liber Esther, quamvis hunc habent in canone, dignior omnibus, me judice, qui extra canonem haberetur, and in his Table Talk, are purely subjective.[1]
Luther could never reconcile himself to this book, because he felt that the saving truths of Scripture were absent from it. The later Jews, on the contrary, exalted it even far above the Thorah and the prophets.[2]
Later Protestant theologians, too, have, in their efforts to justify the canonicity of this book, over-estimated its canonical value, and attributed to the history therein related, Messianic references which are foreign to its meaning (comp. the verdict given upon it in Carpzov's Introd. in V. T. p. 369f.). The moderate opinion of Brentius is: hic liber utilis est ad docendam fidem et timorem Dei, ut pii non frangantur adversis, sed invocantes nomen Domini ex fide, accipiant spem salutis; impii vero alieno supplicio terreantur et ad pietatem convertantur. This opinion is one far better founded than the depreciatory decision of modern critics, that this book breathes a spirit of revenge and pride (de Wette-Schrader); or of Bertheau, that “Esther and Mordochai are full of a spirit of revenge and hostility not to Gentile ways, but to the Gentiles themselves, of cruelty, and of ungodly confidence in a victory over the world, by worldly power and the employment of worldly means,” and that this book “belongs to the historical records of the revelation made to Israel, only in so far as it helps to fill up the chasm between the times of the prophets and the days of our Lord.” “The book itself and its position in the canon plainly testify, that the people to whom the victory over the world was promised, separated themselves farther and farther from communion with the holy God, trusted to their own arm and to worldly power, and could not, therefore, but be worsted in their contest
- ↑ “And while the Doctor was correcting the second book of Maccabees he said: I am so hostile to this book and that of Esther, that I wish they did not exist; they are too Judaizing, and contain many heathenish improprieties.”
- ↑ Comp. the collection of rabbinical eulogies of this book in Aug. Pfeiffer, thes. herm. p. 597f., and in Carpzov's introd. i. p. 366.
