We were reading through the book of Esther at BACC on Saturday, and it occurred to me that the book of Esther didn’t even need to happen. I had always thought that the time of the events of Esther was during the Babylonian exile. I looked at my faithlight commentary and this is what it said.
The events in the book of Esther take place about 55 to 65 years after the Babylonian exile of the Jewish people had ended. The story is set in Susa, the primary capital of the Persian Empire during the reign of Ahasuerus (also known as Xerxes). Chronologically, this places it in the middle of the book of Ezra—after the second temple in Jerusalem was dedicated in 516 bc, but prior to Ezra leading a group of exiles to Jerusalem (in 458 bc.)
John D. Barry et al., Faithlife Study Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2016), Es 1:1–9.
It’s very possible that you read this and you say, so what? And that’s what I thought for a long, long time. But, (to be continued)