What the texts say. Hebrew Esther, followed by the KJV and other Protestant translations, does not mention God once; his care is present but hidden, as in Mordecai’s words that deliverance will arise “from another place” (4:14). The Greek book adds six passages: (A) Mordecai’s dream, before chapter 1; (B) the text of the king’s decree against the Jews, in chapter 3; (C) the prayers of Mordecai and Esther, in chapter 4; (D) Esther’s dramatic entry before the king, in chapter 5; (E) the king’s second decree, in chapter 8; and (F) the interpretation of the dream, in chapter 10, followed by a short note on the translation. That the Greek contains these passages and the Hebrew does not is certain (Very Strong).
Where they came from. The closing note says that “in the fourth year of the reign of Ptolemy and Cleopatra” Dositheus, who said he was a priest, and his son brought the letter in (presumably to Egypt), and that it had been translated by “Lysimachus the son of Ptolemy, who was in Jerusalem.” Scholars usually date the Greek version to the late second or early first century BC, though which Ptolemy is meant is uncertain (Moderate). How and when each addition entered the Greek book is not known with certainty.
Why they matter. The additions make explicit what the Hebrew leaves implicit. Mordecai prays to the “Lord God, king ruling over all”; Esther, before she risks her life, prays, “O my Lord, thou alone art our king”; and at the end Mordecai concludes, “These things have been done of God” (Brenton). The book becomes openly a story of prayer and providence.
What the Orthodox Church reads. The Orthodox Church reads Esther in the Septuagint, with the additions in their places in the story. The Catholic Church also counts them as Scripture; the Council of Trent confirmed the whole book. St Jerome, translating from the Hebrew, moved them to the end of the book, so the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims print them as Esther 10:4 to 16:24. Modern Catholic Bibles either restore them to their places with the old numbers or label them A to F, as the New American Bible does.
Protestant practice. Protestant Bibles follow the Hebrew book. When they print the additions, they place them among the Apocrypha; the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles allow such books to be read “for example of life and instruction of manners” but not to establish doctrine.
What it does and does not change. No doctrine stands or falls with these passages. They differ from the Hebrew in tone more than in teaching: the Hebrew shows a hidden God at work; the Greek shows the same God openly invoked. Both versions tell of a God who keeps his people, and the Church has long read both together.