Bible Quiz: Book of Esther
Ten chapters, a six-month party, a queen who said no, an orphan who never told anyone who she was, a lot cast to pick the date of a massacre, gallows seventy-five feet high, and a king who could not sleep on exactly the wrong night. Esther is also the one book in the Bible that never mentions God by name — which is half of what makes it worth reading closely. Twelve questions drawn from a bank of forty, and every answer shows the verse behind it, so a miss still teaches you something.
That round moved through all ten chapters of Esther — Vashti’s refusal, Hadassah in the palace, Haman’s lot, the thirty days of silence, the three-day fast, the sleepless night, the gallows, and the feast of Purim that came out of it.
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Common Questions About the Book of Esther
How long is the book of Esther, and what happens in it?
Esther runs ten chapters, which is short enough to read in one sitting. It opens in the Persian palace at Shushan with a king throwing a six-month display of wealth and a queen, Vashti, who refuses to be paraded in front of his guests and loses her crown for it. A Jewish orphan named Hadassah, raised by her cousin Mordecai, is taken into the palace and becomes queen under the Persian name Esther, without telling anyone where she comes from. A royal official called Haman takes offence that Mordecai will not bow to him, and talks the king into signing a decree to destroy every Jew in the empire on a date picked by casting lots. The back half of the book is how that decree gets undone: a fast, an uninvited walk into the throne room, a sleepless night, and a set of gallows that end up being used on the man who built them.
Why do people say God is never mentioned in the book of Esther?
Because God is not, at least not by name. Esther is the one book in the Bible that gets all the way through without using the word, and there is no quoted prayer in it either. Everything that saves the Jewish people in the story arrives looking like luck. Haman casts a lot to pick his date and it lands eleven months out, handing his targets nearly a year of warning. The king happens to be unable to sleep on one particular night, happens to call for the palace records, and the page happens to be the one where Mordecai once stopped an assassination and was never thanked. Readers have argued about this for centuries, and that argument is the point. The book does not tell you who arranged the coincidences. It lays them out and lets you decide what you are looking at.
Who are the main characters in the book of Esther?
Five people carry the story. Ahasuerus is the Persian king, usually identified with Xerxes I, who rules a hundred and twenty-seven provinces and signs whatever his last adviser put in front of him. Vashti is the queen in chapter one who says no and disappears from the book. Esther, whose Hebrew name is Hadassah, is an orphan of the exile who becomes queen and spends five chapters hiding that she is Jewish. Mordecai is her older cousin, the man who raised her, sits at the king’s gate, refuses to bow, and ends the book second in the empire. Haman is the Agagite who engineers the decree, and the small detail that he is an Agagite while Mordecai descends from Kish quietly connects them to a feud between Saul and Agag from hundreds of years earlier in 1 Samuel. Zeresh, Haman’s wife, and Harbonah, a palace servant, both get one line each that changes everything.
What is Purim, and where does it come from in Esther?
Purim is the Jewish festival that comes directly out of this book, and it is still kept every year in the month of Adar. The name is odd and the book explains it: Haman cast “Pur, that is, the lot” to choose the day he would destroy the Jews, and when the day turned into a rescue instead, the festival was named after his dice. Esther 9:22 sets out how to keep it, and the instructions are worth noticing. The days are for feasting and joy, yes, but also for “sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.” The deliverance is remembered by feeding someone else. Another detail the book repeats three separate times: although both decrees permitted the taking of plunder, the Jews did not touch it. They wanted their lives, not anyone’s property.
What sort of questions are on a book of Esther Bible quiz?
A good Esther quiz goes past the one verse everybody knows. Expect questions on the specifics the story actually turns on: how many provinces the king ruled, who was keeper of the women, how long the purification period lasted, which two chamberlains Mordecai exposed, what Haman offered to pay into the treasury, how high the gallows were, what the king was doing on the night he could not sleep, and why a sealed Persian decree could not simply be cancelled. The quiz above holds forty questions written specifically for this book and gives you twelve at random each round, so no two rounds are the same and you can practise a book you are being quizzed on without seeing the same twelve every time. Every answer shows the chapter and verse behind it, which means a wrong answer still teaches you something. Play the quiz above and see how much of Esther you actually know.