The Return
- When
- c. 483–473 BC, in Persia
- Written by
- Unknown
- Chapters
- 10
The big idea
A Jewish queen in Persia risks her life to save her people from Haman’s plot.
Themes
- Providence
- Prayer and fasting
- Courage
- Reversal
Memory verse
Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
Key passages
- 4:13–17Such a time as this
- 5Esther before the king
- 7Haman’s fall
- 9The feast of Purim
Links to other Scripture
- Romans 8:28All things work together
- Genesis 50:20God turned it into good
- Matthew 23:12The proud humbled
- James 4:6Grace to the humble
Read the text
Choose a chapter to read it here in the King James Version. Verses with a dotted underline have notes from Bible scholars. Tap one to open them.
Notes from
Chapters
King James text and the commentaries of Henry, Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Gill, Clarke, Calvin, and Keil and Delitzsch are in the public domain. Tyndale Open Study Notes are used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, from tyndaleopenresources.com. Texts were reformatted for this site.
Journal prompts
Keep a journal or notebook for your study. Write your answers there, in your own words.
- Where do you see Christ in this book?
- God is never named in Esther, yet he is everywhere in it. Where have you seen his hand in events that looked ordinary?
- “Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” What might you be placed where you are for?
- Esther fasted before she acted. How could fasting or stillness prepare you for a hard decision?
- In one sentence, this book is about…