Hey, my friends, Matt, this is the 10 Minute Bible Hour podcast and we've been talking about

the Book of Esther for a couple of days.

It's a crazy, high stakes drama set in the King's Court in Persia in a bygone era.

It's a political thriller that maybe is only going to make the most sense if you understand

some of the mechanisms of the Persian structure of government and court life.

But on the other hand, this story is timeless.

You read through it and you can see why this is appealed to generations of people and why it's been

handed down from one generation to the next.

And why now it's such a privilege for you and I to receive it and work through it together

and see if we can glean some of the awesome stuff from it that our ancestors have gleaned from it

regardless of what tradition or background they were coming from and regardless of what

tradition or background you and I are coming from.

So yesterday we were starting the conversation about how we come at this book.

To what degree should we treat it as a story that's timeless and the setting and the King

and all that stuff. It doesn't matter. No, that matters. It's all interchangeable.

This could be placed anywhere. The real juice of the story is all contained within the story itself.

To what extent should we come at it that way or to what extent should we come at it as something

that is set in a particular place and time in the biblical narrative in a particular place and

time in the grand history of planet earth. If it is better interpreted in light where it fits in

the Bible and in history then we probably need to take a little bit of time to go and look into

those things which I think would be really, really fun and it may slightly influence my decision.

But let me just read to you the opening lines here and think about it because you're good at

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