As for Hanukkah, I wasn’t sure if I would ever write a script for Purim seeing as it’s not actually one of the Appointed Times of the year on Yah’s calendar, but, again, just like for Hanukkah, we’ve found it to be so meaningful and relevant in our family’s journey that I decided to finish out this Biblical year with one last script. The themes of obedience, courage, avoiding compromise, and Yah’s faithfulness are just what we need to hear in these days we live in, and I tried to bring out those ideas in the script. I hope and pray this will facilitate great conversations in your families and faith communities!

This script follows the same format I used in the scripts for the Biblical feasts, including a Host, a Hostess, and Readers 1-16. Feel free to divvy those out however it works best for you. If you have more than sixteen people, two can share a reader role. If you have less, one person can do more than one part. I’ve also included some suggestions for songs to sing. Here’s a YouTube playlist of lyric videos with those songs to make it easy for you to find them. As always, feel free to make it your own and change the songs or the wording or anything else you want. This is to serve you, not something for you to serve!

On Purim, Jews traditionally read the entire book of Esther twice, once on the night of Purim and again the following day, with attendees booing and using noisemakers to blot out Haman’s name. Our family enjoys alternating between versions of Esther translated from the Hebrew text (included in Protestant Bibles) and versions translated from the expanded Greek text (included in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles). Both are available in the Bible App in the WEBUS translation.

While it does include a summary of the story, this script is not meant to take the place of reading the book of Esther, but instead to reflect on some of the themes and the relevance of the story to our lives today either before or after reading the full text. Feel free to use your noisemakers and boo for Haman when he appears in the script though if you want.

We have really found the Bible Project’s videos explaining the two different versions of Esther helpful, especially in understanding how the book is structured. It really is quite brilliant!

Watch this one first on the older Hebrew version:

And then this one to understand the additions and why they are there:

I also appreciated this blog post on why the book of Esther is included in the Bible at all and included some of its ideas in the script.

Here are three versions of the script for you to download:

Non-editable PDF File

Editable Word File

Editable Pages File

As with all my other scripts, I make no promises that the Word and Pages files will hold the formatting, so to see how I intended it to look, check the PDF file. I print them double-sided with the short-edge binding setting and then fold them in half. As with the others, I’ve included a coloring sheet for the cover. This one is from SmoothDraw.com.

I hope this is all helpful for you! I’d love to hear how you and your family celebrate Purim!