the man in whose honor the king himself has taken a delight.” The act ends back in the house of Haman, to which Haman had rushed after this humiliating experience.—Esther 6:4-14.

Chapter 7 introduces the third act with a second banquet in Esther’s quarters. At the king’s irate demand Esther exposes Haman as the instigator of the scheme to massacre all the Jews in the empire, including herself. Thereafter the king has Haman hanged on the gallows prepared for Mordecai.

For scene 2 of this act we are back at the king’s house. Since the decree of death for the Jews is unchangeable according to the Medo-Persian custom, a counterdecree, allowing the Jews to defend themselves, is sent out.—Esther 8:1-17.

Consequently, chapter 9 reports that the Jews destroy their enemies in Shushan and throughout the provinces, including the killing and then the hanging of Haman’s ten sons. Mordecai and Esther issue the command to commemorate this deliverance annually on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of Adar, called the days of Purim, because of the Pur, or lot, used by Haman as a form of divination to select the time auspicious for destroying the Jews.

Chapter 10 concludes the account briefly mentioning Mordecai’s greatness and energetic work in behalf of his people.

The book of Esther is in complete accord with the rest of the Scriptures and complements the accounts of Ezra and Nehemiah by telling what took place with the exiled people of God in Persia. As with all Scripture, it was written to provide encouragement, comfort and instruction for us.—Rom. 15:4; see the book “All Scripture Is Inspired of God and Beneficial,” pp. 91-94.

ETA

[Η, η] (eʹta).

The seventh letter of the Greek alphabet. This is the second Greek letter for the vowel “e,” and it has a long “e” sound.

It has, when accented, a numerical value of eight (ηʹ), and 8,000 with the subscript (ˌη).—See ALPHABET.

ETAM

(Eʹtam) [place of birds of prey].

1. A settlement of Simeonites within the territory of Judah. (1 Chron. 4:24, 32) Its location is uncertain, although some connect it with Khirbet ʽAitum, centrally located in Judah’s territory almost twenty-nine miles (46.7 kilometers) W of En-gedi and twenty-eight miles (45 kilometers) SW of Jerusalem.

2. The crag Etam, where Samson lived after burning the Philistines’ fields. From this crag, 3,000 men of Judah took him, willingly bound, back to the Philistines. (Judg. 15:8-13) Whereas no positive identification for the crag Etam is possible, a connection with the town (No. 3 below) cannot be altogether eliminated. However, just two and a half miles (4 kilometers) E-SE of the suggested site of Samson’s hometown Zorah (Judg. 13:2) is ʽAraq Ismaʽin, an isolated crag with a lofty cavern affording a broad view of the Shephelah below. Appropriate to the meaning of the name, this may possibly be the site of the crag Etam.

3. A town of Judah located probably at Khirbet el-Khokh, on a hill two miles (3.2 kilometers) SW of Bethlehem. Apparently Etam and Bethlehem had been settled by close relatives. (1 Chron. 4:3, 4; see ATROTH-BETH-JOAB.) According to Josephus, King Solomon often took a morning chariot ride from Jerusalem those eight miles (13 kilometers) out to Etam, where there were gardens and streams. (Antiquities of the Jews, Book VIII, chap. VII, par. 3) The town was rebuilt and fortified by Solomon’s successor Rehoboam. (2 Chron. 11:5, 6) To the W of here was a spring connected, according to the Talmud, by aqueduct with Jerusalem.

ETHAM

(Eʹtham).

The second campsite listed by Moses in Israel’s march out of Egypt. (Ex. 13:20; Num. 33:3-7) It was at Etham, “on the edge of the wilderness,” that the Israelites made a change in their direction, ‘turning back’ toward Pihahiroth where the crossing of the sea took place. (Num. 33:7, 8) This would indicate that Etham could have been the point of exit from Egypt had not the Israelites been divinely directed to alter their course. This turning back caused Pharaoh to reason that the Israelites were ‘wandering in confusion in the wilderness,’ providing him with an incentive to pursue them and resulting in God’s execution of judgment on the Egyptians at the Red Sea.—Ex. 14:1-4.

Some scholars endeavor to place Etham at the eastern end of the Wadi Tumilat, N of the Bitter Lakes. However, this is because they connect the Hebrew Etham (ʼE·thamʹ) with the Old Egyptian word for fortress (hetem). Even if such connection were correct, there were a number of places to which such Egyptian name was applied. Since Etham was not on the northern route out of Egypt, which would have led “by the way of the land of the Philistines” (Ex. 13:17), it can only be said to have been at some point N of the Red Sea and evidently at the border of the wilderness region forming the NW part of the Sinai Peninsula.

A comparison of Numbers 33:8 with Exodus 15:22 would seem to indicate that the wilderness region by Etham corresponds to the “wilderness of Shur.” Or, if the names are not interchangeable, then, depending upon which region was the larger, the wilderness of Etham may have included that of Shur or else was itself a part of the wilderness of Shur.—See SHUR.

ETHAN

(Eʹthan) [long-lived, permanent, ever-flowing].

1. One of four men whose wisdom, though great, was exceeded by Solomon’s. Ethan is singled out as being the Ezrahite, whereas the other three, Heman, Calcol and Darda, are referred to as sons of Mahol. (1 Ki. 4:31) This Ethan may be the writer of Psalm 89, for the superscription identifies Ethan the Ezrahite as its writer. In 1 Chronicles 2:6, Ethan, Heman, Calcol and Dara are all spoken of as sons of Zerah of the tribe of Judah and possibly are the same as the men mentioned in 1 Kings. Ethan is referred to as the father of Azariah.—1 Chron. 2:8.

2. The father of Adaiah and the son of Zimmah, a Levite of the family of Gershom.—1 Chron. 6:41-43.

3. A son of Kishi (1 Chron. 6:44) or Kushaiah (1 Chron. 15:17), a Levite of the family of Merari. Ethan was a singer and a cymbalist. (1 Chron. 15:19) Because of his close association with Heman it has been suggested that Ethan is the Jeduthun who was appointed by David to serve before the tabernacle at Gibeon and that his name was changed from Ethan to Jeduthun after his appointment. (Compare 1 Chronicles 15:17, 19 with 1 Chronicles 16:39-41 and 25:1.)—See JEDUTHUN No. 1.

ETHANIM

(Ethʹa·nim).

This was the seventh lunar month of the sacred calendar of the Israelites, but the first of the secular calendar. (1 Ki. 8:2) It corresponded to part of September and part of October. Following the Babylonian exile it was called Tishri, a name that does not appear in the Bible record but which is found in postexilic writings.

The name “Ethanim” is understood to mean “steady flowings” or “perennial streams.” The long hot summer now had ended and only those streams that were fed by springs had not dried up. In speaking of the festival that began on the fifteenth day of this month (or around the first part of October), the historian Josephus writes: “The season of the year is changing for winter, the law enjoins us to pitch tabernacles in every one of our houses, so that we preserve ourselves from the cold of that time of the year.”—Antiquities of the Jews, 1825, Book III, chap, X, par. 4, p. 147.