Working through the Bible one book at a time — an introduction, then a chapter at a time
Each book gets a front door — where and when it is set, who is thought to have written it, and the live disagreements about it — and then a page per chapter. Nothing here asks to be believed on anyone's authority. Bring a Bible; check everything.
1 book · 4 pages · 13,727 words
An introduction to the book, its world, and the historicity fight — with the two strongest opposing cases stated as their own advocates would state them, and a third reading the site argues for.
A one-page chart of the book’s chiastic structure, after Dorsey: every move in chapters 1–5 answered in reverse by chapters 7–10, with the turning point at the verse where the king tells Haman to honor Mordecai.
Every word in Esther that appears in no other book of the Hebrew Bible, computed rather than collected — twenty-six items of ordinary vocabulary and thirty-eight proper names, with the verse, the Hebrew, and what the King James does with it.
Chapter one in notes — the king and his fundraiser, the objections to the book and what they are worth, who gets called queen and who gets called wife, and a formula in verse 19 that first appears the day Samuel sentenced Saul for sparing an Amalekite.