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LXX Esther

Septuagint

About this book
Chapter 7

1 So the king and Haman went in to drink with the queen. 2 And the king said to Esther at the banquet on the second day, What is it, queen Esther? and what is your request, and what is your petition? and it shall be done for you, to the half of my kingdom. 3 And she answered and said, If I have found favor in the sight of the king, let my life be granted to my petition, and my people to my request. 4 For both I and my people are sold for destruction, and pillage, and slavery; both we and our children for male slaves and female slaves: and I did not consent to it, for the slanderer is not worthy of the king's palace. 5 And the king said, Who is this that has dared to do this thing? 6 And Esther said, The adversary is Haman, this wicked man. Then Haman was troubled before the king and the queen. 7 And the king rose up from the banquet to go into the garden: and Haman began to plead with the queen; for he saw that he was in an evil case. 8 And the king returned from the garden; and Haman had fallen upon the bed, entreating the queen. And the king said, Will you even force my wife in my house? And when Haman heard it, his face changed. 9 And Bugathan, one of the chamberlains, said to the king, Look, Haman has also prepared a gallows for Mordecai, who spoke concerning the king, and a gallows of fifty cubits high has been set up in the premises of Haman. And the king said, Let him be crucified on it.⁠ 10 So Haman was hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordecai: and then the king's fierce anger was appeased.

Texts in conversation

Compare LXX Esther 7:9 and Matthew 27:22

Septuagint · New Testament

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Summary

Matthew 27 may allude to the Greek Septuagint translation of Esther 7 through the use of the rare Greek verb for “crucify” and a similar call for it, a rare moment where Esther may have influenced the New Testament.

Passages

LXX Esther 7:9

Septuagint
9 And Bugathan, one of the chamberlains, said to the king, Look, Haman has also prepared a gallows for Mordecai, who spoke concerning the king, and a gallows of fifty cubits high has been set up in the premises of Haman. And the king said, Let him be crucified on it. 10 So Haman was hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordecai: and then the king's fierce anger was appeased.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Esther

Matthew 27:22

New Testament
21 The governor asked them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas!” 22 Pilate said to them, “Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Christ?” They all said, “Crucify him!” 23 He asked, “Why? What wrong has he done?” But they shouted more insistently, “Crucify him!” 24 When Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but that instead a riot was starting, he took some water, washed his hands before the crowd and said, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. You take care of it yourselves!”
70–90 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Matthew

References

"... With little dissension, it has long been axiomatic that the book of Esther had a negligible role in shaping the texts of the New Testament. This thesis seeks to develop a methodology that can evaluate that role, and the subject of ‘Esther in the New Testament’, from a fresh angle. Rather than beginning with New Testament passages, the methodology employed here starts with the Septuagintal version of the book of Esther to trace the journey of the text forward through time, conceiving the text to be like a wave that ripples out. Sometimes a wave encounters an obstacle (and responds differently to different obstacles), whereas other waves continue unimpeded. This research seeks a way of discerning factors in New Testament thought that might behave as obstacles to the book of Esther, such that Estherian textual ripples (termed here as ‘cluzographs’) can be identified in the New Testament. To test this methodology, the thesis identifies words that have the potential to be distinctive to the book of Esther (i.e. words that are uniquely/predominantly used in Septuagint Esther that also feature in the New Testament). The two words chosen as case studies are Σταυρωθήτω (LXX Esther 7:9; Matthew 27:22-23) and ἰουδαΐζω (LXX Esther 8:17; Galatians 2:14). These case studies support the conclusion that the book of Esther had some influence on both the proclamation of the crucifixion of Jesus in light of Haman’s execution, and on Peter and Paul’s intra-Jewish debate about Gentiles in Galatians 2:14 ..."
D. M. Lees, “Intertextual Ripples of the Book of Esther: An Evaluation of Σταυρωθήτω and Ἰουδαΐζω in the New Testament” (PhD diss., Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 2018), 12.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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LXX Esther 7:9 and Matthew 27:22

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