Appendix C: The Supposed Problem of Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah

It is often alleged that Esther is utterly unconnected to other books, and Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah are not alluded to by other books. However, if Esther is dated correctly to Darius rather than Xerxes (as I have clearly demonstrated in my Esther studies),⁸⁷⁶ then the book is no longer an orphan book that is utterly unrelated to other Old Testament books. Instead, Esther is inextricably woven together with the themes in Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, and Nehemiah. Once you realize that the Ahasuerus of Esther is Darius, that the queen of Nehemiah 2:6 is Esther, and that Mordecai had accompanied Ezra and Nehemiah to Israel seventeen years before the events of Esther (see Ezra 2:2; Neh. 7:7), then a huge problem that has plagued chronologists in Ezra/Nehemiah is solved.

On modern establishment views, there is a 90 year gap between Ezra and Nehemiah which means that there are two different Nehemiahs who were civil leaders, two Ezras who were priests, and numerous names on the genealogies that just happen to correlate but aren’t the same people. Esther is a needed link that is thematically, chronologically, and canonically tied together with Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, and Zechariah. My studies on Esther show the allusions and interrelationships.

Further, once it is understood that Mordecai was an inspired prophet who composed the book of Esther and who composed the Hallel Psalms (Psalms 113-118), the further interrelationships and allusions can be seen. Psalm 118 references the disastrous events in Esther that almost resulted in the annihilation of Israel by “all the nations” (v. 10), but Mordecai affirms that “God has given us light” (v. 27; cf. Esther 8:16). Again, my studies in Esther demonstrate a remarkable inter-dependence of these Scriptures upon each other.

So even apart from the New Testament allusions to Esther (Mark 6:23 with Esth. 5:3,6; 7:2; Rev. 11:10 with Esth. 9:22; etc.), the tight way in which Esther is integrated into and interdependent with other Old Testament books shows that it is not an orphan. The same inspired prophet whose poems Ezra incorporated into the Psalter also wrote Esther.

As to Ezra and Nehemiah, they were part of one scroll that was co-authored by Ezra and Nehemiah. Nehemiah is quoted as Scripture by the Jews in John 6:31 who claimed that Moses gave them bread (Neh. 9:15). Christ does not correct their idea that Nehemiah was Scripture, but he correctly points out that Nehemiah ascribes the giving of manna to God, not to Moses. Thus the Ezra-Nehemiah scroll is indeed quoted in the New Testament. That is not what canonized those books. We have already demonstrated that Christ treated the Hebrew canon of Genesis to 2 Chronicles as already a canon of “Scriptures.” Ezra’s work in finishing the canon with final edits has been well-documented in other chapters of this book.

Ecclesiastes may be quoted in Romans 8:20 and 1 Corinthians 15:32, but what about the Song of Solomon? Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown say, “the Song seems to correspond to, and form a trilogy with, Psalms 45 and 72, which contain the same imagery; just as Psalm 37 answers to Proverbs, and the Psalms 39 and 73 to Job.”⁸⁷⁷ Furthermore, the bridal imagery throughout the prophets of the Old Testament, and found in Ephesians and Revelation, is intertwined with the symbols of the Song of Solomon.

As a literalist, John MacArthur, states, “even a non-allegorical interpretation of Song of Solomon, (simply taking the love-song between Solomon and the Shulamite at face value) ultimately points us to Christ and his love for the church.”⁸⁷⁸ Thus it is not surprising to find commentators finding parallels between Song of Solomon 1:3 and the “fragrance” passages of the New Testament. An analysis of the graphic placed in chapter 4 shows that every book of the Bible has been woven together by God into a tightly knit fabric of 340,000 cross-references.

To clarify, being quoted by a prophet does not make another person’s book Scripture. If this were the case, the last book of the Bible could never be quoted and therefore could not be canonized. That is a fallacious approach to canonization. We have already demonstrated that God made a book canonical the moment the canonical prophet wrote it. So the presence or absence of quotes is a secondary issue to canonization.

This is especially significant when considering alleged quotations from the apocrypha. Such would prove nothing unless the Scripture quoted an apocryphal book as “Scripture,” but it does not. Luke quotes the conversations of pagans, as does Paul in an ad hominem argument (1 Tit. 1:12), but this did not make those people prophets or Scripture. As Dr. Robert Fugate states,

Another interesting fact is that they [the apostles] were acquainted with at least some of the Apocrypha. This makes it all the more significant that the Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles never once quoted from the Apocrypha, let alone quoted it as Scripture (or as authoritative in any sense)! This is more than an omission; they deliberately excluded the Apocrypha from the canon.⁸⁷⁹