Esther אֶסְתֵּר

Megillat Esther is the scroll of the hidden hand. Alone among the books of the Bible, it contains no divine name — not once in ten chapters. And that is the book's deepest teaching, not its lack: the sages heard in Esther's very name the Torah's warning 'I will surely hide (hasteir astir) My face in that day.' Esther is the book of hester panim — of a world where no sea splits and no fire falls, where the story is carried by a sleepless night, a mislaid record, a lot cast for the wrong day, a queen in the right palace at the right hour: 'who knows whether you came to royal estate for such a time as this?' The Name is not written, tradition says, because it is hidden everywhere in the turnings of the tale — and the reader who has seen the whole scroll knows Who wrote the coincidences. On Purim the Megillah is read aloud from a scroll, evening and morning, Haman's name drowned in noise; the day is kept as the scroll commands — feasting and gladness, portions sent one to another, and gifts to the poor — because the fourteenth of Adar is the day the hidden hand was seen.

This edition presents each verse word by word: the Hebrew, its transliteration, its root, its gematria, and a form-true English gloss, beneath a complete modern English translation adapted from the public-domain Jewish Publication Society version of 1917 — which, like the Hebrew, contains no divine name in this book. Five classical commentators accompany the text — Rashi, Ibn Ezra, the Alshich (Masat Moshe), the Malbim, and the Maharal of Prague (Ohr Chadash) — and in their words the hidden Author of the scroll is named on every page. May the days of Purim never cease from among the Jews, nor their memory perish from their seed.