Esther – Chapter 7

Haman Accused. Verses 1-6

So Haman was hustled off to Esther’s banquet without further ado, before he could reconcile his problem and frustration over the affair of Mordecai. The banquet appears to have proceeded normally, as the previous night, the food being eaten and the men imbibing their wine. Again, the king raised the question of Esther’s problem and again offering to grant her half the kingdom if she requested that.

This time Esther was ready to spring her trap. One wonders whether Haman may not have been anxiously apprehensive after the turnabout of affairs in his plans. Esther was very gracious in presenting her petition, showing thanksgiving to the king for his royal favor bestowed on her. Now if it pleased him she had two requests. First, she asked that her own life be spared, and secondly, that the lives of her people be preserved. She proceeded to say why. Her people had been sold, to be destroyed, slain, and to perish as a nation. To emphasize the reality of the danger she said that if it were no more than enslavement of her people that had been planned she would not have intervened, even though the gain the king might expect thereby would not offset the loss he would incur by their enslavement.

The naive king presumes to know nothing of what she is talking about, for he was still unaware that his beautiful queen was a Jewess. “Where,” he asked, “was the man who would dare to even presume such an act as to kill the queen and her people?” Haman must have seen the hand of fate rapidly falling upon his guilty head. He must have been aware of what the queen spoke about. His demonic possession must have provoked terror in his heart when he heard Esther’s request, but there is yet a word to be spoken to seal his doom.

Esther proceeded at once to name the culprit. “It is this wicked Haman,” she said. The artists have painted this scene, as it occurred in their eye, of king, queen, and Haman in the banquet hall. Esther is on her knees before the king, indicating by a motion of the hand the cringing Haman behind her at the banquet table. It was a climactic moment for Esther, and enlightening. instant for Ahasuerus, and a terrifying time for Haman! God will have the final victory over those who defy Him as Job said, “Who doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number” (Job 9:10).

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

CRITICAL NOTES.]

Est. 7:2. The king said again] Compare Est. 5:6.

Est. 7:3. My life, my people] Esther has had time to carefully prepare her words, and her earnest language rises to the emotionality of poetic parallelisms. We may throw her address into the following form:

If I have found favour in thine eyes, O king,
And if to the king it seem good,
Let my life be given me at my petition,
And my people at my request.
For we are sold, I and my people,
To be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish.

If, now, for slaves and for bondwomen we were sold, I had been silent,
For the enemy is not to be compared with the injury to the king.

Est. 7:4. We are sold] Allusion to Hamans offer to pay into the kings treasury ten thousand talents. Destroyed, slain, perish] She quotes the very words of the fearful edict, and thus gives a most telling point and emphasis to her plea. Although the enemy] This sentence is obscure, and perhaps Esther meant that it should be ambiguous. The common version conveys the meaning that if the Jews were all sold into slavery, their enemy, who brought this woe upon them, could not, by any payment into the kings treasury, recompense him for the loss he would sustain. But the Hebrew seems to make this last sentence give a reason for Esthers keeping silence; namely, because she does not consider the enemy worthy of the trouble and injury it must cost the king to punish him, and counteract the decree of death that has gone forth against the Jews. The enemy] to whom she contemptuously refers is, of course, Haman. Countervail] The Kal participalmeaning, to be equal with; to be compared with. Damage] may be here taken in the sense of injurious trouble, annoyance, vexation.Whedons Com. Thus Esther says (Est. 7:4), The enemy has determined upon the total destruction of my people. If he only intended to bring upon them grievous oppression, even the most grievous oppression of slavery, I would have been silent, for the enemy is not worthy that I should vex or annoy the king by my accusation.Keil.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH. Est. 7:1-4

A STRANGE BANQUET

I. The banquet was strange if we consider the incongruous nature of the company. Things are not what they seem, and the three now meeting together at the banquet are not what they might seem to casual observers. They were not happy, could not be happy under the circumstances. Very different feelings now took possession of their natures. Ahasuerus was now stirred up to a sense of his responsibility. Haman must have felt the approach of his doom. The declaration of the wise men and of his wife must have been ringing in his ears. And Esther was roused up to the fact that an important crisis in her own and in her nations history was now at hand. A deep sense of uneasiness must have pervaded the company which the wine could not allay. Thus, if we could only pierce the outward we should find that the gatherings of this world are not at all in harmony. Sometimes such gatherings end without any startling revelation; but it was not so in this case. It came to a fatal end for Haman at least. The harmonizing spirit of the gospel of love is the true power by which gatherings may be rendered pleasant and profitable. At the gospel banquet all spirits should harmonize. At the banquet of heaven we may expect complete harmony.

II. The banquet was strange if we consider the unaccustomed constancy of the king. Ahasuerus was evidently a vacillating monarch, to one thing constant never. But now he shows a strange exception. For the third time he asks Queen Esther, What is thy petition? The king appears more willing to give than Esther is to ask; and in this he is a type of God. He is indeed more willing to give than the sons of men are to ask. Yea, he gives before we ask; gives in spite of our unwillingness to receive, and of our ingratitude. He is giving every day. Let us be more constant and extensive in our askings. Ahasuerus proves his willingness to give by a repetition of his question. In this he is a small type of the great Giver. He repeats and repeats his assurances of his willingness to give. His invitations and his promises to the children of men are plentifully scattered throughout the sacred records. Ahasuerus showed his willingness to give by a large promise. God shows his willingness to give not only by large promises, but by large bestowals. How many are the bestowals of God! How vast his bounties! What a proof of willinghood in the gift of his well-beloved Son!

III. The banquet was strange if we consider the peculiar character of Esthers petition. Notice(a) The graceful modesty of the preface. If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king. Could anything be more graceful, more modest, and more artistic? Such words from such sweet lips must have confirmed Ahasuerus in his determination to help the speaker in her present difficulty. It is evident that Esther was a woman of skill as well as of beauty. Modesty becomes the petitioner. Beauty is often arrogant. But beautys charms are increased by the presence of modesty. Morally we have no beauty to plead as we come to God in prayer. Modesty is becoming. Yet boldness is permitted because we come to God in the name of Jesus Christ, who always is well beloved. Let us go to God not pleading our deserts, but the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. (b) The natural and the benevolent request. She pleads for her own life, and that was natural. Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. Wonderful this intense love of life. Wise arrangement of Divine providence. Through trial, and poverty, and pain, and sickness the human being clings to life. Esther might well ask for life with her propitious surroundings. But Esther pleads for the life of her people, and that was benevolent. Most probably Esther might have secured the boon of her own life without securing the salvation of her people. This, however, would not have satisfied her benevolent nature. Haman was very fearful when his own life was threatened. He was very reckless about the lives of others. Esther was calm when her own life was in danger, and was anxious for the salvation of the lives of her people. A sweet type was she of the Son of man, who came to save the lost. He did not even go so far as to plead for his own life. Yea, he gave his life a ransom for many. He pleads for the life of his people. As Esthers, so the Saviours intercession was successful, and shall be to the end of time. How noble the office to plead for life! Esther pleaded for physical life; Jesus pleads for intellectual and moral life. Not because God has issued a foolish and wicked decree, not because God is a stern tyrant, a luxurious despot, but because the claims of justice must be met, and the interests of Gods moral government must be maintained. Esther asked little for herself. She asked for her life, but that was a prelude to the further request of the life of her people. The granting of one part of the petition was a pledge for granting the rest. Jesus only asks to see the fruits of the travail of his soul. He desires the salvation of men. Ahasuerus would be astonished at the nature of Esthers request. God is not astonished at the nature of the Saviours request. Not like Ahasuerus, God saw the danger, and provided a remedy. Let us believe that God Almighty willeth not the death of a sinner. (c) The timely confession. She acknowledges her people. She confesses that she belongs to the persecuted race. The time has come for confession, and she is ready to face the worst. The queen talks of the outcast, despised, and death-decreed race as her people. A period will come when a more wondrous confession than this will be made. Jesus Christ will bring forth his people in the day of final reckoning. Very many poor and despised ones of earth will then be spoken of by Jesus as My people. Are we now the people of God? Let us not despise any in whom the smallest spark of Divine grace is found. (d) The startling avowal. For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. There is more harm done through want of thought than through want of heart. The thoughtlessness of Ahasuerus caused this declaration to come upon him in a startling manner. Very many people are still sold to destruction through this very thoughtlessness. And too often Esthers are not found to interpose between the thoughtlessness and its bitter consequences. Let us think about our conduct, and especially as to its bearing upon other people. (e) The gracious considerateness. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the kings damage. How little consideration for others some people possess! A little personal inconvenience soon sets their tongues working, and they do not shrink from giving much trouble to those about them. Esther would have held her tongue had it been a small thing she was called upon to endure. She shrank from giving the king needless trouble. Let us learn to keep the door of our lips, not for reasons of worldly policy, but because we do not desire to give trouble that can lead to no beneficial results. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O God, my strength and my Redeemer. Thus shall our words be timely. Thus shall our words be profitable to others. Thus our tongues will be silent even in suffering.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Est. 7:1-4

Ahasuerus is not more liberal in his offer than firm in his resolutions, as if his first word had been, like his law, unalterable. I am ashamed to miss that steadiness in Christians which I find in a pagan. It was a great word that he had said; yet he eats it not, as over lavishly spoken, but doubles and triples it, with hearty assurances of a real prosecution; while those tongues which profess the name of a true God say and unsay at pleasure, recanting their good purposes, contradicting their own just engagements, upon no cause but their own changeableness.Bishop Hall.

Trembling soul, if this heathen king is so trustworthy in his promises, then your heavenly King is far more faithful. The former promises only to give the half of his kingdom, but he to give you the whole kingdom. Truth may be crushed to the earth, but it dies not; it can be avoided or offended, yet it will finally come to light and triumph.Starke.

But in all this the first notable thing is how far apart stand the judgments of the Almighty and those of this world, since those whom the world esteems most happy and fortunate are truly most unhappy and unfortunate before God. Men, indeed, seeing only what appears, and judging according to the outward semblance, would have boldly pronounced no man more fortunate than Haman. But in fact, and in Gods view, who sees the heart, he was of all men the most miserable. For he was inflated with ambition, he was hot with envy, he was bursting with hate, and went to the banquet in the most disturbed state of mind. There rankled in the bottom of his heart the thought of the fresh honour which he had lately been forced to confer upon his enemy; and he was, moreover, goaded to desperation by what his friends had told him to his facethat he himself, having once begun to fall before the Jew, would for ever be his inferior, and that Mordecai would increase in glory and honour.Feuardent.

Let me make haste away to my country; there are my excellent ancestors, there dwell my noble relations, there is the constant residence of my dearest friends (Plotinus). Oh, happy will that day be when I shall come into that glorious assembly, when I shall have better company than Homer, Orpheus, Socrates, Cato; when I shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the palace of their Friend and mine! Oh, happy day, when I shall come to my Fathers house, to that general assembly, the Church of the first-born, to an innumerable company of angels, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the spirits of just men made perfect! (Tull). A mans knowledge of other things may add to his fears, and make his miseries greater; but the more knowledge we have of God, the less our fears and sorrows must be; and when our knowledge of God is perfect, all our fears and sorrows shall be for ever blown over. I cannot omit a brave speech of that noble Stoic which comes to my mind: If the acquaintance and favour of Csar can keep you (as you are made to believe) from some fears, how much rather to have God for your Father and Friend? How little cause have such to be afraid at any time of anything! Death itself is not an evil to a friend of God; he may say, Come, let us go quickly to our Fathers house; our Father calls us (Epict.).Janeways Quotations.

The concluding words were calculated to draw his attention to the subject as affecting the interests of his kingdom. The Jews were an industrious race. Dispersed throughout the kingdom of Persia, they had devoted themselves to the pursuits of agriculture and commerce. They were captives, but not properly slaves, having their settlements here and there, for the cultivation of the soil or for merchandise, as their inclination led; and, although foreigners, yet mixed up with the general population of the country, and in the character of quiet, peaceful subjects, contributing toward the general wealth and prosperity. That they were not burdensome for their support, but, as to temporal matters, in a flourishing condition, is very manifest from Hamans offer to pay out of their spoil so large a sum into the royal treasury. To have swept away, then, by a wholesale slaughter, a race so active and industrious as the Jews were, would have been to inflict a heavy blow upon the prosperity of the kingdom. Their spoils might be a present benefit to the royal exchequer, but the loss entailed upon the national wealth would be permanent and irreparable. And the difference would not be great as to the national loss, if they were not to be destroyed, but merely reduced to the state of slavery. If sold as slaves, and carried away into other countries by the slave-merchants of Tyre and Sidon, the price paid for them would be a poor return for the fruit of their continued industry as the subjects of the Persian king. And if they were made slaves in his own dominions, there would be the loss to his revenue of so much active enterprise on the part of a people who paid all the public taxes, and increased the national resources by the cultivation of the soil and foreign trading. Esther seems to have known better than the king did, and better than some modern politicians have done, or yet do, the secret of the wealth of nations. To annihilate an industrious and peaceful people she represents as an act equally cruel and impolitic. To substitute slave-labour for the labour and vigorous and persevering industry of freemen she speaks of as also most opposed to the real interests of the state. This is the meaning of her words: If we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the kings damage. The sentiment here expressed is far in advance of the age in which Esther lived, and the truth and significance of it have often been illustrated since her time, although only illustrated so as to indicate that its importance was not yet estimated, nor the wisdom of it practically felt. Thus, for example, when persecution against the friends of Protestantism raged fiercely in France and Belgium, and those who preferred the religion of the Bible to Popery had to choose between remaining at home to be massacred, or seeking a refuge abroad, a vast number of the most intelligent and industrious of the population took refuge in England and Scotland, bringing their skill and industry with them to benefit the land of their adoption. History settles it as a fact beyond all question, that these refugees for conscience sake contributed more largely to the industrial and commercial advancement of this country than it would be easy to calculate. For in those days we were far behind our continental neighbours in the practice of the mechanical and useful arts; and thus the bigotry and cruelty which drove multitudes to seek an asylum in this island, dried up the sources of the wealth of the countries from which they came, while Britain, on the other hand, was rewarded for opening her arms to shelter the oppressed by obtaining all the benefit of their intelligence and labour, as not only skilful artisans, but peaceful and religious citizens.
And then again, with respect to the difference between the exertions and enterprise of freemen for the real advantage of a country, as contrasted with slaves, Esthers judgment was far more correct, for instance, than that of the Americans, who boast so much of their liberty and their political wisdom; and her judgment is corroborated by the sentiments of all intelligent travellers, who have recorded their experience in passing through those States of America where slavery is legalized.* The labour which is exacted by the lash is neither so well performed nor so great in amount as that which is paid for. There is no inducement to the slave to cultivate his intellect. When he sees that he cannot better his condition, he naturally sinks into a state of apathy, or endeavours by craft and cunning to over-reach his taskmasters. And thus, altogether, the just law of Providence comes in to punish the avarice and cruelty of those who trample upon the rights of their fellowmen. For while the strength of a country consists, humanly speaking, in the amount of its industrious population, with a full supply of the means of subsistenceevery man being free to employ his mind and his labour in the field which he thinks will be most profitablethe increase of a slave population is a source of positive weakness, as well as a growing cause of insecurity. Apart altogether from the evils and sinfulness of the system of slavery, as opposed to the great law of love which Christ came to enforce and establish, and apart from the danger which results from the preponderance of a class between whom and those above them there cannot be any real good-will and sympathy, slavery is a positive loss to a community in all respects, whether moral or social; and Esther spoke the truth when she denounced it as calculated to work damage to the king.Davidson.

Est. 7:1-2. So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen. And the king said again to Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom.

Haman, honoured with the kings society at the banquet of wine, might expect to be consoled for his late disappointment by new expressions of the royal favour. But soon did his hope of any remedy prove like the giving up of the ghost. He was brought to the banquet, not that he might enjoy the queens smiles, but that he might hear an accusation against himself, which touched his life, and to which he could not answer.
The king persisted in his kind sentiments towards Esther. For the third time, he promises, whatever her petition was, to grant it, even to the half of the kingdom. Who would not have been emboldened by a promise so often given? To have deferred the petition any longer would have but argued an ungrateful distrust of the kings sincerity. Let us remember how much greater encouragement we have to present our requests to God, and what distrust we discover of his faithfulness if we do not come before his throne of grace with boldness. No less than six times, in the compass of one sentence,* does our Lord Jesus assure us that our prayers shall be heard.

Est. 7:3. Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given at my petition, and my people at my request.

Esther at last ventured to bring forth her request. The nature of the case pressed her. The kings solicitations urged her. His kindness and his promises encouraged her. Unnecessary delays are dangerous, especially in matters of great importance.
The request was for her life, and the life of her people. The king was no less surprised at this petition than Festus was at hearing the accusation of the Jews against Paul. It was certainly not for any such thing as the king supposed. It never came into his mind that his beloved queen could have any occasion to present a petition to him for her life. Although by his own authority (but without his knowledge) a sentence of death had been pronounced against her, it must have astonished him to hear that she and her people were doomed to destruction; and it must astonish the reader of this history that the king, five years after his marriage with the queen, should have passed a sentence of death upon her whole nation without knowing it. Into such absurdities are princes led who are too indolent to look into their own affairs, and leave them to be managed without control by favourites, who have their own interests to serve, and their own passions to gratify.Lawson.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7

Est. 7:3-4. Philosopher and enraged emperor. Joseph charged his brethren that they should come no more in his sight, unless they brought Benjamin with them. We come at our peril into Gods presence if we leave his beloved Benjamin, our dear Jesus, behind us. When the philosopher heard of the enraged emperors menace, that the next time he saw him he would kill him, he took up the emperors little son in his arms, and saluted him with a Potesne, Thou canst not now strike me. God is angry with every man for his sins. Happy is he that can catch up his Son Jesus; for in whose arms soever the Lord sees his Son, he will spare him. The men of Tyre were fain to intercede to Herod by Blastus. Our intercession to God is made by a higher and surer way; not by his servant, but by his Son.Adams.

There is a notable story which is commonly by divines applied to our present purpose; it is concerning a law among the Molossians, where whosoever came to the king with his son in his arms should be accepted with favour, let his fault be what it might. So let a man be what he will before, yet if he come to God in Christ he cannot be thrust away.Janeway.

The full chest hidden. In the very last year of the Arctic expeditions, last year or the year before, they found an ammunition chest that Commander Parry had left there fifty years ago, safe under a pile of stones, the provisions inside being perfectly sweet and good, and eatable. There it had lain all those years, and men had died of starvation within arms length of it. It was there all the same. And so, if I may venture to vulgarize the great theme that I am trying to speak about, God has given us his Son, and in him all that pertains to life and all that pertains to godliness. My brothers, take the things that are freely given to men of God.McLaren.

The gipsy horse-stealer. There was a time in our countrys history when, according to our Draconic code, death was the penalty of horse-stealing. This awful sentence was passed on a poor gipsy who had been guilty of this crime, and no hope of mercy was held out. The young man, for he was but a youth, immediately fell on his knees, and with uplifted hands and eyes addressed the judge as follows: Oh, my lord, save my life! The judge replied, No, you can have no mercy in this world; I and my brother judges have come to the determination to execute horse-stealers, especially gipsies, because of the increase of the crime. The suppliant on his knees still entreated, Oh, my lord judge, save my life. Do, for Gods sake, for my wifes sake, for my childs sake! No, replied the judge; you should have thought of your wife and child before; and the poor fellow was literally dragged away from his earthly judge. Haman pleaded for his life, but he was taken to the gallows. Vast is the mercy of Heaven. At the eleventh hour the sinner repenting and confessing and believing may find mercy.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

VIII. Plea of Esther, Est. 7:1-10

A. Massacre Disclosed

TEXT: Est. 7:1-6

1

So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen.

