The book of Esther fills an important place in the sacred canon, as showing the Divine care and protection extended over the sacred race in the period of their deepest depression. The beauty and grace of a woman were the means of preserving the seed from which the great Son of Man and desire of all nations, should come. Esther held in her fair hand the golden chain at the end of which we see the Mother of Jesus. The "Prayer of Esther" is a composition ascribed to her, and still in honored use among the solemn services of the synagogue.
Judith the Deliverer
[JUDITH THE DELIVERER.]
No female type of character has given more brilliant inspiration to the artist or been made more glowingly alive on canvas than Judith. Her story, however, is set down by competent scholars as a work of fiction. The incidents recorded in it have so many anachronisms as to time and place, the historical characters introduced are in combinations and relations so interfering with authentic history, that such authorities as Professor Winer,[5] of Leipsic, and others, do not hesitate to assign it to the realm of romance. This Apocryphal book is, in fact, one of the few sparse blossoms of æsthetic literature among the Jewish nation. It is a story ages before the time of the tales of the Decameron, but as purely a romance. Considered in this light, it is nobly done and of remarkable beauty. The character of Judith is a striking and picturesque creation, of which any modern artist might be proud. It illustrates quite as powerfully as a true story the lofty and heroic type of womanhood which was the result of the Mosaic institutions, and the reverence in which such women were held by the highest authorities of the nation.