Esther Rabbah


Esther Rabbah is a midrash to the Book of Esther.
From its plan and scope, it is apparently an incomplete collection of the rich aggadic material which has been produced on the Book of Esther.

Structure

Except in the Vilna and Warsaw editions with their modern and arbitrary divisions, this Midrash consists of six "parashiyyot" introduced by one or more proems. These chapters begin respectively at Esther 1:1, 1:4, 1:9, 1:13, 2:1, 2:5. In the Venice edition of 1545, each chapter has at the end the words "selika parashata..." This division was probably based on the sections of the Esther scroll, as indicated by the closed paragraphs ; such paragraphs existing in the present text to 1:9, 1:13, 1:16, 2:1, 2:5, etc. The beginning of 1:4, as well as the lack of a beginning to 1:16, may be due to differences in the division of the text. It may furthermore be assumed that a new parashah began with the section Esther 3:1, where several poems precede the comment of the midrash.
From Esther 3:1 onward, there is hardly a trace of further division into chapters. There is no new parashah even to Esther 4:1, the climax of the Biblical drama. As the division into parashiyot has not been carried out throughout the work, so too the running commentary to the Biblical text is much reduced in chapters 7–8, and is discontinued entirely at the end of chapters 8. The various paragraphs that follow chapter 8 seem to have been merely tacked on.