2

And the king said again unto Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed.

3

Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request:

4

for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my peace, although the adversary could not have compensated for the kings damage.

5

Then spake the king Ahasuerus and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?

6

And Esther said, An adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and queen.

Todays English Version, Est. 7:1-6

And so the king and Haman went to eat with Esther for a second time. Over the wine the king asked her again, Now, Queen Esther, what do you want? Tell me and you shall have it. Ill even give you half the empire.
Queen Esther answered, If it please Your Majesty to grant my humble request, my wish is that I may live and that my people may live. My people and I have been sold for slaughter. If it were nothing more serious than being sold into slavery, I would have kept quiet and not bothered you about it; but we are about to be destroyedexterminated!
Then King Xerxes asked Queen Esther, Who dares to do such a thing? Where is this man?
Esther answered, Our enemy, our persecutor, is this evil man Haman!

COMMENTS

Est. 7:1-2 Promise: The king was anxious to hear Esthers request. She had piqued his curiosity by postponing what was her hearts desire. Now the king repeats his magnanimous promise, . . . even to the half of my kingdom it shall be performed . . . for the third time (cf. Est. 5:3; Est. 5:8). Note that the king addressed her as queen probably tacitly inviting her to make her request great and promising the certain granting of the request.

Est. 7:3-4 Petition: In spite of the urgency of the crisis and in spite of every good reason for Esther to be livid with anger at Haman, she controls her emotions and produces the proper protocol in addressing the king. Esthers petition is verbalized in only four Hebrew words, napheshi bishe elathi, veammi bebaqqashathi; translated into English, my life at my petition, and my people at my request. These are poignant to modern Jews. They have been preserved in Jewish traditional liturgy called the Selichoth. The Selichoth are penitential prayers in the form of liturgical poems recited on all fast days and days of special intercessions and during the penitential season which begins before Rosh Ha-Shanah (Jewish New Year) and concludes with the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). Esther showed great diplomatic skill in pleading for her own life first. The revelation that the life of his favorite was in danger would rouse any protective instinct the king might possess. Who would dare threaten the life of his queen? Then, perhaps for the first time, the king learned that Esther was a Jewess. She must now acknowledge her genetic origin if she is to secure the salvation of her kinsmen.

She does not hesitate; she does not mince words. She tells the king plainly that she and her people have been sold to be slaughtered. Is there an inference in her use of the word sold that the king himself is implicated in the massacre about to be executed?perhaps! What she most certainly does is tabulate the great loss in human resources to the king should this genocide be carried out. Apparently the Jews, even though a people in exile, and technically prisoners of war, were not looked upon as prisoners but were given privileges of freedom practically equal to Persian citizenship so long as they did not seek to disobey the laws of Persia. Esther indicates that she, at least, might have accepted a change of social status to that of bondage or slavery for her people. However, she is quick to point out, Hainans ten thousand talents of silver (Est. 3:9) would not be able to pay for the economic, intellectual, political, ethical loss to the Persian empire should the status of the Jews be changed to slave. The Jews evidently were making great contributions to the Persian society in all the areas mentioned above so long as they were given rights nearly equal to those of native Persians.

The plight of the Jews is not slavery, but imminent annihilation. Now the king realizes he is not only about to lose his queen, his favorite wife, he is also about to suffer irreparable loss of human resources to his empire if he allows this slaughter to take place.

Est. 7:5-6 Perpetrator: Xerxes immediately asks, Who is he . . . The Hebrew phrase is literally, . . . who is filled in his heart to do so? He knows very well that Haman secured the imperial decree to exterminate the Jews. There may have been a subtle attempt to make himself appear free of any involvement in the matter. Esther could have justifiably said, Thou art the man! He was involved. He accepted the money from Haman and put his royal seal to the decree. But Esther was interested more in saving her people than placing blame. Besides, the king had been told a false story by Haman alleging Jewish insurrection.

Esther put the blame where it really should beHaman. Her accusation was that Haman was a tzar (Hebrew for adversary, persecutor, vexer) and an ayav (Hebrew for enemy) and a raa (Hebrew for evil-doer, wicked-one). Esther does not have one word to say in favor of Haman. There were no mitigating circumstances to soften the enormity of his evil intention. His motives were completely wicked.

Haman was afraid. Well he might be. Now he was the condemned, and the Jews his condemners. Now it was his life in the balance. Now he knows how the Jews felt when they heard the royal edict for their massacreterrified! The justice of the One whose very Nature is Absolute Justice is about to be manifested. Someday, just as surely as that day of Haman, all the injustices and persecutions and slayings of all the faithful believers of God and His Son, Jesus Christ, will be corrected and vindicated. Final, complete eternal, absolute justice will be executed by the Judge of all the earth. The enemies of God and His people will receive what they have imposed upon Gods precious saints. The destruction of Haman and the salvation of the Jewish people is simply another historical demonstration of how the Creator intends to consummate all of historywith justice!

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

Esther Pleads for her People

v. 1. So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther, the queen, the drinking after the feast being regarded as the most important part of the entertainment.

v. 2. And the king, being more anxious even than on the day before to find out Esther’s request, said again unto Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, repeating his promise in practically the same words, What is thy petition, Queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee; and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom. She had but to name her desire, and the king would place all his resources at her command.

v. 3. Then Esther, the queen, all her pent-up emotions breaking forth with a sudden rush of words, answered and said, If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request; she pleaded with the king that her own life and that of her race might be spared, saved from the impending calamity;

v. 4. for we are sold, I and my people, a very fitting expression, since Haman had paid a large sum of money into the royal treasury to bring about the extermination of the Jews, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish, the heaping of the words showing the depth of her own emotions, and being intended to awaken similar feelings in the heart of the king. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, if the scheme had implied only slavery for herself and her people, I had held my tongue, unwilling to bother the king on that score alone, although the enemy could not countervail the king’s damage, that is, in the circumstances the punishment of the enemy must be considered less important than the averting of the damage which the king would suffer. Esther thus stated that all other considerations were secondary with her to the one great need of preserving the interests of the king, since all the gold which the enemy might pay would not compensate for the loss of the services which her people rendered to the empire.

v. 5. Then the King Ahasuerus, filled with the greatest agitation on account of the condition revealed by Esther’s words, answered and said unto Esther, the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so? literally, “Who has filled his heart to do so?” For it must have been a heart of extraordinary wickedness which could have thought out such a devilish scheme.

v. 6. And Esther, now fully sure of her ground, said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. It was a moment of most dramatic intensity when Esther thus denounced the man who was filled with such enmity toward the Jews. Then Haman was afraid, he trembled for fear, before the king and the queen, for he had some premonition of what his fate would be. Thus Esther placed her position and her very life in jeopardy for the sake of her people. In the same way all believers who occupy positions of honor and, power have the duty to use their influence in the interest of their fellow-believers.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION

AT THE SECOND BANQUET ESTHER DENOUNCES HAMAN, AND THE KING CONDEMNS HIM TO BE IMPALED ON THE CROSS PREPARED FOR HAMAN (Est 7:1-10). Esther had promised to make her true petition at the second banquet (Est 5:12), and now kept her word. When the king for the third time put the question, “What is thy petition, queen Esther? and what is thy request? It shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom,“ she opened all her mind. “If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it seem good to the king, let my life be given to me at my petition, and my people at my request” (verse 3). My supplication is for my own life and for that of my peopleno less a danger than this has moved me. “We are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, slain, made to perish.” Had it been anything less than this, had we been merely sentenced to be sold as slaves, I had kept my peace (verse 4); but that did not content “the enemy”we are, one and all, to suffer death. Esther’s answer must have made all clear to the kingthat his wife was a Jewess; that her life was forfeit, like those of her countrymen, by the terms of the decree; that Haman was “the enemy” whom she feared. But he will assume nothing, he will have all clearly set before him, and therefore he asks, “Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to act so?” Then comes Esther’s final declaration, clear, direct, unmistakable: “The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman” (verse 6), this man here before you, this man who eats our salt, and would take one of our lives. Fiercely angry, but confused and hesitating, the king rises from the banquet, and quits the room, stepping probably through an open door into the palace garden, Now is Haman’s last chance. Can he excite the pity of the queen? Can he prevail on her to intercede for him and make his peace with the king? He entreats, he supplicates, he “falls upon the couch” on which Esther reclines, in his eagerness to win her consent (verse 7.) At this moment the king re-enters the room (verse 8), and takes advantage .of Haman’s breach of etiquette to accuse him of rudeness to the queen. The attendants see in the accusation a sentence of death, and “cover Haman’s face” (verse 8). Then one of the eunuchs, who knows all the circumstances of the case, anxious for that kind of retribution which is known to moderns as “poetic justice,” suggests that the cross prepared for Mordecai will serve well for the execution of Haman. The king readily consents to the suggestion (verse 9), and Haman is impaled on the cross which he had erected for his enemy in the court of his own house (verse 10).

Est 7:1

The king and Haman came to banquet (marg. drink). In Persian feasts the solid dishes were few, and the time was mainly passed in drinking and eating dessert (Herod; 1:133).

Est 7:2

And the king said again. Esther had promised to let her real request be known at this banquet (Est 5:8). The king therefore once more gives her the opportunity. On the second day. On the second occasion of being entertained by Esther.

Est 7:3

Let my life be given me, etc. First of all, I ask at the king’s hands my own life, which is threatened (Est 4:13); secondly, I ask the life of my people, in whose sentence it is that I am involved. Some rhetorical skill is shown in separating the two, so as to make them correspond to the two clauses of the king’s address ”What is thy petition?” and “What is thy request?”

Est 7:4

For we are sold, I and my people. Haman has paid our price, has given ten thousand talents for us, and you, O king, have sold us to him. The reproach is covert, but clearly contained in the words; and so the king must have understood Esther. To be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. The use of three synonyms for one and the same thing is not mere verbiage, but very expressive. “We are sold, all of us, to be overwhelmed in one universal, promiscuous, unsparing destruction.” Although the enemy could not countervail the king’s damage. “Although, even in that case, the enemy (Haman) could not (by the payment that he has made) compensate the king for the damage that he would suffer by losing so many subjects.” So Gesenius, Rambach, Dathe, and others. But it is simpler, and Perhaps better, to understand the passage as Bertheau does: “for the enemy (Haman) is not worthy to vex the king,” or “is not worth vexing the king about.”

Est 7:5

Who is he? Ahasuerus asks the question to “make sure,” as we saynot that he could really be in any doubt. That durst presume. Rather, “that hath presumed” ( .LXX.).

Est 7:6

The adversary and enemy. Esther adds a second term of reproach”enemy”stronger than the one which she had used before (verse 4), to stir up the king to greater anger.

Est 7:7, Est 7:8

Ahasuerus rose up from the banquet “in his wrath”he could no longer remain quietand entered the palace garden, on which Esther’s apartment probably looked; partly, perhaps, as Bertheau says, to cool the first heat of his fury in the open air; partly to give himself time for reflection, and consider what he would do. Haman also rose from table, and standing near her, began pleading with Esther for his life, which he felt that she, and she alone, could save. Evil, he saw, was determined against him by the king; but a woman’s heart might be more tender, and he might perhaps move the queen to allay the storm that she had raised, and induce the king to spare him. He therefore pleaded with all the earnestness in his power, and at last threw himself forward on the couch whore Esther reclined, seeking perhaps to grasp her feet or her garments, as is usual with suppliants in the East. At this crisis the king returned, and misconstruing Haman’s action, or pretending to do so, exclaimed aloud, “Will he even force the queen with me in the house?” The terrible charge brought matters to a conclusionit was taken as a call on the attendants to seize the culprit and execute him. They covered his face, apparently, as that of a condemned man not worthy any more to see the light, according to a practice common among, the Romans (Liv; 1.26; Cic. ‘pro Rabir; 4.13) and the Macedonians (Q. Curt; ‘Vit. Alex.,’ vi. 8), but not elsewhere mentioned as Persian.

Est 7:9

Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king. Rather, “Harbonah, one of the chamberlains (eunuchs) that served before the king, said.” The “eunuchs that served before the king” were those of the highest grade, as appears from Est 1:10. Harbonah was one of them. Who had spoken good for the king. Or, “who spake good.” The reference is to his detection of the conspiracy (Est 2:22). In the house of Haman. This had not been mentioned previously. It adds one touch of extra barbarity to Haman’s character, that he should have intended the execution to take place within the walls of his own house.

HOMILETICS

Est 7:3

Spare our life!

Was ever so unexpected a request presented as this? When the king in his capricious favour offered his consort whatsoever she desired, even to the half of his kingdom, she asked what might have been naturally enough implored from the royal clemency by some wretched malefactor condemned to expiate his crimes by death. Give us, me and my people, our life! How strange a boon to beg! A queen high in favour, at a royal banquet, to ask that her life should be spared, and her kindred delivered from an unjust and violent endin fact, a massacre! Thus were the eyes of the king opened to the infamy of his minister, and thus was Esther made the agent in the redemption of Israel. In this petition we have an example of the request which, as suppliant sinners, we are bound to offer before the throne of grace. It implies

I. A SENSE OF DANGER. It is something to be alive to this. Esther had only lately come to know of the peril in which she and her countrymen and countrywomen stood. Awake to the impending danger, she was emboldened to urge her plea. So with us. A worse enemy than Haman has plotted against the children of men. A worse fate than massacre awaits those who fall into the snare of the foe. The word of God comes to us as a word of warning, urging us to “flee from the wrath to come.” Bondage is bad, but death is worse. And “the wages of sin is death.”

II. A HOPE OF DELIVERANCE. Esther had her fears; she had gone in, saying, “If I perish, I perish!” Yet she was encouraged by the gracious demeanour and the generous promise of the king. Therefore she said, “If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king.” We have no need of such “ifs” in our approach and our prayer to the King of heaven. He “delighteth in mercy.” “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Our hope in Divine mercy is well founded; for it is founded both upon Divine promises and upon the “unspeakable gift,” which is both the means and the pledge of the gift of pardon and the gift of life.

III. A DESIRE FOR THE SALVATION OF OTHERS. Esther was not so selfish as to ask that she and her kinsman, Mordecai, might be spared; her desire was that the whole nation of the Jews might be delivered. Similar was the attitude of Paul, who said, “My heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they may be saved!” When we seek salvation through Christ we cannot seek it for ourselves alone; we shall pray for our households, for our nation, for our race.

“Thy light, that on our souls hath shone

Leads us in hope to thee:

Let us not feel its rays alone

Alone thy people be.

O bring our dearest friends to God;

Remember those we love;

Fit them on earth for thine abode,

Fit them for joys above.”

Est 7:9, Est 7:10

The oppressed avenged.

This was indeed the handas the heathen would have said, of Nemesisas we Christians say, of a righteous God and Ruler. Upon the tree erected for the impalement of Mordecai, the cruel, bloodthirsty conspirator Haman was sentenced himself to die. “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make whips to scourge us.”

I. OFTEN WE OBSERVE, FOR A WHILE, INNOCENCE SUFFERING AND THREATENED, AND SIN POWERFUL, INSOLENT, AND TRIUMPHANT. Never was a more striking instance of this than was furnished at the court of the Persian king. Yet since the world began similar spectacles have been beheld.

II. A RIGHTEOUS AND ALMIGHTY RULER LOOKS DOWN FROM HIS THRONE AND OBSERVES SUCH SCENES. It is not we only who mark the inequalities and apparent wrongs of human life. An all-seeing Eye is ever upon the prosperous sinner and the afflicted saint. “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”

III. THE TIME WILL COME WHEN THE OPPRESSOR SHALL BE BROUGHT LOW, AND THE LOWLY AND RIGHTEOUS SHALL BE EXALTED. Perhaps, as in the case before us, in this world; assuredly in the general judgment. “The Lord reigneth;” and though he may have reasons we cannot fully understand for permitting the temporary reign of injustice, the Judge of all the earth shall assuredly do right.

Est 7:10

Wrath pacified.

Ahasuerus, unlike Jonah, “did well to be angry.” Haman had plotted against the life of his favourite queen, and one of his most serviceable friends, and against an unoffending community. And he had all but usurped the royal authority in causing the gallows to be reared on which be intended that Mordecai should be put to death. A righteous anger led to what would have been deemed in him, an arbitrary sovereign, a just act of retribution. And only when the judicial sentence was carried out against the offender was “the king’s wrath pacified.”

I. HUMAN ANGER.

1. This is sometimes righteous. “Be ye angry and sin not.” Indignation against wrong and wrath with the oppressor are virtues, without which man is scarcely human.

2. Anger is always to be treated with suspicion. We are all prone, like Ahasuerus, to be angry with what hurts ourselves, and our sense of our rights and dignity, rather than with what is evil in the sight of the Lord. Let us ask ourselves whether our anger is justifiableis sympathy with the Divine righteousness, or is mere selfish passion.

3. Anger should not be confounded with personal revenge. Wrath may be pacified by malevolent action, and then “sin lieth at the door.”

II. DIVINE ANGER.

1. God is angrywith the wickedevery day. The Scriptures represent him as regarding the evil-doing of men with displeasure and with wrath.

2. In the midst of wrath God remembers mercy. This is the message of the gospel, which does not conceal God’s indignation at sin or his displeasure with the sinner; but shows that he is just, and the Justifier of the believer in Christ. He condemns the sin in pardoning the sinner. “Thou wast angry; but thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst us.”

Lessons:
1. Rejoice that God is pacified and reconciled.

2. Accept his offers of mercy.

3. Seek to share his placable and forgiving spirit.

HOMILIES BY P.C. BARKER

Est 7:3, Est 7:4

The effectual prayer of a true priestess.

From the darker side of human nature and its painful suggestions we are glad to come out to the light and air of its more hopeful aspects. We are able to do this now without presumption or incaution. A brittle thread of hope for the very despondent is still a welcome sight to the eyes of those who look on. The plaintive prayer of the oppressed is touching not least to those who may happen to overhear. And the signs of a deep sorrow sinking almost to abject submission, rather than bearing the marks of a healthy resignation, will not fail to wake betimes our tenderest sympathy. These are the more inviting conditions under which the scene now presents itself to us. King Ahasuerus is present, on the grandeur of his throne, and with the dread authority of his golden sceptre. But it is not he who is the central figure. Esther is the central figure. Haman also is there, the would-be destroyer of a scattered nation of people, whose head is already bowed in the clay of punishment. But the eye shuns him, and flees past him to the vista which shows that same people reviving their hope and lifting again the head. And in the background of this scene there is one specially hopeful sign. It is not much that can be said at any time to the honour of Ahasuerus, yet we feel somewhat propitiated towards him when we remember that the arbitrary, imperious monarch has waited, and has even asked three times, for the prayer which Esther is now at last about to offer before him. Upon her he is bending a gracious eye, and to her he is lending an attentive ear. Esther has become awhile the priestess of her people. Let us consider her appearance in this character. We have from her lips

I. A PRAYER, THE SUBJECT OF WHICH WAS LIFE. The prayer asked for life. It asked the least, for anything less would be of no worth without this being secured first. It asked the least, but what signified everything beside. Esther’s prayer told its tale, and told it all, but told it most simply. No general phrases, no hasty sentences; each word had been weighed, not indeed to produce an artificial, but a transparent effect. The skill in it was the skill of sincerity and profound earnestness alone. There was art in it, but the art of artlessness, not of artfulness. This prayer for just life and breath for herself and the congregation of her people breathes a tone of wonderful humility, and has an extraordinary promise of content in it. The voice of it surely must have faltered through falling tears, or been choked in sobs, when, in the name of all that venerable nation, so long lifted above all nations of the earth, Esther adds that if it had been only a question of bondage, and of selling into such bondage of every man and woman of them, it was not her voice that should have been heard to deprecate, nor her lips that should have been parted in prayer to prevent it. But, she says, the case was one of greater, even of supreme extremity. They were soldto death. They were sold, in the words of the opportunely-quoted “decree,” “to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish.” Many drops of big tears had those words been to an unumbered multitude of sensitive and high-spirited people; but now were they not for the first time like drops of molten lead to the hearing of Haman? For him they were hot with terror, heavy with doom, while their effect upon Ahasuerus was electric. Who does not feel that a prayer for life must be respectfully listened to, at least?

