Satan

Satan is presented as the adversary who seeks to oppose God and harm God’s people, yet never as a power able to escape divine rule. In the commentary’s account of Esther, his influence runs through ordinary human choices and deceptive counsel, while God overrules those forces without suspending human responsibility. Satan’s reach is real; his sovereignty is not. The resulting tension—between hostile intention, accountable action, and providential outcome—is central to the book’s meaning for the author.

Identity and Theological Function

The commentary calls Satan the prince of darkness and describes him as exercising influence over a world in rebellion against God. It does not portray this influence as an independent kingdom beyond God’s jurisdiction. Rather, even when Satan and his agents oppose God, their actions remain within a history whose final direction belongs to God. The author’s point is not that opposition is unreal, but that opposition cannot finally defeat its object: God can make even hostile plans serve purposes their authors do not intend.

This account distinguishes Satan’s intention from the outcome God brings about. Human beings think, decide, and act voluntarily, and remain blameworthy when their actions are sinful. Yet those same actions may be incorporated into God’s purpose. The commentary insists on holding both claims together, rather than explaining away either human responsibility or divine sovereignty. Satan’s presence sharpens the difficulty: rebellion is neither an illusion nor a force that leaves God helpless.

Satan and the Providential Pattern of Esther

The commentary reads the events leading to the Jews’ deliverance as a connected sequence, not a collection of unrelated accidents. A royal feast, the king’s decision concerning Vashti, and Esther’s elevation to royal standing become links in a chain that prepares deliverance before the danger has fully appeared. The author emphasizes the contrast between the worldly and morally compromised character of these circumstances and the purpose they ultimately serve. God’s work does not depend on the human agents becoming faithful servants or understanding the role they play.

Satan belongs to this wider pattern as an adversary whose opposition is overruled, not as the hidden author of every particular event. The commentary’s central claim is that God can work through enemies as well as friends, and through ordinary political and personal events as well as religious action. The account therefore refuses to treat the apparent disorder of worldly affairs as proof that God’s purpose has been frustrated. What looks like a sequence shaped by human appetite, authority, and error can become, in retrospect, part of the means by which the Jews are preserved.

The author uses this pattern to offer consolation amid visible wrongdoing and suffering. The world may appear governed by the counsels of people hostile to God, and Satan may seem to occupy the position of ruler. But, in the commentary’s reasoning, appearance does not establish ultimate control. God continues to direct events, including the actions of adversaries, toward an end they neither seek nor recognize. The claim is theological rather than a denial of the harm caused by evil: the wickedness remains wicked, even when it is made to serve a purpose beyond itself.

The Lot and the Reversal of Hostile Counsel

The casting of lots at Haman’s direction gives this argument a particularly concrete form. Before obtaining royal consent for the destruction of the Jews, Haman uses divination to select what he regards as the most favorable time. The lots are cast in Nisan, in the twelfth year of Ahasuerus, and the date fixed for the attack falls on the thirteenth day of Adar, more than eleven months later. The commentary stresses the interval: had the date been immediate, it argues, Haman’s plan might have succeeded before the Jews could respond. His resort to superstition thus produces delay that becomes consequential for their preservation.

For the author, this is not evidence that the oracle possesses independent power. It is an instance of God overruling a practice intended to serve a hostile purpose. The same principle appears in the comparison with Jonah: heathen mariners cast lots to identify the person they believe responsible for a storm, and the lot falls on Jonah. The commentary does not treat lots as a dependable way to discover guilt; it presents these particular outcomes as occasions in which God uses human beliefs and decisions to accomplish a purpose. Satan’s apparent advantage, like the divination employed in his service, does not guarantee the result he seeks.

Deception and the Authority of Scripture

Satan’s influence is also described as intellectual and religious. The commentary argues that opposition to Esther can appear in the respectable language of concern for Scripture: critics may object that the book does not name God or is not quoted in the New Testament. The author portrays such reasoning as deceptive when it leads readers to discard the book and lose the account of providence it contains. The danger, in this view, is not limited to open unbelief. A professedly pious argument can, without appearing hostile, deprive believers of part of the biblical record.

The commentary contrasts this strategy with Satan’s use of more openly irreligious critics, naming Richard Carlile as an example. Its larger claim is that deception adapts to its audience: blunt opposition may serve among the profane, while an appearance of reverence may be more effective among religious readers. The author therefore treats the dispute over Esther’s place in Scripture as part of a broader struggle over the principles by which the Bible is received. Satan’s strategy is not simply to deny sacred authority, but sometimes to invoke one part of that authority in a way that undermines another.

Blindness, the Gospel, and Defeat

The commentary extends this account of deception to the reception of the Gospel. Drawing on Paul, it describes Satan as blinding the minds of unbelievers, while also affirming that the Gospel is self-evident in the way light makes itself known. The image makes spiritual blindness a matter not merely of missing information but of aversion: the light is present, yet it is not perceived by those who reject it. In the author’s argument, this does not make the Gospel obscure in itself; it explains how people may fail to recognize what is presented as manifest.

That blindness does not have the final word. The commentary presents the person and work of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God’s glory and describes the salvation of sinners as a display of divine wisdom. Satan’s attempt to bring humanity into misery is set against the claim that those redeemed through Jesus Christ are raised to share in his triumph. Likewise, the increase of the true kingdom following Haman’s destruction is treated as a historical parallel: opposition and judgment do not prevent the growth of God’s people.

Satan’s narrative and theological role is therefore defined by reversal. He seeks to misdirect, endanger, or blind; God turns hostile counsel and ordinary events toward the preservation of the Jews and the spread of the Gospel. The commentary does not resolve every philosophical difficulty in this account. Instead, it makes the tension itself instructive: Satan’s opposition is serious, human guilt remains real, and yet neither can overturn the providential purpose the book of Esther is said to reveal.