For Commentary Compass, I use 2020 or later as the normal threshold for a “recent” commentary. That makes Esther an unusually thin field.

Several of the works I rate most highly remain comparatively modern—Tomasino appeared in 2016, Lau in 2018, and Reid in 2008—but they do not qualify under this definition. Among the Esther works examined here, only two significant 2020+ treatments stand out strongly enough to recommend: Eric Ortlund’s contribution to the ESV Expository Commentary and Marcia Y. Riggs’s recent Belief volume with Sheena Mayrant.

That is not a reason to enlarge the list artificially. A recent-commentary list is useful only if “recent” is not allowed to substitute for “good.” I would rather identify a genuinely thin recent field than recommend a mediocre book because of its publication date.

The two works are also very different. Ortlund is a conventional evangelical expository commentary. Riggs is a theological, womanist, social-ethical reading and belongs more naturally in a companion category. I have therefore kept that distinction clear below.

1. Eric Ortlund — Esther — ESV Expository Commentary

Published: 2020

Rating: ★★★★½

Ortlund is the strongest recent standard commentary on Esther among the works considered here. His contribution is not a fundamentally new reconstruction of Esther’s history or textual development; its value lies in bringing strong literary analysis, explicit evangelical theology, moral seriousness, and preaching usefulness together in a relatively compact modern exposition.

One of his clearest strengths is the presentation of Esther’s reversal structure. The narrative descends toward the threatened annihilation of the Jews and then turns around the sleepless night of Esther 6. The corresponding movements—Haman’s elevation and Mordecai’s elevation, hostile and protective decrees, Esther’s two banquets, mourning and feasting—allow Ortlund to show how form and theology reinforce one another. The reversal of Jewish fortunes is not simply something that happens at the end; it is built into the architecture of the story.

He is equally alert to humour. Ahasuerus emerges as an ineffective and pompous monarch whose immense formal power repeatedly contrasts with his dependence upon others, while Haman becomes the victim of his own grotesquely inflated ambitions. Ortlund rightly allows the reader to enjoy these comic reversals without forgetting the lethal anti-Jewish hatred that drives the plot.

The commentary becomes particularly distinctive in its treatment of moral ambiguity. Ortlund does not assume that because God providentially uses Esther and Mordecai, every action they take must therefore be morally exemplary. His strongest criticism concerns Esther’s request for a second day of violence in Susa and the display of Haman’s sons. He regards these actions as vindictive and unjustified.

I appreciate the willingness to address the ethical difficulty rather than dissolve it, although I would state the conclusion more cautiously. Esther 9 does not give us enough information about the continuing threat in Susa to establish Esther’s motives with certainty, and the narrative itself does not explicitly condemn her. Ortlund’s moral verdict is therefore stronger than the textual evidence warrants.

His canonical application is generally careful. Rather than turning Esther or Mordecai into direct Christ-types, he focuses on the larger biblical patterns of exile, providence, deliverance, reversal, and the final victory of God over hostile powers.

Ortlund does not replace Tomasino, Bush, Levenson, Berlin, or Jobes for technical, Jewish, literary, or text-critical work. But he genuinely complements them by offering an accessible modern evangelical exposition that is especially strong on structure, ethics, providence, and preaching.

Recent Theological Companion

2. Marcia Y. Riggs with Sheena Mayrant — Ruth and Esther — Belief

Published: 2025

Rating: ★★★★

Riggs’s volume is the newest Esther work considered here, but it should not be mistaken for a conventional verse-by-verse exegetical commentary. It is deliberately theological and social-ethical, employing a womanist hermeneutic of religious ethical mediation to interpret Ruth and Esther as moral agents negotiating violence, oppression, survival, power, and the possibility of transformative action.

That methodological clarity is both the book’s major strength and its principal limitation.

Riggs is especially interesting on Esther’s agency. Esther does not simply move from obedience to courage because Mordecai tells her what to do. She must decide when to act, how to deploy her identity, how much risk to accept, and how to use the limited political power available to her for the survival of herself and her people. The result is a reading in which moral agency includes strategic discernment under conditions no character freely chose.

The contrast between Vashti and Esther is particularly useful. Vashti represents direct dissent against an oppressive system; Esther eventually represents strategic action from within it. Riggs resists treating those two models as simply opposites. Different forms of resistance may be appropriate under different circumstances, and moral courage must be judged not merely by how publicly confrontational it appears but by its capacity to respond responsibly to violence and injustice.

The commentary also brings womanist, feminist, and postcolonial scholarship into sustained conversation with questions of survival, marginalisation, solidarity, reconciliation, and complicity. Readers whose Esther library consists almost entirely of historical-critical or conservative evangelical commentaries will encounter questions here that those volumes often barely raise.

I nevertheless have significant methodological reservations. Riggs describes the authority of Scripture primarily in terms of its power to transform readers and communities. Readers with a more traditional account of Scripture as divine revelation will likely find that formulation inadequate. The explicit social-ethical framework can also become so programmatic that modern political and ethical concerns sometimes occupy more interpretive space than the ancient narrative itself. At such points I would want a stronger distinction between what Esther itself claims and what a contemporary ethical dialogue with Esther may legitimately develop.

For those reasons, I would not use Riggs as my primary commentary on Esther. I would use it as a deliberately different conversation partner alongside a strong exegetical commentary. In that role, it is genuinely worthwhile and represents one of the most distinctive recent contributions to the interpretation of Ruth and Esther.

Bottom Line

The recent Esther field is currently too thin to displace the leading older works.

Among commentaries published from 2020 onward, Eric Ortlund is my clear first choice. He offers a strong modern evangelical exposition with particularly useful work on literary reversal, humour, hidden providence, moral ambiguity, and preaching.

Riggs and Mayrant provide the more original recent methodological contribution, especially through womanist ethics and their analysis of Esther’s agency, survival, resistance, and power. But because the volume is intentionally a theological commentary rather than a comprehensive exegetical one, I would treat it as a companion rather than my main Esther resource.

If publication date were irrelevant, I would still begin with Tomasino (2016) rather than either recent volume. Levenson, Bush, Berlin, and Jobes likewise remain more important overall for serious Esther study.

This is a useful reminder that a “best recent” list and a “best overall” list answer different questions. New commentaries are most valuable when they contribute something that the established literature did not already provide. Ortlund and Riggs each do that in different ways, but neither makes the older leading works obsolete.