pur

Twice the book of Esther uses this word and then stops to explain it: they cast "pur", the writer says, "that is, the lot". The explaining phrase uses the ordinary Hebrew word for a lot (גּוֹרָל), which tells us the first word was foreign to the audience. It came into Hebrew from Akkadian, the old language of Mesopotamia, where the word named a small inscribed cube thrown to pick a name or a year by chance.

Casting a lot was how the ancient world let something outside human argument settle a question. In Esther it settles a date. Haman throws the lot month by month until it falls on the twelfth month, Adar, and that becomes the day appointed for wiping out the Jews.

The third use looks back at that moment. When the story explains where the festival's name comes from, it points to "the name of Pur", the lot itself. The book wants the reader to notice that the day chance picked for slaughter turned into the day of rescue.

The festival's name is simply the plural of the word for the lot, so "Purim" means something close to "lots". The name is deliberately strange. A festival of deliverance is named after the piece of foreign court superstition that was supposed to seal the Jews' destruction, and that reversal is the whole point.

In the closing chapter of Esther the word is always plural and always attached to something being made permanent:

• the days of Purim, to be kept in every generation and every province
• the letter of Purim, written by Esther and Mordecai to confirm the practice
• the words of Purim, established by Esther's command and written down in the book

That insistence has a purpose. Purim is a festival no law of Moses commands, set up by Jewish leaders living far from the land. The repeated language of confirming and establishing is the book making its case that this new festival belongs in the calendar for good.