II. A PRAYER THAT RESTED ON SACRIFICE. Esther does not purport to bring an outer sacrifice. A most real and precious sacrifice she does in fact bring. She was herself the sacrifice, and she knew it full well. Though with modesty, and as mute as could be under the circumstances, she does in a veiled manner utter the fact, and claim the plea. She pleads, as she had been taught and urged by Mordecai to plead, that she had been raised up by Providence for this hour, and “to this end” had been placed where of late she was found. There are many outer forms of sacrifice, but the principle at work here, and but thinly concealed, is the leading principle invoked in them all. So Esther makes this the plea: “If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king.” And “if she had found favour,” was it not the result of a most real intrinsic sacrifice of self?

III. A PRAYER WHICH HAD FOR ITS CHIEFEST BURDEN INTERCESSION. Esther was as “merciful” a priestess as she was a skilful one. She lets not go of the argument, the plea, the sacrifice which was found in herself; and she keeps this well in the foreground. But our ear can hear well that her prayer is really intercession. It is “my people” she has ever in sight, ever “deep graven on her heart.” Her people’s name is kept close linked with her own. She had no thought of permitting them to get separated from her. They and she had the prospect of being about to share and share alike the “decree,” and she takes care to pray and pray alike. This was necessary with all the old high priests under the law. Only of Christ was it not true, who “needed not to offer a sacrifice first for his own sins, and then for the people’s.” But this is the language of Esther: “Let my life and my people be given me: for we are sold, I and my people.“

IV. A PRAYER WHICH IN MANY RESPECTS IS A SUBLIME TYPE OF THE SOUL‘S PRAYER TO GOD. Within the four corners of Esther’s prayer there are some amazing analogies with the prayer of man to God, of the sinner trembling between fear and hope to the Saviour, of the helpless creature stricken with the sense of unparalleled need to the Possessor and Spirit of life. Esther’s prayer is indeed horror to our ears to hear, and grates on every highest sensibility of our nature, when (though no fault to her) we think of it as addressed to a fellow-creature. But we may now put this out of sight. The postulates of prayer are here

1. In the praying disposition of the suppliant. Here are the deep feeling, the just estimate of the critical character of the occasion, the overwhelming sense of the prize of life. There are also to be noticed the natural selection of simplest language, the choice of briefest arguments, and all these held in hand with a self-command almost inconceivableanother touch of a true analogy. All these are the things which characterise heavenward prayer where intense spiritual importunity exists.

2. In the absolute ownership, the omnipotent power, the sovereign sceptre of the being addressed. These do belong to him whom man addresses in prayer when he prays heavenward. And when these two postulates of prayer meet, rare indeed are the exceptions to that result which in one blessed word we call mercy.B.

Est 7:6

A changed attitude.

The priestess has risen from her knees, and appears suddenly transmuted into prosecutrix for herself and her people. The posture of prayer is exchanged for the full-drawn height. The suppliant attitude is replaced in a second by the defiant. Inclining arms, and hands clasped in prayer, are flung wide apart. The extended right hand points a finger of vigorous decision at Haman, that type of monstrous iniquity. The averted eye, shunning him, is to Ahasuerus, the present object of hope and trust. As one looks on from the distance, the tones scarcely heard just now have risen from suppliant earnestness to the pitch of indignant force and unmistaken denunciation. Such the transformation. And one token of genuineness, it was the work of an instant. The explanation of so violent a contrast and so rapid a change is the extreme opposite of any native fickleness, of any tendency to infidelity, of any unreality of heart. The opposed appearances are due to one fixed purpose, one imperious necessity, one unalterable religion. In the midst of most unpromising surroundings we seem to see here the long prostrate image of righteousness upraised again. Truth and goodness, oppressed and down-trodden without mercy, recover their standing. There rises in the centre before our vision what might seem a Divinely-sculptured form, for its beauty, its truth of outline, and its suddenness. Let us note some of its suggestions.

I. IT STANDS FOR THE PRESENT A SOLITARY TESTIMONY TO REBUKE INIQUITY. Such has been almost always at the first, and often for a while, the history of integrity, of truth, of conscience. A unit of these heavenly forms appears. The individual is raised up. Strength is made perfect in the weakness of one. One has to bear, and bears the brunt. One has to do the work, and does it. One has to set the example, and show the way, and leap into the gulf, and unfurl the banner, and uplift the standard. ONE HANGS UPON THE CROSS. And there stands here, in the person of Esther denouncing the “wicked adversary Haman,” one figure, absolutely alone, testifying rebuke of sin, and of the sin of the mighty. There are few positions more dangerous to the person who takes it than this. The one rebuker of the iniquity of the many, or of the powerful, needs to be sure of his cause, and supported by an informed conscience; otherwise he has little to expect from those on whom he visits rebuke.

II. THE ATTITUDE OF IT HAS SUCCEEDED IMMEDIATELY TO THAT OF PRAYER. HOW many of the greatest works have, in point of historical fact, grown out of prayer. They have taken form after the silence and meditation of prayer. They have grown out of the strength given in answer to strong supplication and tears. The illustrations which Scripture offers are many, and are the beacons for us. But the illustrations of all history, and of our own lives, far surpass them in number.

III. IT IS OF THE TYPE OF THE GENTLE AND WEAK AND DEPENDENT, THOUGH FOR ITS WORK ONE WOULD HAVE EXPECTED THE CONTRARY. At any time gentleness has its own proper force, tenderness its peculiar strength, and dependence can often summon a far vaster might to its service than any independence possesses of itself. But there are times when the feminine and the tender is manifestly endowed with an unusual force, and then it takes additional advantage from the background of weakness which belongs inherently to it. So now we are the more bound to study the reason of it when we find the eye of this one woman, with an unusual exercise of it, flashing a force of conviction which rends in twain the hard, gnarled courage of one of the worst of hearts, and shivers the flint. Tenderness is one thing, and strength another. Yet here we find the type of the one usurping the prerogative of the other, and to almost unequalled advantage. Not only “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings has God perfected praise;” but often does God choose “the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.” And so he brings it to light that it is not the force of man at all which really wins the victory, but the force of his truth, his goodness, his justice, HIMSELF.

IV. THIS IS A FORM WHICH DIVIDES SO MUCH OF THE WORLD AS IS IN ITS PRESENCE INTO TWO GREAT PARTS. We have here an humble instance of what the cross of Christ did when it stood betwixt the two other crosses. It showed the world divided into the penitent and the impenitent, the believing and the unbelieving. So now the world is forced into one of two classes: there is he who consents to the judgment of Esther and will execute it, and there is he who is convicted and condemned irresistibly by it. The one consents with the deepest emotions, the other suffers conviction with a fear and trembling that positively incapacitate him from governing his actions or taking the most ordinary precaution. When truth and justice are the vision, the background being really nothing else than the sky, then the immediate consequences to all beholders are either those of consenting sympathy, or of stricken amazement and confusion of face. Seldom was the work of severance better done than by Esther now. Her form seems to bring the whole scene to life again, as though we were there. And the more we gaze, the more we justly wonder at the achievement of the moment, which shows Esther with finger pointed at Haman, and saying, “The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.”

V. THIS IS THE FORM OF CONVICTION LEFT MISTRESS OF THE SITUATION. The position is evidently in many respects more impressive than that which found Nathan confronting David, and saying, “Thou art the man.” Nathan had a heart not callous, a conscience not lifelong injured, to deal withthose of one man. How different the conditions of Esther’s task! What a contrast this moment to the moment when, after the fasting of herself, her maidens, and her people, she presented herself within sight of the despot, nor breathed freely till the golden sceptre was extended to her! Such the change for those who watch and pray, who pray and fight, who know and follow and trust the good that is above. They come to a point sometimes where all seems endangered, but prayer and trust and work convert that very time into the date of an exceeding great moral victory. Up to this time Esther had been a queen but in name; now she was a queen in deed and of a truth. The form of Esther is a very faint type, but a very true prophecy, of that great victory, which is ever drawing nearer, which shall show wickedness prostrate, righteousness supreme.B.

HOMILIES BY F. HASTINGS

Est 7:7

Moments that flash.

“And the king arising.; went into the palace garden.” Esther spoke plainly enough when she turned and charged as her “enemy this wicked Haman.” Her words seemed almost incredible to the king. Haman watches to see how they are taken. The king rises in anger from the table and steps out into the garden. Here he paces to and fro meditating. He is wise to have a few quiet moments before deciding as to his action. Perhaps they were only moments of delay before announcing sentence. They were also moments in which would flash upon him

1. The reckless character of his own dealings with an innocent and captive people.

2. His complicity in the designs of a murderous and greedy wretch.

I. THERE ARE MOMENTS WHICH COME TO US AT DIFFERENT PERIODS WHICH FLASH LIKE THOSE IN THE PALACE GARDEN. We have had some problem to work out; or we have been going through a series of circumstances, the end of which we could not comprehend, when at one point all becomes clear. We are like men on board a vessel when the fog lifts and shows them to be near, unexpectedly, to some well-known headland. Or we have “tracked” through a dense forest, and have come to its edge at last, when a wide view opens out before us. These moments come to the youth when a friend or parent dies; or when he first finds out how faithless is some professed friend. Or they come when, later in life, we listen to some searching sermon; or when affliction falls upon us. To some they come most unexpectedly, when engaged in ordinary affairs. The Holy Spirit uses such moments. Paul knew what such moments meant when, outside Damascus, the light flashed from heaven, and he saw himself in his real state.

II. IT IS WELL TO TAKE TIME FOR MEDITATION AFTER ANY SUDDEN REVELATION. When angry we should pause. He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city. On the meditation of a few moments how much may depend. Here it was the deposition and execution of a prime minister, and the salvation of a whole nation.H.

Est 7:8

The covered countenance.

“As the word went out of the king’s mouth they covered Haman’s face.” A hint is sufficient for the king’s servants. It is to them a matter of little import whether they robe Haman for exaltation or cover his face for execution; whether they lead him to a banquet or to a gallows. Their duty is to obey their king. So with the angels; they minister for joy or punishment.

I. TO BE IN DISGRACE WAS TO BE UNWORTHY TO SEE THE KING. Nathaniel Hawthorne represented, in one tale, a man as wearing ever a crape veil, and in death wishing it to be kept over his face, because he felt his own unworthiness.

II. TO BE CONDEMNED OF GOD WOULD RENDER US UNABLE TO SEE HIM. As light dazzles, so God’s purity alone would blind us. Our own sin will be the covering. When death shall throw his black pall over us, unless mercy lifts it, our own hands will never tear it away. We should examine our hearts, and see whether there is any cherished sin which may eventually lead to our rejection and condemnation. Let there be no “veil” on our hearts as on those of Israel, that there may be no covering our faces as Haman’s was covered.H.

Est 7:9

Righteous retribution.

“Hang him thereon.” Short time elapsed between the discovery of Haman’s crime and his suffering for it. He had observant enemies around. Those who had been willing to fawn upon him while he was in power are ready to turn against him on his fall. They let the king know of the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai. “Hang him thereon,” says the king, with respect to the builder.

I. WE CANNOT FAIL TO BE STRUCK WITH THE SUITABILITY OF THE PUNISHMENT TO THE CRIME. Haman “hoisted with his own petard.” Into the trap he digged for another he fell. See another fitting illustration of this in Adoni-bezek, who, having disabled seventy-two by the excisions of thumbs and great toes, was himself served in the same way, and confessed, “As I have done, so God hath requited me” (Jdg 1:7).

II. IN THE FUTURE THE SUITABILITY OF THE PUNISHMENT TO THE SIN OF THE LIFE WILL BE CLEARLY SEEN. It will be the outgrowth naturally of our sin, and not an arbitrary infliction on the part of God. Despisers of parents, oppressors of the weak, the intemperate and sensual, will find how fitting is the retribution to the sin, and will have to confess, as Haman must have done in his heart, that it is just.H.

HOMILIES BY D. ROWLANDS

Est 7:10

The terrible consummation of a wicked life.

Our first impulse on reading these words is to praise Ahasuerus for his faithful administration of justice; for if ever a man deserved summary vengeance at the hands of the law, it was Haman. But a little reflection must correct our judgment. The whole transaction reveals the fickle, passionate, unscrupulous disposition of the tyrant. Without any apparent reason, or at least without any regard to his merits, he had made a special favourite of Haman, and had lavished upon him all the honours at his command; and now, in a fit of uncontrollable rage, he hurries him, without any pretence of a trial, to a felon’s death. Flatterers are the most unreliable of men. Those who lick the dust at your feet in prosperity are the most likely to tread upon your neck in adversity. There is but one step between “Hosanna to the Son of David,” and “Away with him! crucify him!” The king’s servants, who vied with each other in their obsequiousness to Haman while he enjoyed their master’s favour, were now so eager to execute him that they could scarcely wait for the sentence. The text is in many respects one of the most striking in the whole Bible, and is fraught with weighty and permanent lessons. Note

I. THE TERRIBLE CONSUMMATION OF A WICKED CAREER. It sometimes happens that the ungodly flourish in the world to such an extent that our faith in eternal righteousness is staggered. We could point to men whose road to power was paved with injustice, treachery, and bloodshed. Many an upright heart, crushed for its very uprightness, has poured forth, in contemplating such men, the despairing complaint of the Psalmist, “Verily! have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocency.” But a careful observation of facts would doubtless show that even in this world excessive wickedness frequently brings about its own requital. Pharaoh perished in the Red Sea; the dogs licked the blood of Ahab in Samaria; Herod was eaten of worms upon his throne. There are circumstances about the case of Haman which separate it from all others, but in its essential features it is but one among thousands. Three elements in Haman’s character may be mentioned which, while they contributed to his temporary success, led to his final ruin.

1. Boundless ambition.

2. Boundless pride.

3. Boundless cruelty.

II. THE IGNOMINIOUS EXTINCTION OF AN INFAMOUS RACE. Some think that Haman was an Amalekite; and we are told that the Amalekites, for their hostility to the Israelites, had been singled out for retribution. The Lord said to Moses, “I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.” The threat was not carried out at once; for ages the footsteps of justice seemed to linger, and the delay had only intensified their malignity. But here the last of the race dies upon the gallows, for after this they disappear altogether from history. Piety runs in families, and so does wickedness. God’s blessing rests upon families, and so does his curse. This is not due to haphazard, caprice, or favouritism; but there is always a definite cause for it. Think of the Stuarts of England, and the Bourbons of France. By trampling upon the rights of the people, and seeking self-aggrandisement at the expense of righteousness, they sinned no less against Heaven than against humanity. But, as if pursued by an inexorable fate, they were hurled from the summit of power to the ignoble obscurity which they so richly deserved. Let us beware of committing “presumptuous sins,” lest they should taint our families, and doom them as well as ourselves to eternal disgrace.

III. THE SIGNAL DEFEAT OF A HEARTLESS PURPOSE. The incident before us is one of those incidents which cannot be accounted for except on the supposition of an overruling Providence. We perceive cunning baffled, crime punished, impiousness abashed in such a wonderful way, that to attribute the whole affair to mere chance would be the height of folly.

1. Haman was degraded just when he thought of reaching the goal of his ambition. The highest dignities of the kingdom, next to those enjoyed by the king, were his already. His vanity, his love of authority, his fondness for display had nothing to desire. And now the only annoyance that disturbed him was about to be removed the people which he hated was about to be annihilatedand he was about to become absolute master of the situation. Henceforth he would be admired, courted, envied by all the world. But, alas, it was not to be. “There are many devices in a man’s heart; nevertheless the counsel of the Lord, that shall stand.” Haman had left that counsel out of his calculation; hence, when he thought of attaining the climax of honour, he was plunged into the abyss of shame. Prosperity is the worst thing that can happen to the wicked man. Adversity may mellow his heart, and produce reflection, repentance, and reformation; but a course of unbroken triumph only hardens his heart, and hastens the inevitable catastrophe. “For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape.”

2. Haman perished on the very gallows that he had erected for another. This was probably the bitterest ingredient in his cup of woe. Imagine his chagrin, his confusion, his despair, when he found that the huge instrument of death which he had set up at such great expense to punish his unbending antagonist was to be employed for no other purpose than his own execution! And who knows but that Mordecai himself was among the crowd who witnessed the scene? There was an awful fitness about the punishment. After-ages have with one consent pronounced it just. No utterance commends itself to universal approval with greater force than this: “Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein; and he that rolleth a stone, it will return upon him.” We are reminded here that as virtue is its own reward, so sin is its own punishment, Haman died on a gallows of his own construction; so shall every impenitent sinner perish through his own waywardness. “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee.”R.

HOMILIES BY W. DINWIDDLE

Est 7:1-6

Accused and convicted.

I. TARNISHED GILT. Haman would hardly go “merrily” to Esther’s second banquet. His heart would be heavy with the day s disappointments, and his ears would be haunted with the gloomy vaticinations of his friends. The glory of the honour which had so inflated him was dimmed. Worldly delights that are ardently anticipated may be robbed of their promise even before they are touched.

II. WHETTED CURIOSITY. The king’s desire to hear Esther’s petition grew with delay. For a third time he asked her to speak, and encouraged her by the largest promise. Idle curiosity is a weakness and a snare. There may be a legitimate and even dutiful curiosity, and that too in connection with individual cases. A loving desire to give help will often justify even a seeming intrusion into the privacy of a friend’s sorrow. A sympathetic word may cause a secretly-burdened heart to open and relieve itself, and thus give an opportunity of affording it the benefit of wise counsel and timely succour. Our Saviour has “a fellow-feeling with our infirmities,” and desires the full confidence of his people, that he may help them in their “time of need.”

III. UNBURDENED DESIRE. The queen knew that the time had come for her to speak. She could no longer delay without injuring her cause. If it is well to know when to be silent, it is also well to know when to speak. It is folly to expose a great matter to a heart that may be cold or hostile. Esther’s matter was exceedingly great, and she could not subject it to any needless risk by a premature disclosure. But now the king was so favourable to herself, and so interested in her secret, as to make it plain that she must tell all. So she laid before the king the weighty burden she had been silently carrying. What a relief to open a secret sorrow to those who can feel for us and give us an effective solace! We can at all times speak to God. Whatever barriers of fear and distrust stand between us and him are of our own making. The Redeemer of men is ready to share our every burden and to exceed our largest desires.

IV. POWERFUL PLEADING. Much wisdom and much pathos mark the words in which Esther presented her petition. Observe

1. How heroically she united herself with her people. It was for her own life and the life of her people that she prayed. That the queen was a Jewess would be startling news to the king and Haman, and would certainly quicken the fears of the latter. Esther calmly elected to be numbered with the Israelites, and to die with them if they were to die. She only cared to live if they were permitted to live. It was a strong way of putting the matter before the king. It is better to suffer with God’s people than to share the splendours of their enemies. The example of Moses is suggested (Heb 11:24-26). That of Joshua too (Jos 24:15). Especially that of Christ, who made himself one with us that he might redeem us from evil.

2. How energetically she described the doom contrived for her people. She used the very words of the royal proclamation”To destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish”showing the ruthless determination of the enemy. Then there was an indignant allusion to the bribe. “We are sold, I and my people,” to be thus destroyed. A further sting to the listening Haman. Hatred of wrong and pity for the oppressed give force to the tongue of the advocate, when it is free to speak. Strong feeling can only express itself in strong words. Direct and plain are the utterances of a heart that is breaking with a desire to save the innocent. Happy are the victims of evil who have an advocate like Esther. She reminds us of the great Advocate, the one Mediator between God and man. Our elder Brother, the vanquisher of the giant oppressors of our race, ever works and pleads for his people (Heb 7:25; 1Jn 2:1).

3. How pathetically she pleaded the submissive spirit of herself and her race. If it bad been only bondage that was threatened she would have been silent. Her scattered people were used to hardships, and bad been trained to quiet submission. Yet, as she gently insinuated, even if the enemy had been content to reduce the Israelites to serfdom and poverty, he would not have saved the king’ from damage. A free, orderly, and industrious people was of more value to the state than a race of slaves. This was a far-sighted truth much in advance of her day. Insubordination of peoples has generally been the result of oppressive rule. Nations have been wonderfully patient under all sorts of unjust exactions and crushing burdens; but there is a point beyond which the most patient submission cannot go. All are free in the kingdom of God. No oppressions there. Citizens are sons (Joh 1:12; Rom 8:14, Rom 8:15, Rom 8:21).

V. RESPONSIVE EMOTION.. The pleading of Esther. instantly roused within the king’s mind a turbulence of feeling. “Who or where is the man who durst presume in his heart to do so?” Was he ignorant of the decree against the Jews? Had he sealed it in a careless or drunken moment? Or was he thinking of Haman and his presumption when he cried, “Who or where is the man?” We cannot say. All we know is that he yielded himself up to the power of Esther’s words. We learn several things here.

1. That the worst men may retain a certain amount of good which only requires occasion to be inflamed into indignation against heartless sin. There is a point in every heart which the truth may peradventure reach. This should be encouragement to all workers for God.

2. That it is a good thing to be susceptible to the accents of injured innocence. We should cherish sympathy with the weak suffering, and be ever ready to set our faces against injustice and violence.

3. That false friends are worse than avowed enemies. Flatterers like Haman, who use the power they acquire for selfish and pernicious ends, are more to be feared than rebels or conspirators. A smooth tongue may work greater evil than an unsheathed sword.

4. That we should be thankful for awakenings to unconscious peril, even though they cover us with shame. It is less disgraceful to confess our weakness and folly than by persistence in them to allow wickedness to run its course. It may be noble to welcome a light that condemns us, but it can only be despicable and ruinous to close our eyes against the truth in order to shield our pride.

VI. RESISTLESS ACCUSATION. Esther’s opportunity had come at last. “Who is the man?” cried the excited king. There is the man, answered the queen, pointing her finger to her second guest. “The adversary and the enemy is this wicked Haman.” The charge fell like a thunderbolt on the culprit; a deadly fear seized his heart. There he stood convicted, speechless and trembling. We think of David before God and his prophet Nathan: “Thou art the man” (2Sa 12:7). The avenger may wait, but his time will come. God is long-suffering, but even his patience may be exhausted. D.

Est 7:7-10

Judgment.

I. A SILENT WRATH. Feeling may be too deep for utterance. The king’s silence was ominous. He could not speak for the moment in answer to Esther’s charge, but neither could he sit still; and when he rose and went out Haman felt that the king had abandoned him. Whenever God turns from an evildoer, and ceases to speak to him, the end is not far off. It is a solemn thought that God may thus withdraw his mercy, and leave a sinner to himself. That is fatal.

II. A VAIN PRAYER. In the absence of the king Haman besought his life at the hands of Esther. But the queen was now powerless. She could render no help to the intended destroyer of her race. In presence of the Judge prayer will be too late. Vainly shall the impenitent cry to the mountains and rocks to fall on them and hide them from “the wrath of the Lamb” (Rev 6:15-17).

III. A SIGN OF DOOM. On his return from the garden the king saw Haman at the feet of Esther in an agony of imploration. He uttered a harsh word at the sight, and perhaps gave a signal, whereupon his attendants “covered Haman’s face.” A sign of death I Judgment had been pronounced, and the great man had fallen. In a moment the brilliant fabric which wickedness had reared crumbled into the dust. How many are thus startled by the signs of approaching death! How many will be similarly overtaken in “the day of the Son of man!”

IV. A PITILESS SUGGESTION. Harbonah’s name is memorable and blessed among the Jews; but his words seem servile and heartless. He and his companions had probably fawned on the favourite whilst he was in power; but now, in his eagerness to please the wrathful king, he suggests the infliction of a special ignominy. No confidence can be placed in the sycophants of the great. When the wicked fall their friends turn into enemies. The same motives that make men flatter them in prosperity make men insult them in adversity. Nor will the impenitent derive any advantage before the tribunal of God from the things or beings in which they trusted on earth. All refuges will then fail them. Their boasted defences will prove a mockery.

V. AN APPROPRIATE END. When Harbonah spoke of the gallows in Haman’s house, the king said, “Hang him on it.” And so Haman was hanged on the very gibbet which he had prepared for Mordecai. A most fit yet terrible retribution l The would-be murderer was “hoist with his own petard.” Evil contrived against the innocent recoils with deadly force on the contriver. The person who maliciously injures receives more harm than the person on whom he inflicts injury. The wicked themselves fall into the pit which they dig for the righteous (Psa 7:15, Psa 7:16).

VI. AN APPEASED WRATH. The execution of Haman gave quiet to the king’s mind. Justice had been done, and the way opened up for a great deliverance. The mediation of the queen had been effective. The enemy of Israel had been destroyed. We have little sympathy with the king in connection with the death of Haman; yet his action serves to remind us of the justice and mercy of God. The Bible tells us of a Divine wrath against sin, and of the way in which that wrath satisfied itself. Justice was appeased and sin was punished and slain in the sacrifice of God’s Son. On the cross justice and mercy meet in amity. “He who knew no sin was made sin for us” (2Co 5:21). “Christ suffered for sins, the just for the unjust” (1Pe 3:18). And now the salvation of a doomed race is heralded by the gospel through- out the earth (Isa 55:1; Mat 11:28, Mat 11:30; Joh 3:14-18).D.

HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON

Est 7:1-7

A crisis, a plea, and a deliverance.

We have here

1. A most serious crisis. “So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen” (verse 1). The culminating point in this great issue is now reached. The lives of the chosen people of God throughout all Persia, in all her provinces, hang on this interview between an arbitrary sovereign, his wife, and his minister. Except the wife shall prevail over the crafty and all-powerful statesman, the race must die by one cruel blow.

2. A powerful plea. At the king’s invitation (verse 2) the queen makes her appeal in simple but forcible language. She appealed

(1) to his affection for herself: “Let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request” (verse 3);

(2) to his pity for a suffering people: “We are sold,” and sold not even to bitter bondage, but “to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish” (verse 4);

(3) to his sense of what was politic: the loss of so many subjects would be greatly to “the king’s damage” (verse 4).

3. A great deliverance (verses 5, 6). Having readily consented to the slaughter of thousands of his subjects, the king with equal readiness consents to their lives being spared. He appears to have been shocked at the idea of what was contemplated; but he had not reckoned on the sanguinary decree including his own wife in its evil range. We learn

I. THE MYSTERIOUSNESS OF GOD‘S GOVERNMENT. Why the Divine Ruler should allow his Church to come into such terrible danger, barely escaping from utter destruction; why he should sometimes permit such fearful atrocities to be inflicted, not interposing, as here, to save them, but allowing the beheadings, burnings, burials alive, imprisonments, etc. on which so many skies have looked down in different centuries; why he should allow a Haman of ancient times, or an Alva or Claverhouse of more recent times, to wreak such cruelties on the people of God, and why he should choose such instruments to avert and overthrow as one woman’s beautythis we cannot tell. God does and suffers many things which we do not understand. He declines to interpose when we should have confidently expected his aid. The truth is that he is too high and too great, and we are too low and too small to understand him. “His way is in the sea, his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known.” “His ways are past finding out.” We are but very little children before him, and must wait awhile; we shall understand hereafter what we know not now (Joh 13:7).

II. THE GOOD WORK THAT ONE WEAK VOICE MAY DO. Little did Esther think, when she was first accepted as queen, that she would do a good work for her race which should never be forgotten. But the hour came for her to make a great attempt; she made it, and succeeded. Her success was due to her courage and her charms and her address. But these were the outcome of a life of virtue and piety. By the exercise of these she had “bought up the opportunity” (redeemed the time), and “when the occasion came she was equal to the occasion.” Wisely use the present, and when the hour of opportunity comes you will be ready to speak, to strike, to suffer, or to save.

III. THE UNENVIABLENESS OF RANK AND POWER WITHOUT WISDOM. Judging from the notion of mere worldliness, we should say that Abasuerus occupied the most enviable position in Persia. As king of that great empire, he held in his hand all that men usually desire. But judging from a distance, impartially, and in the light of God’s truth, how little should we care to be such as he was. How unlovely the haste and passion of the man. Hungrily seizing the opportunity of reimbursing his treasury, he makes a decree which would have the effect of slaughtering a race, of ultimately weakening his resources, and of taking the life of his own queen. Happily, but accidentally, in the right mood when the chance is given him of retrieving his error, he turns with characteristic passion and precipitancy on his favourite minister, and wreaks vengeance on his head. Moral littleness in high places is very pitiable.

IV. THE UNSUSPECTED RANGE OF OUR ACTIONS IN THEIR EFFECTS. How amazed was Ahasuerus to find that in striking at the Jews he was aiming a blow at his own wife, and so at himself. All our actions, good and bad, stretch further and come closer home than we realise at the time when we do them.C.

Est 7:8-10; Est 8:1, Est 8:2

Reversals.

Human life is well likened to the river which glides smoothly and evenly along from the spring where it rises to the sea into which it falls. But it is also well compared to the wheel which takes to the bottom that which was at the top, and to the top that which was at the bottom. There is much of orderly and regular procedure; there is much also of change and reversal. Seldom, indeed, does human life present before our eyes the picture of so signal and complete a reversal as that told in the text. Haman, the favourite, the prime minister of state, the all-powerful courtier, the wealthy and strong noble, hanged on the gallows; Mordecai, the despised Jew, whose life was seriously threatened, and likely to end most ignominiously, promoted to highest favour and greatest influence with the king. These reversals were not mere accidents; they illustrate the truths

I. THAT, SOONER OR LATER, SUCCESSFUL SIN WILL BE OVERTHROWN (Est 8:9, Est 8:10). We all “see the prosperity of the wicked,” as the Psalmist did, and, like him, we are grieved and troubled by it. But we must be like the patient patriarch, and wait to see “the end of the Lord.” If we wait long enough we shall find that sin meets with its due award. The guilty empire founded in usurpation and bloodshed, and maintained by violence and corruption, goes down and goes out in ignominy and disaster. The guilty adventurer rears his head for many years, but misfortune and misery overtake him in time. Haman goes to the gallows at last.

“The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small;
With patience he stands waiting, but with exactness grinds he all.”

The truth is, that sin carries in itself the seeds of its own discomfiture; these must germinate, and grow, and bear fruit in time. “I have seen the wicked in great power,” etc.; but wait awhile, and “lo, he is not: he has passed away” (Psa 37:35).

II. THAT, SOONER OR LATER, PERSECUTED RIGHTEOUSNESS WILL TRIUMPH (Est 8:1, Est 8:2). Haman has gone to the gallows, and now Mordecai takes the chief chair of state. Honesty proves the true policy in the end. Purity, uprightness, integrity, kindnessthese have in them the power and prophecy of ultimate success. Let the godly man who is oppressed by iniquity bear his burden, and also his testimony; let him patiently pursue his course, looking, up and looking on, and somewhere in the. future the crown of a pure success awaits himif not here, hereafter. “Weeping may endure for a night”possibly a long nightbut “joy comes in the morning.” It may be the morrow of the distant future, but it will then be the beginning of a cloudless and endless day.

III. THAT SIN CONTINUALLY SUFFERS FROM ITS OWN HAND. “They hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai” (Est 8:10). Into the very trap he laid for another his own foot fails. We learn

1. That sin frequently brings on itself the very evil it designed for others. A man bent on ruining another (by legal measures, or unfair under-selling, etc.) often impoverishes himself. A man in his wrath goes out to slay, and is himself the slain one. The accuser of others is condemned by others, and suffers general reprobation.

2. That sin invariably suffers as the consequence of the evil which it does. If it does not endure the very evil it designs, it does bear its penalty. No man can hurt another without being hurt himself. The chief victim, the principal sufferer from sin, is the sinner. Every act of evil, every thought of sin, inflicts a damaging wound, more or less obvious, in the breast of the evil-doer, in the heart of the sinner. Contrast with this stern truth the obverse

IV. THAT GOODNESS ALWAYS BLESSES THE AGENT AS WELL AS THE OBJECT. It is not mercy only, but every kind of work, that “blesses him that gives and him that takes.” “Give, and it shall be given unto you.” “He that watereth shall himself be watered.”C.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

B.ON THE VERY GALLOWS CAUSED TO BE ERECTED FOR MORDECAI, HAMAN, ACCUSED BY ESTHER, IS HIMSELF HUNG

Est 7:1-10

I. Esther pleads for her People, and accuses Haman. Est 7:1-6

1So [And] the king and Haman came to banquet [drink] with Esther the queen.2And the king said again [also] unto Esther, on the second day, at the banquet [feast] of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? [ask,] and it shall be granted [given to] thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the 3half of the kingdom [ask to the half of the kingdom, and it shall be done]. Then [And] Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favor in thy sight [eyes], O king, and if it please [be good upon] the king, let my life [soul] be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: 4For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed [for one to destroy], to be slain [to smite], and to perish [cause to perish]: but if [and provided] we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue [hushed], although [for] the enemy [adversary] could not 5countervail [is not equalling] the kings damage. Then [And] the king Ahasuerus answered [said],1 and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he [is he this], and where is he [is this he]2, that durst presume in his heart [whose heart has filled him] to do ?Song of Solomon 6 And Esther said, The [a man]3adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.4 Then [And] Haman was afraid [terrified] before the king and the queen.

II. Ahasuerus, extremely enraged, causes the Death of Haman. Est 7:7-10

7And the king, arising [arose] from the banquet of wine in his wrath, went into the palace-garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life [soul] to [from] Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined [finished] against him by [from with] the king. 8Then [And] the king returned out of the palace-garden into the place of the banquet [feast] of wine; and Haman was fallen [falling] upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he [Is it to] force the queen also before [with] me in the house? As the word went out of the kings mouth, [and] they covered Hamans face. 9And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains [eunuchs], said before the king, Behold also, the gallows [tree] fifty cubits high,5 which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken [spoke] good for [upon] the king standeth in the house of Haman. Then [And] the king 10said, Hang him thereon. So [And] they hanged Haman on the gallows [tree] that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then [And] was the kings wrath pacified [subsided].

TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL

1 [Est 7:5. The Chaldaizing influence upon the language is evident in this vague repetition of the verb , which eventually led to its use in the sense of commanding.Tr.]

2 [Est 7:5. The pron. here very nearly approaches a copula.Tr.]

3 [Est 7:6. here is more than the ordinary apposition of class; it is almost a demonstrative like iste. Tr.]

4 [Est 7:6. The original is very intense: Haman, this bad man. Doubtless her finger pointed to him.Tr.]

5 [Est 7:9. The position of this clause in the original is more striking, being at the end of the sentence. Tr.]

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Est 7:1-6. What here follows seems a thing to be expected as a matter of course, yet the manner of its occurrence, particularly the rapidity with which events succeed each other, as well as their magnitude and importance, imparts a certain charm to the narrative. Esther now steps unreservedly forward at the banquet that she has prepared and to which she has invited Haman (in Est 6:14), and boldly presents her accusation and request. The king is quite prepared to give a correct decision in the case.

Est 7:1. So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen. stands for: in order to participate in the. The drinking after the feast, (comp. Est 5:6) was probably regarded as the chief matter at the time. But Esther petitioned (Est 7:3): let my life be given at my petition, and my people at my request.The is the so-called pretii, about, for. Her petition is seemingly the ransom which she proffers: my people means in short: for the life of my people. She bases her petition in Est 7:4 on the words: For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed,etc.She has all the more occasion for the expression , since she and her people were left to the mercy of Haman for the sum of money he had promised the king if the Jews should be destroyed (Est 3:9; Est 4:7). and the following active infinitives are clearly substitutes for the passive form, precisely as in the royal order (Est 3:13).6 She also adds, however: But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the kings damage, and she thereby indicates that it concerns not only her own, but also the kings interest. , contracted from , as in Ecc 6:6, also common in the Aramaic language, introduces an event in a hypothetical manner as being more desirable, and is followed by the perfect, if instead another event than the one anticipated has occurred. In the next sentence usually the perfect follows with consec. Here, however, the is absent because Esther does not desire to say what she would do, but what she would have done: I had held my tongue, although, etc. The sentence: , means according to R. Sal. ben-Melech and Rambach: The enemy can by no means equal, compensate or make good by his money the loss which the king suffers by our destruction Similar also are the views of Clericus and others, who suggest an intermediate thought enlarging the meaning, such as: But I dare not be silent. Though even such an addition were in itself not doubtful, still in the Kal, with , does not mean compensate (to compensate), but to be equal to, or to be worth as much as some other thing (comp. Pro 3:15; Pro 8:11). The assumption of Gesenius, that the expression: The enemy is not equal to the damage to the king, is only another form of sentence for: The enemy cannot make good the damage to the king, is very improbable. Hence Bertheau and Keil interpret it: The enemy is not worthy of the kings damage, i.e. is not of sufficient account that I should grieve or distract the king. They insist that does not only mean pecuniary loss, as is commonly assumed from Ezr 4:13; Ezr 4:22, but according to the Targums means also bodily harm (comp. Targ. Psa 91:7; Gen 26:11; 1Ch 26:22). Still the thought thus gained is not quite satisfactory. It would have mattered little, not whether Haman, but whether the Jews were worthy of the kings displeasure. Certain it is that Esther expressed herself in very brief words, and such as implied more. Perhaps we may enlarge their sense thus: I would have held my tongue; for the punishment of the enemy is not worthy of, is less important than the averting of the damage which the king will suffer, now that the Jews are ordered to be destroyed; but this he would not have suffered if they had been sold as slaves, and hence had realized a large sum. In this way the chief thought is made to be the loss which the king would sustain if a whole people were destroyed; and Esthers keeping out of sight her special concern about the destruction of the Jews, which would have been very shrewd in her under any circumstances, becomes particularly so in the present instance and before Ahasuerus. The ancient translators, it seems, were at a loss here, and hence offer us but little help.

Est 7:5 with its twice-repeated : Then the king Ahasuerus answered, and said unto Esther the queen, by its solemn title: The king to the queen, indicates the great importance of these words and of the moment. The king of the great empire here addressed her, who was a daughter of her people, but also the queen in this great realm. At the same time the twice-repeated: he said, reveals the agitation of the king, to which also corresponds the double question: Who and where is he? : that durst presume in his heart to do so.We might expect it to read: Who had filled his heart, viz. with the thought to do so. But it is the heart from which proceed the thoughts, and which determines the rest of the man to conclusive purposes (Isa 44:20; Ecc 8:11; Mat 15:19).7

Est 7:6. Esther still hesitates to name Haman, but at last brings the predicate into prominence: The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.She does not say: The evil-disposed person, viz. of whom she is speaking, but without the article, , in order to make as strikingly prominent as possible the conception of the man so inimical. Haman trembled; for means more than that he was simply alarmed (comp. 1Ch 21:30; Dan 8:17, and , Psa 88:17; Job 6:4).

Est 7:7-10. Thereupon the king became at once terribly angry. Because of his agitation he went aside for a moment, but soon returned, and at once gave order for the execution of Haman. Into the palace-garden (comp. Est 1:5), which was the place to which he retired. This is strikingly expressed by . He did this in order to recover from the first burst of anger, and to consider what was to be done with Haman. Haman remained standing to make request of his life to Esther., properly, because of his life ( with , as in Est 4:8), since he saw that on the part of the king there was no more hope for him if Esther would not intercede for him; strictly: that evil was determined against him by the king,fully determined ( as in 1Sa 25:17; Ezr 5:13).

Est 7:8. Was fallen,i.e. had kneeled down ( as in Jos 7:10 and elsewhere) upon the bed whereon Esther was (sat), hence as a petitioner he fell at her feet.8 The king, however, soon returned and saidsince he could not control his anger, but now manifested it more terribly: Will he force the queen also before me in the house?The infin. is here placed, as if he were understood as asking a question. But it may also be made stronger (comp. 1Ch 15:2, etc.), viz. to trample under foot, to subjugate. If the question had only been whether the queen could be forced sexually, then Ahasuerus could not have asked such a question so lightly. It would only have been an expression of his highest displeasure and wrath. If Esther were honest and just, she must of necessity have exonerated Haman from such an evil design. The whole situation of things makes such a foul purpose highly improbable, indeed impossible. Or perhaps Ahasuerus was only asking whether, if one would attain anything from the queen, it was necessary to make request with such force.9 We can readily think that Esther sought to withdraw from Haman, but that he, as it were, forcibly detained her. The word of which it is now said: As the word went out of the kings mouth, they covered Hamans face, cannot mean the question that just preceded. Then it would be this word; but this is another word. We may consider that this word, possibly with a little addition, quite intelligible to the officers, was to them a command to take Haman out of his sight. The subject of is those whose duty it was to execute such commands, the servants of the king. The covering of the face was probably the beginning of the execution of the death-sentence (comp. Curtius Est 6:8, Esther 22: They brought Philetas with covered head into the palace). Even old interpreters, such as Brentius, Rickel, Feuardent, remind us of the sentence in Cicero pro C. Rabirio IV. Esther 13: Lictor, bind his hands, veil his head, hang him on the hapless tree.10

Est 7:9. In order that it might appear very strikingly what our history here would teach that he who dug a pit for others, especially for pious Jews, shall fall into it himself; or yet more definitely that inimical heathendom shall perish by its own devices, it must be so ordered that one of the officers shall bring it about to have Haman hung upon the same gallows which he had caused to be erected for Mordecai. And in order to show how much hated this enemy of the Jews was, one of the kings officers must point out this very tree of death. This person was Harbonah, doubtless the one mentioned in Est 1:10, one of the eunuchs of the king, i.e. of the higher officers who waited on the king. The word with which he begins: Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai,etc., may not imply that the other servants or even Harbonah himself had already brought accusations against Haman, and in addition would also reproach him with the erection of this gallows (Bertheau, Keil); but from Harbonahs view, it points out the most appropriate means at hand offered by the prepared gallows for the fate of Haman. This is more significant against Haman. In giving prominence to the fact that Mordecai was the one who spoke well of the king by revealing the plot against the kings life (comp. Est 2:22; Est 6:2), he intimates that it was more fit for Haman to grace the gallows than the one for whom it was originally erected.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

Vers. l sqq. 1. How very carefully Esther brings her petition before the king, even though the king for the second time has accepted her invitation! She waits until the king himself inquires into it anew, and until he has even obligated himself to her to the half of his kingdom; she so frames her speech that her more personal interest, which in the present instance would have been of paramount importance in the eyes of the king, is presented equally with, indeed in advance of, all others. She avoids at once opposing herself against Haman; and finally she seeks to take the king on his weak side by giving prominence to the fact that in the destruction of the Jews the king would sustain a great loss. It was to her still a question whether Ahasuerus would permit her to interfere in the business of governmentindeed whether he would grant her a hearing while opposed to so powerful a rival. But she acted at last with fear and tremblingalthough she was assured of the best ally as being with hernot only Ahasuerus, but also Gods love. Her petition, moreover, had the very best effect. Thus the Lord, who leads the hearts of men and of kings like streams of water, has His help prepared for us, when we in our little faith stand trembling; and often where we hardly dared hope or advance, He gives us the greatest success. All depends upon this, that our hesitation be not of unbelief, but that we have fears only from our own power, capability, or worthiness; and that we seek not so much to promote our own cause as rather Gods, and ours through Him.

Starke: Trembling soul, if this heathen king is so trustworthy in his promises, then your heavenly King is far more faithful. The former promises only to give the half of his kingdom but He to give you the whole kingdom (Luk 12:32; Luk 22:29). Truth may be crushed to the earth, but it dies not; it can be avoided or offended, yet it will finally come to light and triumph.

2. Haman, from the very outset, had moved toward the fulfilment of his wishes with the greatest assurance. Even after being inquired of by the king as to what should be done to the man whom the king would especially honor, he had answered with the greatest confidence. Doubtless he thought that, because of the friendship, or because of the weakness of the king, all things were for him permissible, and he hoped every thing for himself. Yet if he had but reflected, he must have acknowledged that this foundation was unsafe, and that it was easy for another to gain the favor of the king against himself. But this is the common curse of human self-confidence that it places us in a state of insecurity. He who has succeeded in gaining the favor of the great is very liable to think that now he will also easily govern the servants of his Lord.
3. Truly it is a distressing condition in which Haman finds himself at the table of Esther. Outwardly he receives the highest distinction and is made happy, but inwardly there already comes a painful presentiment of his downfall. He is indeed already bound by the cord that shall plunge him into destruction.

Feuardent: But in all this the first notable thing is how far apart stand the judgments of the Almighty and those of this world, since those whom the world esteems most happy and fortunate are truly most unhappy and unfortunate before God.. Men, indeed, seeing only what appears, and judging according to the outward semblance, would have boldly pronounced no man more fortunate than Haman. But in fact and in Gods view, who sees the heart, he was of all men the most miserable. For he was inflated with ambition, he was hot with envy, he was bursting with hate, and went to the banquet in the most disturbed state of mind. There rankled in the bottom of his heart the thought of that fresh honor which he had lately been forced to confer upon his enemy; and he was moreover goaded to desperation by what his friends had told him to his facethat he himself, having once begun to fall before the Jew, would forever be his inferior, and that Mordecai would increase in glory and honor.

Haman, at the table of Esther, is but a picture of all wicked ones at the table of fortune. The change of circumstances now manifest, it is true, was unique, and seemed as if purposely selected for him.Feuardent: A little while ago all fell prostrate before Haman, but now he quails before a feeble woman. He who persecuted the Jews worse than a dog or a serpent, now becomes a suppliant to a Jewess. He who had procured a cruel slaughter for all the Hebrews is now anxious to save his own life. He who could not endure Mordecai now intercedes with his domestic. The old reverse substantially recurs: At the feast he who was unwilling to afford a crumb of bread to Lazarus, asked to be cooled by the finger of Lazarus dipped in water. This change will be most striking when Christ shall lay all His enemies at His feet.

On Est 7:8. 1. The only means left to Haman to be tried for his salvation evidently was that he should fall at the feet of Esther and implore her pardon. But it was just this which Ahasuerus, now returning from the garden, interpreted as a great crime, and so it filled the measure of his sin. When once the season of divine grace and forbearance allotted to sinners is closed, when punitive justice arises against them, then it seems as if they can undertake nothing but what will aggravate their case and hasten their own destruction. As Ahasuerus did in this case, so did all those who stood by the side of Haman and had given him their confidence. Now that he is so near his downfall, these are inclined to use every thing against the offender by which he might obtain deliverance. They know him too well to be ignorant of the tricks and deceptions of which he is capable. Petitions for pardon and even repentanceis in such cases often thought to be only the repentance of Cain, affording no guarantee of genuine reform. Possibly these judges go too far in their sentence, but Gods justice employs them as channels against the offenders.

Feuardent: The king indeed is unjust in fixing this calumny upon Hamanbut God is just who permits the righteous penalty to fall upon him for his lies and calumnies, inasmuch as he would have brought violence upon other virgins or matrons, and would have plunged the whole people of God into ruin. Accordingly it is written: By what one sinneth, by that also shall he be punished; and again: With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you again.

2. The question raised by ancient interpreters whether it was not the duty of Esther to exonerate Haman from the accusation by the king, and to second his request for pardon, can only be satisfactorily answered by making the proper distinction between the views of such points in the Old and in the New Testaments. Upon New Testament grounds, the answer would undoubtedly be in the affirmative. It is no greater offence than one which the Christian, though he have suffered the most grievous insults and offensive acts, should be prepared to pardon, in a spirit free from hatred or revenge. Now whether the king, here acting in his judicial capacity, could entertain her request, would have been a different matter. Taking, however, the Old Testament view, the answer would most certainly be, No; and this the more, inasmuch as there was not yet a more satisfactory means of averting evil than the destructive judgments of God upon Haman, who, as an Agagite and an Amalekite, was regarded as representing the cause of evil in opposition to the cause of God and of His people (comp. Doct. hist. thoughts on 3:36 sqq.). Further, in Esthers conduct is plainly shown the important fact that, when the season of grace is expired, Justice desires no interruption through petitions for mercy. This truth must be taken to heart, and we must not bewail its force. When Christians see the wicked perish, let them weep over their fate. But we must rejoice over the divine judgments upon iniquity. This serves to strengthen our faith in a holy, ever active God. Our own opposition to iniquity must be as unrelenting as was that of Esther against Haman.

Starke: It is barely credible that the king should have thought further upon this matter have perceived the wonderful dealings of God. Neither can we believe that he was thereby led to know the true God. Esther, however, and Mordecai, together with many of the Jews, must have been gloriously strengthened in their faith. Jehovahs judgments are just (Rev 19:2). Let the Christian here notice the goodness and truthfulness of God (Rom 11:22), and let both be to him a warning voice !

On Est 7:9-10. Bitter and sarcastic must it have struck upon the ears of Haman when Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, who up to this time had humbly shown him all desired honor, remarked, now that the doomed man was led away: Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Must it then be that this despicable creature should raise his foot against the dead lion? See how in this moment he turns toward the newly rising sun with praises in his mouth! Must this miserable slave also add to the already great misfortune of Hamanthat he should be hung on just this gallows which he had intended for the Jews! Poor Haman! Didst thou not know that in such ways as were thine thou hadst no really true friend? Didst thou not perceive that a selfish spirit and hypocrisy formed thy body guard? Not know that those who externally bowed the knee to thee, inwardly gnashed their teeth against thee? True friendship and fellowship can only exist between those who are together united to God. Even then we may often discover the overweening egotism which again loosens such bonds. Where this common bond is wanting, there separation must ensue; there, in fact, each goes his own way. If in such a case all the secret endeavors and aims could be exposed, we would discover a war of all against all. It is frequently seen that apparent friends afterward become executioners, who, by their mockery, add to the misery of the culprit. In the future also it will be found that the enemies of the people of God will themselves destroy each other in order that judgment on them may be perfect. There is a universal just government of the world on the part of God. He who is capable of so shameful an act as not only to wish to destroy his enemy, but also to cover him with the greatest possible ignominy, must not be surprised if in his own well deserved misfortune great shame shall also accompany his own end. Whoever digs a pit for others, will himself fall into it. This proverb verifies itself in its fullest sense. It has the ring of Satanic mockery when Harbonah says: And the gallows also stand ready, and that, too, before Hamans own house. There are many people who hesitate not to utter it mockingly, and how good were it for all those who are in danger of entering the way of destruction, should they hear it said loud enough for them to hear, and should they repeat it to themselves: Also the gallows stand ready without.

Starke: It must also so happen in the just judgment of God that since the highest minister of State had caused the highest gallows to be erected in accordance with his greatness of feeling and State position and honors, before which all bowed in adoration to the earth, he should himself be elevated above all other people that were hung.

Footnotes:

[1][Est 7:5. The Chaldaizing influence upon the language is evident in this vague repetition of the verb , which eventually led to its use in the sense of commanding.Tr.]

[2][Est 7:5. The pron. here very nearly approaches a copula.Tr.]

[3][Est 7:6. here is more than the ordinary apposition of class; it is almost a demonstrative like iste. Tr.]

[4][Est 7:6. The original is very intense: Haman, this bad man. Doubtless her finger pointed to him.Tr.]

[5][Est 7:9. The position of this clause in the original is more striking, being at the end of the sentence. Tr.]

[6][Esther here quotes the exact words of the edict issued for the destruction of the Jews. Thus the king would not fail to understand her, and to learn for the first time that his favorite was a Jewess. Rawlinson. Tr.]

[7][Ahasuerus could not really have doubted; but he affects to doubt, that he may express his anger at the act, apart from all personal considerations. Rawlinson.Tr.]

[8][Like the Greeks and Romans, the Persians reclined at their meals on sofas or couches (Herod, ix. 80, 82; Xenoph. Cyrop. VIII. 8, 16, etc). Rawlinson. Tr.]

[9][Of course the king did not believe his own words. But he meant to tax Haman with a further offence in not sufficiently respecting the person of the queen; and he thereby suggested to the attendants his instant execution. Rawlinson.Tr.]

[10][The Macedonians and the Romans are known to have commonly muffled the heads of prisoners before executing them; but it is not mentioned elsewhere than here as a Persian custom. Rawlinson.Tr.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

CONTENTS

Here we have in this chapter the final ruin of Haman. Esther, at the banquet, presents her petition; prays for her life, and the life of her people: accuses Haman of his villany. The king orders his execution.

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

(1) So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen. (2) And the king said again unto Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom.

It should seem that the king was as anxious to know and to answer Esther’s request, as she was to present it. He again repeats what he had twice said before, that to the half of his kingdom, let her request be what it might, it should be granted. Here, Reader! pause and consider, that if this poor heathen was so jealous of his honor to fulfil his word, what must thy God be to fulfil his promises? He that graciously proclaims himself as the faithful God. Deu 7:9 . Oh! for faith to give the Lord the honour due unto his name!

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

The Index Finger

Est 7:6

“The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.”

IN the third chapter we saw that Ahasuerus fell into Hainan’s hand in the matter of killing the Jews:

“And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king’s laws: therefore it is not for the king’s profit to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed: and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the king’s treasuries. And the king took his ring from his hand, and gave it unto Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews’ enemy” ( Est 3:8-10 ).

No name was mentioned, so far as the record enables us to judge. The question, therefore, of Ahasuerus “Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so?” was neither an expression of affectation nor of ignorance. Ahasuerus thought that Haman could do no harm, no wrong; so hearing a request from his chief officer he took off his ring and said: Operate according to thy desire; carry out thy policy, and pay the money. This being done, “the king and Haman sat down to drink.” No good can come of that. Into what history soever that line enters, we shall find mischief sooner or later. What happened afterwards we have already seen. Ahasuerus, Esther, and Haman are now at the second banquet; the queen is asked once more for her petition and her request:

“Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish” ( Est 7:3-4 ).

This is the speech she would have made a day or two ago, but could not; the king’s face did not read favourably. Ahasuerus had indeed challenged Esther to make her petition and her request known unto him, but she read every wrinkle in his face, pondered every tone of his voice, and as we have said she made haste slowly. Now the second banquet is being held, and this pathetic request has been urged, and the king demands the name of the man who has plotted this destruction; and Esther, looking that look of earnestness which never can be mistaken, fixed her eyes upon her enemy, and, mayhap lifting the index finger, said, “The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.” There are moments when we must speak. We speak best in such moments when we do not know what we are going to say: “It shall be given you in that same hour what ye ought to speak.” We know the substance of it, but the accent is given at the moment; the tone is Pentecostal, the accent is sharpened with the sadness of inspiration.

The best way of dealing with every enemy is to avoid generalities; beware of the sophism associated with vague sentiments. Definite statements are manageable, but vague charges are never to be entertained. He is always a false accuser who makes a general charge; he is a learned false witness, skilled and cunning, who says he will not go into the case: he will say nothing about it: he thinks it better to hold his tongue. Would God his tongue had been cut out before he said that! He has said more by not saying than he could have said if he had told the truth. The supreme, vital, ever-useful lesson of this incident is that we are to lift the index finger, point to the adversary and the enemy, and name him. When we learn this lesson we shall make progress in many upward and beneficent directions. No man makes progress who deals in generalities. The sermon is in the application. The prayer is in the Amen. The Amen is not a final word in any rhetorical sense; it is the word that takes up into itself all preceding words, and repeats them with the conciseness which heaven cannot mistake.

Let us apply this teaching in one or two directions: For example, in the matter of our own personal character. We should accuse ourselves frankly. A man should be upon such good terms with himself as always to tell himself the truth. How can this be done? May not a man say: I am in a world of sin and sorrow, and am tainted by the general atmosphere, and it is most difficult to thread one’s way through principalities and powers and the rulers of the darkness of this world? No. We have had enough of that pointless sentiment. You ask, May not a man describe himself as a poor wandering sheep in wolf-land? The answer is, No. You must be just to your own character and destiny. Put your finger upon the weak point of your character, and say, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Self-indulgence. Sometimes you go a long way towards abashing an enemy by naming him: he sees that you are coming into close quarters with him, and he feels how small is his strength, and sometimes he falls backward to the ground. Tell yourself that you are allowing your life to ooze away through self-gratification. You never say No to an appetite; you never smite a desire in. the face. Do not talk about the general ill-condition of the world, the infirmities of human nature, but lift the finger, look the enemy in the face, and say, Thy name is Self-indulgence; the wine is killing me; the gratification of illicit desire is sapping the foundations of my life, taking the life which issues out of my brain, making a fool of me: I must speak the truth and name the enemy. Others can see it; other men know when you are telling lies by delivering yourselves of generalities; they see the brute coming up through the face that was meant to be divine; every time they meet you they say, The enemy has written his signature once more upon that countenance; the man’s voice is not what it was wont to be; he does not look so steadily: how his eye wanders, how his cheek flushes, how his lips have lost their firmness and expressiveness, and how altogether he is going down in a lurch that signifies weakness wrought by concupiscence and evil! You will never be cured until you name the disease.

Look at the subject in another direction: The adversary and enemy is this hateful Jealousy. Jealousy does not like to be named. Jealousy is sensitive, a most delicate refined creature, that cannot bear the cold wind or the indication of some accusing and reproachful finger. Jealousy! who ever knew it? Whoever has known it can never forget it Jealousy spoils everything: it throws a black mantle over the white dawn, and turns the noonday to dark night, and the summer it clothes with sackcloth. Though it had all gold and silver and honour, yet so long as there was one poor Mordecai in the way all would go for nothing. Does the helm turn the ship? Does a little thing move the vessel of life? So jealousy may move the whole nature in wrong directions, away from havens that invite it to repose and luxury and security. Your disease, you say to yourself, is jealousy. Speak in this fashion: when you have entered your closet, and shut the door, say, I am a jealous man, and therefore I am an unjust man; I cannot bear that that man should be advancing; I hate him; the recollection of his name interferes with my prayers; would God I could lay hold of something I could publish against him! I would run him to death: yes, this is the reality of the case: Almighty God, cast out this devil, this all-devil; only thou canst exorcise this Legion. Now there is hope of you; you have named the enemy. But you have been going about, saying, I am sure I feel no jealousy : why should I? what is there to be jealous about? after all, who is he? the thing is positively ludicrous to me, that I should be charged with jealousy. Thus men tell lies to themselves, and therefore they never can be cured.

Or take it in some other aspect, and say: The adversary and enemy is this eternal Worldliness that will not let me get near my God: I know it; I sing hymns audibly, and make bargains inaudibly at the same time; I take my whole business to church, I audit my books at the altar; when some poor earnest or fanatical man asks me to bow my head in prayer, I close my eyes that I may see my business affairs the more distinctly: I will speak to myself about this; I will say, Thou art a worldly man that is, a world-living man; thou art satisfied with dust, with time, with sense, with things that can be held in the hand; thou canst not pray, there are bags of gold upon thy dumb lips, and through them thou canst not breathe a supplication to heaven: God pity me! for the world has hold of my right hand and of my left hand, and when I look abroad it is to see what I can next seize, how I can more perfectly satisfy my avidity. Now you have begun to mend “To know oneself diseased is half the cure” there is hope of thee now, O patient; but in talking generalities and vague sentiments, in looking impiously pious, thou wast telling lies to thyself, and hurting God. Every man carries the enemy within himself. A man can have but one real enemy. Look the enemy in the face; call him your enemy; name him. He thinks you do not know him; he conceals himself by many skilfully-arranged disguises and hears you speak of general infirmity, and then he strikes you again; but if you will lay hands upon him, and look at him with eyes of fire, and name him with the eloquence of earnestness, you will at least have begun the right conditions of battle; God be with the truth! This would put an end to a good deal of pastoral intercourse. Pastors have to listen to many lies softly spoken. They could name the adversary and the enemy, but they shrink from doing so, and call that shrinking delicacy.

What say you to this case? A man is dying of a fatal disease, and he knows it; the disease is internal, his life is ebbing out of him; and yet he says, I hear as well as ever, I see distinctly, I have not lost a single limb. Why this irony of enumerating supposed points of strength when the life itself is succumbing to a fatal assault? Would it not be wiser on the part of the man to say, Do not tell me wherein I am apparently complete and strong; direct attention to the disease that is killing me, and if you can do anything towards the mitigation or cure of that disease, for pity’s sake, and in pity’s name, do it; but do not talk to me about symptoms that are apparently favourable: as a dying man, I ask you to save me from death! That is earnestness; that is religiousness. Now are we faithful to ourselves, or do we shrink from self-reproach? Do we take refuge in generalities? If so we can make no progress, and our pastors’ solicitude and teachers’ eloquence go for nothing because of our own self-neglect.

The same point of view may be occupied with regard to public accusations. Take it in the matter of national decay. Where is there a minister who will have courage enough to say, The adversary and enemy is this wicked , and then name the most popular sin of the day? We love to hear the minister speaking generalities, and if we can assign those generalities in any degree to the person sitting immediately behind us we are proportionately gratified; but directness we never paid for. No man subscribes to a ministry that is direct and personal. Many ministries have been ruined because they would not trifle with the hearers, but would when occasion needed come straight down upon the richest, strongest man in the congregation, and say, Thy name is Iscariot! That was pointed, personal, and the poor soul, fool of fools, he went away and came no more. No man ever pays a pew-rent for the purpose of having the truth spoken to him, though he is willing to subscribe that insignificant trifle to hear generalities which he can dissolve in air. So mysterious is the religious sentiment! So incalculable is religious charity! Who in looking abroad upon the country will say, The adversary and enemy is this wicked liquor traffic? He would lose hearers; but he would be a stronger man for getting that burden off his conscience. What is the use of ministers and Sunday-school teachers, tract distributers and Christian visitors, going up and down doing their work whilst the infernal drink traffic is slaying, damning the land? Where is there a teacher who dares stand up and say, The adversary and enemy is this wicked official self-seeking? He would be accounted rude. Critics would say, There is about him a kind of brusqueness that may perhaps offend some, and to some extent may lessen his influence or cripple his usefulness. No! the Christ of God was a plain-speaking man; he said: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees! whited sepulchres!” What wonder that he had not where to lay his head!

Or we may apply the same law to the decline of spiritual power. It is an easy and delightful thing to read a paper upon this subject namely, the decline of spiritual power but who names the Haman? Who comes down upon the villain with a constable’s clutch? What keeps us back? Fear of offending the world. The world ought to be offended. No worldling should ever have one moment’s comfort in the house of God. He should feel that unless he is prepared to change his disposition, he is altogether in the wrong place. He has come to cool himself in a furnace; he has perpetrated the most obvious irony that can possibly occur in all human conduct a worldly man who wants to love the world has gone to church! It is simply impossible. As a matter of fact, he has gone. We deny it; he is seated within the four walls which are, for convenience’ sake, entitled the church. But the worldly man was never at church in his life; if he was, he came out a scorched man, hot all over, hating the minister and detesting the whole place, unless, indeed, he went, saying, I feel that I am worldly, and I want to be converted; I am listening for words that will help me to begin, under God, a blessed life, then he was at church, and then he went away thanking God that he had seen heaven opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God with gifts for men.

Then sometimes the adversary and enemy is this wicked Doubt in the heart of the preacher himself. The man is divided. His axe is split across the very edge. There is no power in his right arm. When he speaks he keeps back the emphasis. He knows it, feels it, but he cannot live perhaps without his pulpit. It works like madness in the brain! Why do not men speak just what they think and believe: what they can see with their inner vision and feel with all the sensitiveness of a renewed nature? If we are appointed to preach speculatively, what wonder if we get up in the clouds, and are left there by all common-sense men? Any man so fond of the clouds as to live amongst them ought to be left there. By all means let him enjoy that airy blessedness! But the journalists, the preachers, the schoolmasters, the parents, who have anything to speak to the sphere within which they operate ought to speak with distinctiveness, simplicity, sympathy, kindness, hopefulness, burning earnestness, and let other things of a speculative turn or quality come to show themselves as life unfolds and becomes ennobled.

We might apply the same doctrine to hindrances in the Church: The adversary and enemy is this wicked cold-hearted man. Whenever he comes into the church the preacher cannot preach: he cannot do many mighty works because that man is there cold, icy, unresponsive, critical. He will make his minister an offender for a word, a man who is the victim of grammar, and who never felt the intoxication of a supreme enthusiasm. Nearly every church is wrecked by one man the cold, ghastly, sepulchral, bony man! Is there no means of getting rid of him? We have seen many a noble young soul quenched, and taking refuge in its little piece of paper called a sermon the moment the man described has come in. We must name him, and those who are in more independent positions than others, if there are such, ought to name him first and to insist upon his being taken out. A thousand men must not have their spiritual education risked by the presence of any one man, though he drive to the church in a chariot of gold and there be six white steeds in its silver-clasped shafts. That man must go! his patronage is a burden, his presence a perpetual difficulty. Name the adversary and the enemy. Do not palter with the occasion. Life is brief, and there is only time to be true. Earnestness will save such definiteness from the vulgarity and folly of rudeness. Be earnest and you will be dignified. Nathan lost nothing of dignity when, looking at the king, he said, “Thou art the man.” Paul lost nothing of majesty when, looking at Agrippa, he said, “King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest.” Nor did Paul lose anything of moral sublimity when he stood before Felix and “reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come,” until the two hearers whitened and quailed. We are not to work in a spirit of mere criticism or fault-finding in our accusations of men and of the age; if we do we shall soon degenerate into exasperation or defiance: we are to accuse with dignity, and to vindicate our charge by the cogency and abundance of our proofs. The Christian Church as a church is to be a witness against every form of evil. We are afraid to name the adversary in church, we confine ourselves to “proper” words, to “decent” expressions, to euphemisms that have neither beginning nor ending as to practical vitality and force. We are the victims of circumlocution; we go round and round the object of our attack, and never strike it in the face. What we want is a definite, tremendous, final stroke. Esther succeeded. Her spirit can never fail.

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

Reprisals

Esther 7-10

WE have seen Esther in the attitude of lifting the index finger; we have now to consider the attitude of Haman whilst that finger was being pointed at him. The statement is marked by great simplicity, but also by solemn suggestiveness,

“Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen” ( Est 7:6 ).

Why was he afraid? Nothing had been stated but simple fact: is it possible that a man can be terrified by being reminded of simple reality? We may go farther in this case, and by going farther may increase our wonder. Could not Haman defend himself? Was it not open to him to say to king Ahasuerus, That is certainly true, but nothing has been done without the king’s consent, and no writing has been sent forth that was not sealed with the royal signet: what the queen has said is perfectly true, but I must hide myself behind the king’s authority? Not a word did he say: he simply burned with shame; his cheeks were red with fire. How is this? The answer is plain enough. We do many things with the king’s signet which we have no business to do. We may be very careful about our little cordon of facts, but all this amounts to nothing so long as the heart accuses itself. No matter what writings you have, it is of no consequence that you point to conversations, and recall incidents, and remind your interlocutor of certain occurrences, if the thing itself is wrong. There is something in human nature that gives way at the weakest point. There are defences that are in reality accusations. To excuse is in very deed to accuse under such circumstances. Men know this, and yet play the contrary part with great skill and persistence; they say they have documentary evidence, but they do not tell us how they procured it; they can produce letters sealed and signed by high authority, but they never tell the wicked process through which these letters came to be facts. Men, therefore, soon give way under the pressure of incomplete evidence; the unwritten law swallows up all the inky documents. Haman had indeed gone to the king, and told him about a certain people, diverse from the people of Media and Persia, and had in very truth received the king’s orders to write letters of destruction; but when all came to all it was the unwritten law that made a coward of Haman. The letters ought not to have been written; being written, they simply amounted to so much evidence against the man; the very motive of the letter burned the letter, and thus made it non-existent; and we are perfectly well aware that we are doing many things, in statesmanship, in ecclesiastical relations, in personal references, that bear very distinctly upon this method of procedure. There are laws, there are facts, there are letters; but all these ought not to have been; they are not in accord with the eternal unwritten law of righteousness, truth, charity, pureness, godliness, and therefore when that is pointed out all the documents fall into the fire, crinkle, blacken, catch the flame, and evaporate in smoke. Thus was Haman afraid before the king and the queen. Cowardice is traceable to consciousness of wrong-doing. Haman said to himself, I got the letters, but I ought not to have got them; I could take off this ring and show it to his majesty, but the ring would take fire and burn me if I held it up under such circumstances; no, I am a murderer, and I am discovered. What then took place?

“The king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life” ( Est 7:7 ).

That was all! Let me live! Strip me, cast me off, banish me, but let the poor dog live! All mock royalties come to that, all false ambitions, all ill-conceived plans, all selfishness, all murder. Do not hang me! I care for this poor old neck; I will never speak more, I will only ask for bread and water; only let the dog live! He was a great man just now;

Haman “sent and called for his friends, and Zeresh his wife. And Haman told them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all the things wherein the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king” ( Est 5:10-11 ).

Now he says, Let the dog live! Let the bad man take care! Judas Iscariot, be on thy guard! Heaven is against thee, and thine own hell hates thee. “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” You are very clever, you only are asked to the king’s banquet, you are entrusted with the king’s seal, you are chancellor, premier, leader, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” The success of bad men is their failure. There is no heaven in their gold; it is not gold, it is gilt. How rich the table is! but Haman cannot eat; the wine is old, but the palate is dead. Walk in the garden and view the lovely flowers: there is no loveliness to eyes of greed, to eyes of ambition, to eyes of selfishness, every Eden is lost by the disobedient man. Do not let me die even in Eden, give me a skin of beast to my back, and let me out of the golden gate Let the dog live! There are many valiant men whose valour will one day be turned into pale cowardice. Only they are valiant who are right; only they are heroic who love God and keep his commandments; to them death is abolished, the grave a hole filled up with flowers, blossoming at the top. Who would be wicked prosperously wicked, dining with the king, but wicked; drinking wine with the queen with a murderer’s lips? We may be murderers without shedding blood. Every man who has broken a heart is a murderer, it matters not whether he be the highest prelate or supremest minister.

Whatever Ahasuerus did he did quickly. No one ever complained that he was dilatory. Let justice be done to Xerxes. He was a man of action. It was pointed out to him that the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, stood in the house of Haman. The moment Ahasuerus heard there was a gallows he said, Hang Haman. Circumstances happily coincide here is the victim, here is the gallows: a child may complete the syllogism. It is wonderful how men who have no knowledge of the true God have always discovered a point of almightiness somewhere. Men who had no God, as we understand that term, have always had a deific line in their policy, a black line which meant the end. The Oriental kings realised this ideal of almightiness. Their word was law. Hang him! and no man dare say, Spare him! How could Haman complain? The gallows was his own invention; it was made after his own imagination; it was the very height he liked best for a gallows not forty-nine cubits high, but the round fifty. How often he had hanged Mordecai on the preceding night! how he had seen the Jew dangle in the air, and almost seen birds of carrion come and alight on his shoulder to look him over with a view to banqueting! How could he complain? This is God’s law: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” All this we ourselves must go through. Take care! How much deeper are you going to make that hole? Do you say you mean to make it about ten feet deeper? then be assured that you have ten feet farther to fall. Men dig holes for others, and fall into them themselves. Do not be grave-diggers. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Our hands were never made for the forging and hurling of thunderbolts; they were made to clasp other human hands, to lead the blind, to help the helpless. Yet who does not rejoice in this law of retribution, worked out on a grand scale, without a sign or token of pettishness in all its evolution? The universe would not be secure without it. The wicked man must be stopped somewhere: and how can a man be more decorously hung than on his own gallows? Is there satire in heaven? Is there just a faint wreathing of sarcasm on the lips of Justice? Do the powers supreme wait until the plans of bad men are quite completed, and then make them cut down the harvest which they themselves sowed in such glee of heart? Bad man, thine end is the gallows-tree! thou shalt surely be hanged by the neck until thou be dead. We see thee at thy front door, well painted, well polished, opening upon museum and picture-gallery and treasure-house; we hear the horses pawing and snorting in their warm stables, and see the servants flitting about in panoramic activity and confusion; we speak to thee over thy bags of gold thou shalt be damned! Say ye to the wicked, It shall be ill with him: he shall vomit his own successes, and when he is most ashamed it will be when he most clearly sees his triumphs. Say ye to the righteous, It shall be well with thee: poor, desolate, and afflicted, carrying seven burdens when one is enough for thy poor strength; yet at the end, because thou hast loved thy Lord, it shall be well with thee. Do not attempt to explain God’s “well.” It is a better word than if it had been in the superlative degree. Grammatical increase would mean moral depletion. It is enough that God says, “Well done.” “Well” is better than “best” in such setting of words.

From what point did Haman proceed to the gallows? From a banquet of wine. Oh to think of it! from a banquet to the gallows! There is not such a distance between the two points as might at first appear. Nearly the worst things in all the world are banquets. How a man can live in a mansion-house and pray, is a problem which we can consider even if we cannot answer. It was the rich man in the parable who was called “fool.” We should have been sorry for him under that designation if we had not first heard his speech; but after hearing his speech we found that no other word precisely covered the occasion. The house of mourning is better than the house of feasting. There is a sadness which is to be preferred to laughter. There are funerals infinitely more desirable than weddings. But we are the victims of the senses; we like gold and silver, and satin and colour; we rub our skilled fingers over them and say, Behold the texture! see the lustre! admire the beauty! We are blind within. An awful irony, that a man should have eyes to see stones and trees, and no eyes wherewith to see spirits, angels, God! Men drink away their vision; men drown in their cups the divinity that stirs within them.

Is the matter then at an end here? No. Haman’s policy must be all reversed.

“On that day did the king Ahasuerus give the house of Haman the Jews’ enemy unto Esther the queen” ( Est 8:1 ).

Esther had another request to make “She fell down at his feet, and besought him with tears.” Then it was all over! What did she beseech the king to do?

“To put away the mischief of Haman the Agagite, and his device that he had devised against the Jews. Then the king held out the golden sceptre toward Esther. So Esther arose and stood before the king. And said, If it please the king, and if I have found favour in his sight, and the thing seem right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes [Oh this eloquent tongue! She knew it was all settled before it began], let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews which are in all the king’s provinces: for how can I endure to see the evil that shall come unto my people? or how can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred?” ( Est 8:3-6 ).

Pathos will do more than logic. Would God all preachers knew that one simple, practical, eternal lesson! Tears conquer. It was all done. Ahasuerus made gracious reply; the king’s scribes were called at the time to write letters of reversal all over the empire

“To the lieutenants, and the deputies and rulers of the provinces which are from India unto Ethiopia, an hundred twenty and seven provinces, unto every province according to the writing thereof, and unto every people after their language, and to the Jews according to their writing, and according to their language “( Est 8:9 ).

It was the beginning of a gospel: Go ye into the provinces, and tell every Jew that he shall live. It was a great speech. There is a greater still made by the Jew whom we call the Son of. God, and worship as God the Son: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,” the gospel of pardon, acceptance, adoption, restoration, assured and immortal sonship.

Now will the Jews be merciful? Will they remember that

“Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them” ( Est 9:5 ).

That is human, but not the less awful. Who can be so bad as man? What beast can be so cruel as an unnatural parent? We have no excuse to offer for these men. If we had been reading a story rather than a history we should have had a different conclusion; we should have made the Jews almost divine: but the Jews were human, and therefore resentful and unforgiving. There is but one Man who can forgive sins.

A wonderful book is this book of Esther! We are told that the name of God does not once occur in it. How fond people are of counting times in which names appear! Observe, it is the name of God that is not in it: God himself is in every line of it. This distinction should be carefully marked by all men who are verbal statisticians, who take note of how many times the name of Christ appears in a sermon. The name of Christ may never be mentioned, and yet Christ may be in the sermon from end to end, the inspiration of its power, the secret of its pathos, the charm of its earnestness. It is but frivolous work to be counting the number of times in which the name of God occurs in this book or that, or the name of Christ occurs in this sermon or in that: is the Spirit Divine there? Is the thought from eternity or from time? Is it a mighty rushing sound from heaven, or is it but a whirlwind carrying nothing with it but thick dust? Men can answer the question well. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding If God be for us, who can be against us?

“Mordecai the Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed” ( Est 10:3 ).

What narrow escapes we have in life! How near being hanged was even Mordecai one night! Who can tell what will happen tomorrow? Blessed is that servant who when his Lord cometh shall be found waiting. The faithful servant shall be called up into friendship and honour and coronation. You are in great straits to-day to-morrow you may have great riches. “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” There is a sentimental hope which is never to be trusted; there is a hope which is the blossom of righteousness or the music of reason. Every Christian has the spirit of hope given to him as part of his divine estate: quench not the Spirit. We are not delivered in order that we may crush our enemies; we are not Christians in order that we may slay the heathen; we have not been adopted into God’s family that we may go out with a naked sword to cut down every infidel, sceptic, atheist, and unbeliever: we are saved that we may save; we have this honour given to us that we may call others to the same great joy. Let us, if we are delivered men let us, if we are saved from peril, strait, and sore extremity let us show our gratitude by our benevolence.

So we part with the brilliant queen, in some respects the Lady Macbeth of her day. The oldest blood of history warmed her veins, and the light of generations of heroes shone in her glorious eyes. She was developed by circumstances. Now she is timid, calculating, half afraid, half ashamed: her courage comes and goes like the blood-tide on fair cheeks, and anon she is as an unquenchable fire. How carefully she laid her finger on the king’s pulse! How well she kept the neck of Haman within reach of her crushing heel! She saw wonders, too, in her dreams! Countless hosts of murdered Jews; women begging for pity, and so doubling the very agony they hoped to abate; children speared, and hurled into depths like refuse too vile to waste fire upon: then Mordecai, grey with grief, bowed down with sorrow’s invisible burden, and sad with woe never to be all known; his quivering old life now yielding to despair, and now rising to an impossible hope, herself, killed, and buried amid oaths and jeers and Haman, his breast a hell, rejoicing with infernal joy as the last Jew gasped and died. Then the dream changed: a king was approached, interested, mollified; a fair woman grasped a moral sceptre, addressed a heart-speech to a willing ear, transfixed with eloquent finger the prince of villains, and on a morning cool and bright the enemy who plotted the murder of others swung from a gallows fifty cubits high! Thus life hints itself in dreams. Thus in the night we see outlines invisible in the glare of day. Thus, and thus, and thus, the great Spirit comes to establish his infinite purpose. We do not strain the moral of the story by calling for an Esther to stand up in modest courage in the presence of devastating forces drunkenness, lust, selfishness, oppression, slavery, and all wrong. The Woman must deliver us. She knows the availing method: her tongue is the instrument of eloquence; her eyes see the path that lies through all the darkness; she can mark the time, estimate the forces that are foremost, and strike violently without violence, and mightily without exaggeration. We want no dramatic attitude, no public display, no vaunting ostentation or self-assertion; we want the might of light, the stratagem of love, the courage of faith, the word of deliverance. Are not women themselves beaten, starved, dishonoured? Are not children cast out, neglected, left to die? Are not lies triumphant, are not honour and truth thrown down in the streets? The true propriety is to be unselfishly sincere, high-minded, fearless, O that women would take up the sad world’s cause and live and die for Christ. When did Jesus discourage the ministry of women? When did he order them home with gruff disdain? Did he not need them all, and make them rich with his blessing?

Fuente: The People’s Bible by Joseph Parker

XXV

THE STORY OF ESTHER

Esther

Our subject for this discussion is “The Story of Esther.” First, a few words by way of general introduction to the book. The book of Esther belongs to what is called The Haggiographa, that is, the writings. The books of the Old Testament are divided into three groups: The Law, The Prophets, and The Writings. This book belongs to the third group. The time of this book is during the sixty years of silence between the dedication of the Temple and Ezra’s return. It should be located right between the sixth and seventh chapters of Ezra) perhaps about thirty-eight or thirty-nine years after the dedication, or 478 B.C.

The author is unknown, but unquestionably he was a Jew, possibly Ezra or Mordecai, but probably neither of them. The style is against Ezra as author, while the high praise of Mordecai is against Mordecai as author and, besides there are no first personal pronouns in the book referring to the author. It was evidently written by a Jew contemporary with Mordecai. Some say Joakim, the high priest, wrote it, but this is hardly probable, since he does not seem to have had a knowledge of the Persian court sufficient for such a task. The date is about 450 B.C.

There is a great deal of difference in the way the book of Esther is regarded by scholars and others. Many Gentiles have but little use for it, because it is such a Jewish book. Ewald, a great German critic, says that it is like coming down from heaven to earth to read Esther. Luther said he wished the book had never been written it is so Judaizing. So you see this book is variously estimated. The Jews value it highly. They maintain that the book of Esther will last when the prophets have perished. They always read it with great joy and say its place in the canon of the Holy Scriptures is unquestioned. But in many editions of the Bible it was not included; it was not considered worthy of a place. But by a large majority of the scholars it is included in the canon, as rightfully belonging to the Holy Scriptures.

The book was undoubtedly written to give a historical basis or ground for the Feast of Purim. This feast was observed for centuries before Christ in the month of March. The book was written by a Jewish patriot to give the occasion of this feast. This book has some peculiarities. The name of God is not once mentioned. There is no mention of prayer in it. There is not even a reference to Jerusalem nor the Temple. But it must be remembered that it is a national book; written for national purposes and from a national motive. It is intensely Jewish, referring to a tragic incident in their history, recounting the marvelous way in which they escaped from a great crisis. There are two allusions in the book to facts in previous Jewish history, viz: Mordecai’s captivity (Est 2:6 ) and the dispersion of the Jews in all the provinces (Est 3:8 ).

The book is real history. The arguments against the historicity of book are as follows:

1. According to the history of Herodotus, and that is our chief authority for the history of this period, especially Persian history, the queen of Ahasuerus at this time was Amastris, whom he married many years before the events found in the book of Esther could have happened, and she never was put away, but maintained a great influence over him and largely shaped the course of his life. She was a Persian woman of very bad personal traits: unscrupulous and crafty, controlling the king in many matters. She was entirely different from what Esther is pictured as being. Our reply to that argument will come up in a later reply to it.

2. The law of the land compelled the Persian monarchy to marry in the families of his own relatives, or five of the noblest Persian favorites. Thus it would have been impossible for a Jewish woman to have been made the queen.

3. Esther is regarded as the queen in this book. But she could only have been the chief favorite in the royal harem. This is probably the only position in which we can place her and be in harmony with the facts.

4. It is argued that the book clearly indicates that Haman knew the race of Mordecai, but not that of Esther. How could he be ignorant of the race?

5. The appalling massacre of their enemies by the Jews, seventy-five thousand at one time, seems incredible. It looks like the fancy picture of a novelist. The reasonable thing is to deny that seventy-five thousand citizens of the Persian Empire could be killed or butchered in such a way.

6. It is highly improbable that the massacre should have been deferred for eleven months after it was decreed. Lots were cast, and according to the lot Haman fixed the date of the decree which he had secured from the king. It is neither improbable nor by any means impossible, but perfectly true.

7. The story is so well knit together as to resemble a fairy tale. But cannot God arrange his providences as well as a writer could arrange them? Is God’s mind inferior to a novelist’s?

8. The religious element is in the background, and scarcely referred to either directly or indirectly. It is true that God is not directly referred to, nor is prayer mentioned, but God is implied, and there may be a reason for the silence in the matter of religion. The writer may have found it better to conceal the element of the Jewish religion than to reveal the power behind the throne.

9. Its moral tone is unworthy of Scripture. The best characters in the book are represented as ruthlessly demanding this massacre and then demanding its repetition, not satisfied with the butchery of five hundred people in one city alone, only satisfied when three hundred more were put to death. Such is at variance with the Scripture, and seems to be unworthy of a place in the canon, they say.

Now the arguments in favor of the historicity of the book are as follows:

1. It is true to the Persian manners and customs, even down to the minutest details. It is true to the life, times, and customs of the Persian people. No man could have written this book unless he was familiar with the Persian life in all of its details. So at once it is evident that it cannot be fiction.

2. The character of Xerxes, or Ahasuerus, is correctly pictured. Point by point this king can be matched with the picture and record of Herodotus, the great historian. The man who wrote this book must have known this king, or he never could have written the book as we have it.

3. The existence of the Feast of Purim itself must have some historical occasion and is a mighty argument for the historicity of the book. Critics have tried to account for this feast which has existed now for twenty-three or twenty-four hundred years in other ways, but have utterly failed. The only way to account for the feast is to accept the feast as actual history.

4. The great council in the third year in the reign of Ahasuerus mentioned in the first of the book of Esther, that is, the feast actually occurred and was called together to plan an expedition against Greece. That expedition he carried out as secular history plainly records. Then were fought the battles of Thermopylae and Marathon on the land, and the sea contest at Salamis, when the hosts of Persia were scattered like chaff before the Greek patriots. It is a historic fact that this great assembly came together in the third year of the reign of Ahasuerus.

5. There is no historical discrepancy in the book. The most critical of the German critics has failed to point out a single incident which contradicts history.

6. It makes its appeals to the chronicles of the kings of Persia, as found in the last chapter. The writer would not have dared to do that writing as he did in the land of Persia, if his record had not been true and he had not authority for what he wrote.

7. It tacitly, though not openly, recognizes a providence in history, and was written to record the divine providence in relation to God’s chosen people. Much scripture is written for the very purpose of recording God’s dealings with his people in their preservation, and the incidents of their natural existence. Why should not one book then be written with this great event as its real background?

8. The ruthless demand of Mordecai and Esther for the massacre of their enemies must be studied in the light of their age and the circumstances that had been forced upon them.

9. God’s providences may produce as good and as well knit a story as the imagination of a novelist. To deny that is really to deny the workings of divine providence, or to deny that God is as great as man.

The classic name of Ahasuerus is Xerxes, the boundaries of whose empire were India and Ethiopia. The places of the scenes of the book are Shushan, the palace of the Persian king, and the provinces.

We may now pursue our study of the book itself by taking up the story chapter by chapter as follows:

Chapter 1 : In the palace of Artaxerxes there is a great feast, lasting 180 days; his magnificence is displayed. A second great feast is made for the people of Shushan. There are revelling and drinking till the men are all drunken. The king is intoxicated. He commands to bring his wife, Vashti, for his drunken lords to look at, that he might display her beauty. The refusal of the queen to come and be insulted, the anger of the king, the advice of one of his counsellors, the issuing of the decree that all women, throughout the Persian Empire should ever after obey their husbands about as foolish a decree as any man ever made.

Chapter 2 : A new queen is sought. A bevy of beautiful girls is brought one by one before the king. Among them is Esther, a Jewess, brought up by Mordecai. She succeeds in pleasing the king and becomes queen. A great feast is made in honor of her. About that time a plot is discovered by Mordecai in which two of the king’s chamberlains plan to assassinate the king. Mordecai reveals the plot.

Chapter 3 : The promotion of Haman, the Agagite, to be prime minister. Mordecai, the Jew, refuses to bow down to him. Haman is angered and mortified. He will not be content with putting to death one Jew, but asks the king on promise of payment of a large sum of money for permission to put to death the entire Jewish nation, on the condition that he replace his loss out of the money of those he killed. The decree is granted. The lot is cast to decide the day. The edict goes forth that on that day eleven months hence all the Jews are to be put to death.

Chapter 4 : The grief of the Jews. Mordecai commands Esther to intercede on their behalf before the king. She asks him to fast three days on her behalf. The answer to Mordecai, “Do not think that thou thyself shall escape their massacre?”

Chapter 5 : Esther appears before the king, taking her life in her own hands, for it might mean death to appear before the king unbidden. She is accepted. This incident is to Esther like the experience of Nehemiah in the reign of Artaxerxes, the son of this same king. Everything seemed to depend upon the whim of this childish king. She invites him to a banquet. She knows how to get on the best side of him. She asks Haman to be with them also. Haman hears the news that he is to banquet with the king and his queen, and he is very much elated. He tells his wife about it, then complains about this man, Mordecai, who will not bow the knee to him. His wife says, “Get ready a gallows fifty cubits high and hang Mordecai on it.” He follows his wife’s advice and prepares the gallows.

Chapter 6 : Incidents leading up to the honoring of Mordecai. The state records are read. The story is told how the king’s life had been spared by a man named Mordecai. He asks the question, “Has this man been honored? He saved my life.” Answer, “No.” While he is thinking about this, Haman comes in. The king asks him, “What shall I do to the one I desire to highly honor?” Haman, thinking it is himself that the king desires to honor, gives this suggestion: “Put the king’s robe on him and a chain about his neck, and have the chief man in the kingdom lead his beast through the streets of the city.” He said that, thinking that he was to be thus honored himself. “All right,” said the king, “You go and do that to Mordecai,” and he had to do it. There was no escape from the king’s command. Then he went home like a sulky boy because he had been whipped. As soon as he reaches home, word comes that he is to go to the banquet.

Chapter 7 : The banquet passed off without incident. Persians were very fond of drinking and banquets. The king wanted to know what Esther demanded. She wanted time to get him in a good humor, so she asked that he come to another banquet. At this the king declared that he was ready to grant her request even to half of the kingdom. Now the time had come. She began to beg for her life and for the life of her people. We may imagine how the king felt when he learned that his favorite queen was to be killed. See how she works him up. Yes, she was to be killed, for the decree did not exclude even her. “Who is going to kill my very idol, my favorite queen?” “Why, this wicked Haman is going to do it.” This is another psychological moment. Haman begins to beg and to plead with Esther for his life; he even climbed up on the couch where she is reclining. The king thinks that he is even trying to add insult to injury, and so his rage knows no bounds. The servants say that he has made a gallows fifty cubits high on which to hang Mordecai. The king commands them to take the wretch and hang him on it.

Chapter 8 : Mordecai is promoted to Haman’s place and becomes chief minister. Esther begs that the decree against the Jews be revoked, but the law of the Medes and Persians changes not. The only thing that can be done is to issue another decree, so the king asks her what she will have. She and Mordecai have talked it over and she is ready for that request. She asks that the Jews have the privilege of slaying their enemies. There was no other way out of it. This shows Mordecai’s shrewdness and ability. There was great rejoicing among the Jews at this turn of affairs.

Chapter 9 : The day arrives. The Jews are prepared. The nobles help the Jews because a Jew is prime minister. The nobles knew on which side their bread was buttered. So they help the Jews and altogether, seventy-five thousand of the people are slain; five hundred in Shushan the palace alone. Esther and Mordecai make another request. Esther wants the massacre repeated. She wanted another day of butchery. I do not know why. The king grants it. There is great rejoicing among the Jews. This occurred on the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar, or our month of March. Mordecai and Esther fix this day in which all the Jews shall celebrate this great event. She has the edict issued under the seal of Mordecai the prime minister, and so the feast is established. That is how this feast originated. Every year on the fifteenth of March, all the Jews celebrate it. They do not celebrate it in a very religious fashion now. Still they regard it as a great day.

Chapter 10 : This chapter speaks of the greatness of Mordecai, as the prime minister of the Persian king.

Now let us look at the chief characters of the book, as follows:

1. Ahasuerus : There is no question but that this Ahasuerus is the Xerxes of history, and is an exemplification of despotism. He was an absolute monarch, a despot. In him we see the outworkings of despotism. Caligula of the Roman Empire was a despot, and his despotism drove him mad. It is despotism that made this king, Xerxes, ridiculous in the eyes of the world. He was the slave of his ministers and servants. He knew nothing but what they told him. He was absolutely dependent upon them, for all of his information. He was like a child in his silly notions. His servants and nobles deceived and tricked him, and he was so suspicious of them that he was a very slave to his slaves. He was afraid of them, and they knew that if he suspicioned them, he would kill them, and so he was afraid of them, and they were afraid of him. He was the slave also of his passions. He spent his time drinking, eating, banqueting and satisfying his gluttony and lust. He was not much above the beast. Because the Hellespont wrecked his ships, he ordered it to be flogged. He was the slave of his whims and fancies, the slave of his temper and his feelings. He knew no control but his own will, the tool and the plaything of the favorite of his harem, willing to ruthlessly murder thousands of his own subject to satisfy his favorite queen. We must, however, say for him that he recognized the services of Mordecai in saving his life, and honored him. But he did this because it was called to his attention, and not because he sought it out or remembered it.

2. Vashti : She has been honored above many women in history. She is recognized as one who would forfeit her position and crown rather than to sacrifice her honor and her pride. She refused to obey the king at the risk of her own life. But she maintained her dignity and self-respect. She was valorous and womanly. She was having a feast with the women, and it is thought by some that she may have refused to do the king’s bidding because she had taken a little too much wine, hence was not much disposed to be ordered, but I rather think this is not true. She was a rare gem in the midst of that corrupt Persian Court.

3. Haman : This man’s name is a synonym for vanity and fulsome pride, ruthlessness and savagery, deceit, cruelty, and all that is ignoble. He is the incarnation of insane conceit. Honors made a fool of him. Now pride in itself is not such a bad thing. A man may have pride of the right sort and really be helped by it. But a man with this kind of pride wants everything in the universe to be his slave. Even preachers may have this disease. They sometimes think that everybody and everything ought to bow down to them. Because Mordecai would not bow his knee to Haman his vanity was hurt. When a man thus allows his vanity to rule him, he sees everything out of proportion. Haman could not be satisfied with the murder of Mordecai, but he must do the big thing and kill the nation. Vanity is insatiable, and often causes wars. It was this man’s vanity that led to his downfall.

4. Mordecai : He is one of the great characters of the book. He was a Jew and a poor one, but he was loyal to the king, under whose government he lived. The Jews have become citizens of nearly every nation in the world. Here we have a Jew the prime minister of the empire. One of the greatest prime ministers that Great Britain ever had was a Jew. Mordecai was faithful to his king. He was elevated to be prime minister, but it did not give him the “big head.” When he was led through the streets he did not feel puffed up. He had sense enough to know that that sort of thing would not last long. Here is a man who waited and worked. We do well to learn that lesson working and waiting and doing your best will bring its reward, in due time. God always has a place ready for the man who works and waits and does his best.

5. Esther : She was brought up in the family of Mordecai and trained by him. She was trained well beyond any doubt. She was beautiful but not spoiled by her beauty. She was able to use her beauty in the right way. Though she was the favorite of the king and was successful with him, it did not spoil her. She remained loyal to her uncle and did not forget him. Neither did she lose her religion when she became a queen in the most wicked court of her times. There is no mention that there was prayer connected with the three days fast, but doubtless there was. She takes her life in her own hands for her people. She knew how to manage the king. She outwitted the cunning Haman. She was severe. She was one of the greatest heroines of history, and she has been called by many the saviour of her people. She was beautiful, talented, brave, shrewd, and a womanly woman, yea, one of the greatest of women.

QUESTIONS

1. At what point in the history of Israel does the book of Esther come in?

2. Who wrote the book and when?

3. What of the canonicity of the book?

4. What was the purpose of the book?

5. What are the peculiarities of the book?

6. What two allusions in the book to facts in previous Jewish history?

7. Is the book real history and what arguments prove and confirm?

8. What was the classic name of the Persian king who married Esther and what were the boundaries of his empire.

9. What was the place of the scenes of the book?

10. Give the story of the book, chapter by chapter.

11. Give a character sketch of Ahasuerus, Vashti, Haman, Mordecai, and Esther, respectively.

12. What great lessons of the book and at what points in the story is God’s hand most plainly seen?

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Est 7:1 So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen.

Ver. 1. So the king and Haman came to the banquet ] Heb. To drink, for multorum vivere est bibere; of many, to live is to drink, and profane persons have a proverb, Bibere et sudare est vita Cardiaci. To drink and to sweat is the life of Cardiacus. Such are your chamber champions, whose teeth in a temperate air do beat in their heads at a cup of cold sack and sugar. Belshazzar’s feast days were called , because he was quaffing in the bowls of the sanctuary, to the honour of Shac or Bacchus (Greg. Posthum.). Little did either he or Haman think, that in the fulness of their sufficiency they should be in such straits, aud that every hand of the troublesome should come upon him; that when they were about to fill their bellies God should cast the fury of his wrath upon them, and rain it upon them while they were drinking, Job 20:22-23 . But this is the portion of a wicked man from God, and the heritage appointed unto him by God, Job 20:29 . Why, then, should any saint be sick of the fret, at the prosperity of the ungodly? Surely as fishes are taken in an evil net, and as birds are caught in a snare, so are such snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them, Ecc 9:12 . Of Esther’s invitation Haman might have said, as he did of the gifts one sent him,

Munera magna quidem mittit, sed mittit in hamo. (Martial.)

