Esther: A Woman of Discretion and Valor

Some five centuries before Christ, the biblical narrative travels east, out of Israel to the kingdom of Persia-modern-day Iran. King Ahasuerus, or Xerxes, ruled the Middle East and the Persian Gulf at the apex of world domination. God's people, the Jews, were in exile, yanked violently away from their homeland. There, in a foreign land, one of the great stories of Jewish deliverance unfolds, precipitated by a beautiful young woman named Esther.The account that bears Esther's name is one of ...