In sum, Song of Songs and Esther present two different but equally important trajectories of human experiences: the search for love and the search for justice in the created world. The theology of absence in these books is not to be taken lightly or relegated to the margins. Rather, the two books, even without explicit reference to God’s name, exert their voices in conversation with the rest of the Scripture—that the absence of God is a serious theological issue. These two books contribute to Old