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Esther: An Introduction and Commentary is unavailable, but you can change that!

The Jews were threatened with genocide. A decree ordered the extermination of young and old, women and children. The place: Persia. The time: fifth century B.C. The book of Esther describes how this crisis was averted through the bravery of Esther, the wisdom of her stepfather and the unity of the Jewish people. It also reveals the God who quietly—and sometimes unexpectedly—works behind the...

named after Iahali.’24 Though the book of Esther belongs to Persia in the fifth century BC, and describes the use of the lot for a different purpose, nevertheless ‘the terminology and the underlying technique remain the same’.25 Thus the derivation of the word pûrîm given in the book is vindicated by the extraordinary chance of archaeology that one dice bearing the word pûru should come to light. The dice serves a wider purpose, in that it illustrates how widespread was belief in a predetermined
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