second, Day submits, is not merely repetitive, but rather offers, particularly in verse 25, a classic example of "framing"-selective reportage of facts previously recounted, but now from a different perspective and for a distinct purpose. Day presents good logical and literary arguments for the pertinence and rhetorical force of the book's last and oft-disputed section on Purim. As a party, she notes, it constitutes a natural climax, the "party par excellence" that comes at the end and as the end, the tenth, of a series of fetes (p. 8) that unites the work, spanning from beginning to end.

On the presence and role of God, Day's reading is as uncertain as that of Michael Fox (see his Character and Ideology in the Book of Esther [Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1991] 244-47). But her notions of incongruity and her bold sociopolitical applications show her, in the end, to be more optimistic than Butting's Esther. Day may celebrate Esther's "complete" transformation from sexual to political queen (p. 162), but her feminist and liberating instincts seem not as keen as Butting when she experiences, in the book's conclusion, "a sense of satisfaction and completion" (p. 169). For Butting, Esther continues to be manacled [my term] at the very end. She remains a woman in a royal harem, ignored by the king's historiography. Esther 10:2 speaks of Mordecai's greatness and honors as recorded in the annals of the Medes and Persians, and 2 Mace 15:26 calls Purim the "Mordecai Feast." But whether or not Day's feminist visions are the grandest or most radical, the conscientious evenhandedness of her ethical readings and the boldness of her social commentary make for quite enough of a provocative reading.

Lael O. Caesar

Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI