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, unlike Daniel who made it the point of orientation for his prayer.1 More than that, Esther is the only book in the Bible which definitely does not mention God,2 though this has not stopped people trying to find references to God hidden in acrostics in the text. For