176 | Reversal and deliverance (ESTHER 8-10)

The book of Esther is set in the Achaemenid Persian Empire, sometime in the 5th century BCE — though scholars date the actual composition of the book anywhere from the late Persian period into the Hellenistic era, roughly 400 to 150 BCE, with most placing it in the 4th or 3rd century. Persia at this point is the largest empire the ancient world has seen, stretching from modern Pakistan to Ethiopia. The Jews in the story are living in diaspora — scattered across that empire after the Babylonian conquest of Jerusalem about a century earlier. Most of them have not gone back to Judah. They are building lives inside a foreign system, and their vulnerability inside that system is what the whole book is about.Source:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kbbV-YxLraUKirlx2E6hZs4PRhjDpxlV/view?usp=sharing