But he knew not yet what evil was toward him; though I doubt not but his conscience (if not altogether dead and dedolent) began by this time to stare him in the face; his friends having already read his destiny.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

Esther Chapter 7

So the banquet proceeds (Est 7 ), and the king and Haman are found, for there was no time to lose. The chamberlain had come and summoned Haman to the banquet, and now the king, for the third time, demands from the queen her petition. “What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee; and what is thy request? and it shall be performed even to the half of the kingdom. Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition.” What! was it come to this? the queen to be a beggar for her life! “Let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request; for we are sold, I and my people to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish: but if we had been sold for bond-men and bond-women, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the king’s damage.” She had struck the right chord. Not only all the affections of the king burst out at this insult that was done to the one that he loved above all in the kingdom; but more: there was the audacious presumption that should attempt the destruction of the queen and all the queen’s people – of all her people without even the king’s knowledge. Who could be the traitor?

“Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he that durst presume in his heart to do so? And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.” “Then Haman was afraid” – as well he might be – “before the king and the queen. And the king arising from his banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden.” Well did Haman know that it was sentence of death that was pronounced upon him. “And Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen, for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king.” And when the king returns he finds Haman in his agony fallen upon the bed where Esther was, and the king willingly puts the worst construction upon it. The word goes forth from his mouth and they cover Haman’s face for immediate execution. And Harbonah one of the chamberlains suggested to the king the gallows that was already made in Haman’s own premises, and this also meets the king’s wishes. “Then the king said, Hang him thereon. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified.”

Fuente: William Kelly Major Works (New Testament)

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Est 7:1-10

1Now the king and Haman came to drink wine with Esther the queen. 2And the king said to Esther on the second day also as they drank their wine at the banquet, What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom it shall be done. 3Then Queen Esther replied, If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me as my petition, and my people as my request; 4for we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed and to be annihilated. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for the trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king. 5Then King Ahasuerus asked Queen Esther, Who is he, and where is he, who would presume to do thus? 6Esther said, A foe and an enemy is this wicked Haman! Then Haman became terrified before the king and queen. 7The king arose in his anger from drinking wine and went into the palace garden; but Haman stayed to beg for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm had been determined against him by the king. 8Now when the king returned from the palace garden into the place where they were drinking wine, Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was. Then the king said, Will he even assault the queen with me in the house? As the word went out of the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face. 9Then Harbonah, one of the eunuchs who were before the king said, Behold indeed, the gallows standing at Haman’s house fifty cubits high, which Haman made for Mordecai who spoke good on behalf of the king! And the king said, Hang him on it. 10So they hanged Haman on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.

Est 7:4 for we have been sold This VERB (BDB 569, KB 581, Niphal PERFECT) is used in Lev 25:34; Lev 25:48 in the sense of sold for debt (cf. Neh 5:8). It became the opposite of redeem. Esther sees herself and her people as sold to Haman’s hatred and by implication, the king’s nonchalance.

to be destroyed, to be killed and to be annihilated These three INFINITIVES (Hiphil [BDB 1029, KB 1552], Qal [BDB 246, KB 255], and Piel [BDB 1, KB 2]) describe the doom awaiting all Jews in Persia. The series is for intensity! It also is exactly what Haman had written in his decree (which Mordecai had given to Esther, cf. Est 3:13) under the king’s authority.

NASBfor the trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king

NKJVthe enemy could never compensate for the king’s loss

NRSVbut no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king

TEV—–omitted—–

NJBit will be beyond the persecutor’s means to make good the loss that the king is about to sustain

JPSOAfor the adversary is not worthy of the king’s trouble

This is polite court language. It is not meant to be literal, but demure. All of the ifs in Est 7:4 serve the same purpose.

The translations differ over how to take the term nzq (BDB 634, KB 684) an Aramaic loan word found only here in the Bible. Some translations take it as (1) trouble or annoyance, but others (2) as damage or loss (referring to the money Haman offered in Est 3:9; Est 4:7). Esther is thinking of herself, her people, and her king!

Est 7:5 who would presume to do this There may be a sound play in the term sell (Est 7:4, BDB 569, KB581, Niphal PERFECT) and presume (lit. fill, BDB 569, KB 583, Qal PERFECT). The king has asked the crucial question!

Est 7:6 foe. . .enemy. . .wicked Esther combines a series of words (as Est 7:4) to describe the depth of her animosity toward Haman.

terrified The Arabic root means to come upon suddenly. In Hebrew (BDB 129, KB147, Niphal PERFECT) the Niphal stem denotes terror (cf. 1Ch 21:30; Dan 8:17).

Est 7:7 and the king arose in his anger from drinking wine This shows how alcohol accentuates the emotions (cf. Est 1:12). See Special Topic on alcohol at Ezr 7:17.

Est 7:8 falling on the couch where Esther was It must be remembered that the wife of the king took on something of his royal person. Therefore, to touch her was a grave offense. Haman probably had grasped Esther’s legs and may even have been kissing them when the king re-entered. Jealousy and anger took over!

It is interesting to speculate from a Jewish perspective how Haman was seen as wanting to be king himself:

1. wants the king’s clothes

2. wants to ride the king’s horse

3. Esther’s accusation in Est 7:4 may have implied a charge of treason

4. wants the king’s wife (or so the king thought)

they covered Haman’s face Although we do not know this from the Persian period, we learn from Greek and Roman literature that this was done to condemned people (from the Anchor Bible, vol. 7B, p. 72; Curtius 6.8,22; Livy 1.26.25). Some scholars say that they have no right to see the king anymore, while other scholars say it was to protect the king from the person’s evil eye.

Est 7:9 What irony!! In context Haman was trying to kill the very one who the king was honoring!

Est 7:10 hanged Haman on the gallows This was probably impaling, not hanging as we understand the term. See note at Est 2:23.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

This is a study guide commentary which means that you are responsible for your own interpretation of the Bible. Each of us must walk in the light we have. You, the Bible, and the Holy Spirit are priority in interpretation. You must not relinquish this to a commentator.

These discussion questions are provided to help you think through the major issues of this section of the book. They are meant to be thought provoking, not definitive.

1. Did the Persians crucify, hang or impale criminals? How and why?

2. Explain the significance and/or origin of the theological statement of Haman’s wife in Est 6:13.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Chapter 7

So Haman came in, but he was really troubled by this whole experience. And so, Esther prepared another beautiful banquet for the king, and again, the king in his generous mood said, “Esther, what do you want? Half of the kingdom, whatever it is. Your petition, your request.”

And so Esther said, All I want is my life and my people [the life of my people]: For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold as slaves, I wouldn’t have said anything. [I would have kept quiet]. Then king Ahasuerus answered and said to Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that dares to presume in his heart to do so? And Esther said, The adversary, the enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen. And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his anger went to the palace garden: and then Haman stood up to make a request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king. And then the king returned out of the palace garden and into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman had fallen upon the bed where Esther was. And the king said, Are you going to rape my wife before me in my own house? As the words went out of the king’s mouth, they took and covered his head with a cloth, [which signified, of course, his impending death]. And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold, there are seventy-five feet gallows, that Haman has made for Mordecai, who spoke the good for the king, and they’re there in his back yard. And the king said, Hang him thereon. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified ( Est 7:3-10 )).

God turning the tables. And it so often happens. You remember when Joseph was sold by his brothers to slavery, to the traders going to Egypt. And he was weeping; he was crying. He said, “No, don’t do this!” And as the traders were taking him off towards Egypt, he was just a teenage boy crying, begging his brothers, but they had steeled their hearts against him. Years later, when they had to come down to Egypt to buy provisions in order to survive, and they didn’t recognize Joseph, the man who was in charge of the provisions of Egypt. But Joseph recognized them and began to give them a bad time, speaking roughly to them through an interpreter. And they turned to each other talking in their own language (which, of course, Joseph could understand) and they said, “You know, this sin has happened to us because of what we did to our brother Joseph. Don’t you remember his tears and all, and we didn’t pay any attention? Now it’s coming back on us.”

But then later, when Joseph did reveal himself they were even more frightened, and they began to beg Joseph for mercy and so forth, and he said, “Look, I know that you meant it for evil, but God intended it for good.” God is so often able to take those things that were intended for evil and turn them around for good. It happens over and over and over again. That is why the Bible says concerning you as God’s child: “No weapon that is formed against you will prosper” ( Isa 54:17 ). This is the heritage of the children of the Lord!

God won’t allow any weapon formed against you to prosper. God is going to take care of you. God is going to watch over you. God is going to turn the tables on your enemies. And He is so clever. And I love the book of Esther, because it has all of this interesting intrigue, and table-turning, and the whole bit. “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Est 7:1-4

Introduction

ESTHER MAKES HER REQUEST; THE KING GRANTED IT; AND THEN SHE IDENTIFIED HAMAN AS HER ENEMY; WHOM THE KING EXECUTED

This second banquet was the climax of the episode. Esther made her petition for her life and for the life of all her people. She identified Haman as the author of the plot to murder them, and she was rewarded by the king’s favorable reception of her plea.

Est 7:1-4

ESTHER’S PETITION FOR HER LIFE

“So the king and Haman came to the banquet with Esther the queen. And the king said again to Esther on the second day at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed. Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my peace, although the adversary could not have compensated for the king’s damage.”

What an incredible shock that request must have been to Haman! At this point, no doubt, he began to understand that Esther was pleading for the life of all the Jews whom Haman had determined to destroy, and that she herself was among the number. This request was most skillfully presented.

1.Esther protested that if the Jews had merely been sold as slaves, she would have held her peace.

2.She protested that Haman had lied about being able to compensate the king for the damage done.

3.She displayed perfect knowledge of Haman’s immense bribe, noting that she and her people had been “sold.”

4.She placed all the blame on Haman, ignoring the king’s own responsibility for that evil decree.

E.M. Zerr:

Est 7:1. To banquet. The second word is a verb and is defined in the lexicon, “to imbibe.” That is the main item of the occasion, although it would imply also a feasting as an additional indulgence.

Est 7:2. The king was still under the “spell” of his love for Esther. Ordinarily a man tries to express his love for a woman by making her a present of some valuable article. He may spare no expense within his possibilities, sometimes even bringing himself almost into bankruptcy. Ahasuerus could think of no gift that was good enough for this woman who had him overwhelmed by his devotion to her. So he told her to name the gift most desirable, the limit being nothing less than half of his kingdom.

Est 7:3. Esther made her request general at first, merely asking that she and her people be spared their lives. This must have been one of the greatest surprises the king ever received. Being entirely uninformed of the identity of the people against whom he had signed the decree of destruction, he had no inkling of any danger to the Jews. He was also unaware of the nationality or race of his wife, and consequently had no idea of the peril overhanging her.

Est 7:4. In continuing her answer to the king, Esther was actually recounting the terms of the decree that he had unconsciously signed against her and her people. However, she did not as yet reveal their race, nor the connection between them and the decree that had authorized Haman to start a movement of destruction. She explained that she would not have made any complaint had the edict required only that they be sold into slavery. It would have been a loss to the kingdom had the Jews been sold into bondage, for the price of their sale would not have been as great as the loss from the services of so good a people as hers. And neither would Haman have been able to make up for the loss, although he had pretended to have great wealth when asking for the decree. These last remarks are based on the concluding words of the verse, which may appear a little vague to the readers. I shall offer a few words of explanation. The enemy is Haman. Countervail means “make up for,” and damage means loss. With these definitions in mind I will reword the last sentence thus: “I had held my tongue, although Haman could not make up for the king’s loss.” In other words, the sale of the Jews would have been a loss to the king, which Haman with all his boasted wealth could not have made up for the king. While Esther might have regretted seeing such loss to the king, yet she would have suffered it to go through, rather than cause any appearance of opposition to the royal decree.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Events now moved rapidly forward. By the way of the banquet Haman passed to the gallows. It was a fierce and terrible judgment, and yet characterized by poetic justice. The man who for no reason other than his pride had prepared the gallows for Mordecai found himself suddenly stripped of all authority and ending his career by the very instrument his brutality had prepared for another.

The very core of Haman’s hatred for Mordecai was his own self-centered and self-consuming pride and ambition. This was of so masterful a nature that one man’s refusal to render homage to him inspired in him such hatred that he was determined to encompass, not the death of that man only, but also of all those who bore blood relation to him. The nets of evil plotting and malicious enterprise swing far out in the tides of human life, but never far enough to enmesh God. He remains beyond them all, and gathering them in the hands of His power He makes them include the men who weave them to destroy others.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

Craft Overreaches Itself

Est 7:1-10

Esther had prayed, as we have seen, Est 4:16, but she acted also. She took such measures as were possible, to gain the kings favor, to awaken his curiosity, and to appeal for his help. All the money that Haman could pour into the royal treasury could not compensate for the loss of an entire people. In his anguish of soul, Haman adopted an attitude of entreaty which seemed to the king a gross impertinence, and this sealed his fate. His face was covered as though he were no longer worthy to behold the king. The chamberlain sent to summon Haman had probably seen the gallows on that errand; and thus it befell that the wicked was taken in his own trap, Psa 9:15. It may be that we are to see in our modern world, on a national scale, the counterpart of this extraordinary reversal. Watch events transpiring in Palestine!

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Chapter 7

The Second Banquet And The Amalekites End

It is hardly to be supposed that the remarkable happenings of the forenoon had all taken place without Esthers knowledge. We know that she was in daily communication, through her chamberlains, with her aged cousin; and there can scarcely be any question as to her having been made familiar with his sudden elevation to the imperial favor. This would account for the lack of hesitancy and the implicit confidence with which she prefers her request when the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen (ver. 1).

The feast was not yet concluded when the king said, What is thy petition, queen Esther? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? and it shall be performed, even to the half of the kingdom? (ver. 2). It is the same invitation to ask largely with the same assurance, as on the previous occasion, that all shall be given. In the word of a king there is power. How much more to be relied on is the word of God that cannot lie, who has said, Everyone that asketh, receiveth; and who invites implicit confidence, on the part of His own blood-washed and redeemed saints, in His faithful promises.

Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: for we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. But if we had been sold for bondmen and bondwomen, I had held my tongue, although the enemy could not countervail the kings damage (vers. 3, 4). Knowing that her lords favor is toward her, she pleads both her own cause, and her peoples. She petitions him to spare their and her life.

How surprised must the king have been to hear her so speak. Who would dare seek the life of his beloved queen? And who could her people be who were thus placed in jeopardy of their lives? It is to be remembered that Esthers kindred had not yet been made known to the king. He was in ignorance of the fact that she was a Jewess.

Her words must have deeply agitated the already toppling son of Hammedatha. Was there not even a designed coincidence on her part between the decree drawn up by Haman and the queens words as she said, We are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish? How could he forget that such had been the language he had caused the kings scribes to write? What an appalling discovery to learn that he had included the wife of Ahasuerus in his bold scheme of blood-shed and revenge! How earnestly he would listen for the kings reply.

Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so? (ver. 5). He at once makes her enemy his; and demands the name of the infamous wretch who could dare conceive so fearful a plot. The guilty conspirator reclines but a few feet from him. His sin is to find him out at last!

And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen (ver. 6). He is manifested now in his true character. The fawning and politic courtier appears as the deep-dyed villain whose perfidy is almost too great to be believed. Satan has again been foiled in his attempt to destroy the line of promise, and God has once more vindicated His Word.

It is easy to cherish a feeling of contempt and disgust for so low and vile character as Haman. But it is well to remember, that in every mans heart is found the same evil thing, which when brought to its full fruition, appears so abominable in the ungodly Agagite. The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and God asks the question, Who can know it? He solemnly answers Himself: I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings (Jer 17:9, 10). It is out of the heart, says the Lord Jesus that all kinds of evil things proceed, and He names evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false-witness, blasphemies (Mat 15:19). These are the things which defile a man, He adds; and we desire affectionately to remind the reader, lest any should be in danger of forgetting it, that it is the grace of God alone which makes one man to differ from another.

No amount of education or culture, nay, nor self-restraint or religiousness, will eradicate the evil. It is the nature that is wholly and utterly corrupt and pernicious. Therefore before one can please God there must be a new nature imparted, and this is the result of new birth. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Nothing but this second birth, through receiving the word of God, will avail to place any natural man on a different footing before the throne of the Majesty on high, than that occupied by the Hamans, the Pharaohs, and the Herods of the Bible. There is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

People often consider it a mark of superior virtue to be shocked and horrified by the crimes of others whom they imagine to be worse than themselves. It is well to realize that the worst acts of the worst men all spring from a nature identical with that of all other sons and daughters of Adam. It is because of this humbling fact our Lord had to tell a religious doctor that except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God, and again, Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

Is my reader certain that he or she is the subject of this great change? Have you truly turned to the Lord for yourself, and from the heart believed the gospel-message which declares that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners? If not, I beseech you, read no further, but stop right here and consider, until you have, as a guiltly, helpless sinner, cast yourself unreservedly upon that blessed One, who died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again (2Co 5:15).

If truly a Christian, turn with us once more to our narrative. The poor discovered wretch trembles before the king and the queen; as some day men will tremble before the Omnipotent Judge when all their secret guilt shall be made known before an assembled universe and it will be too late to seek a hiding-place.

It would seem that Ahasuerus is dazed for the moment, as he begins to realize what Haman had obtained his royal consent for. He is, in a very grave sense, a party to the proposed indiscriminate slaughter of the Hebrews, which would include his beloved spouse. We are told that the king arising from the banquet of wine went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king (ver. 7). The man who without a twinge of remorse could devote a nation to destruction, is in dire distress at the thought of himself losing life or liberty. He takes the place of suppliant at the feet of the now triumphant Esther, cousin to the unbending old man he had led through the streets in the morning. One is reminded of the word to Philadelphia, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee (Rev 3:9, last clause).

In his desperation Haman oversteps the bounds of both court etiquette and ordinary decency, by throwing himself upon the divan where the queen was reclining. At this juncture the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed where Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the words went out of the kings mouth they covered Hamans face (ver. 8). His very importunity, unwise in the extreme, is the means of his complete undoing. At a signal from the outraged monarch his face is covered-token of his condemnation to death. Hope is gone. He shall never see the kings face again; nor shall he be troubled by Mordecais uplifted form evermore. It is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you (2Th 1:6). The ungodly may now be supreme, while to the righteous waters of a full cup are wrung out; but the triumphing of the wicked is short. God is still the moral Governor of the world, to whom all men must give an account. He will manifest His power eventually when all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch (Mai. 4:1). This passage has no ref- erence to judgment after death. It is not the unsaved dead being cast into the lake of fire. It refers solely and simply to Gods judgments which will be meted out to the oppressors of His people at the end of this age. Of this Hamans case gives us a hint.

The chamberlains, quick to discern the mind of the king, waste no sympathy on the fallen premier. Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold, also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon (ver. 9). So certain had the now friendless wretch been in the morning of his having no difficulty about getting the kings permission to hang the refractory Jew, that he appears to have made no secret of his intention. It is evident that Harbonah was quite familiar with it, and as it is very unlikely that such information had been vouchsafed after the procession through the street in the forenoon, it would seem that Haman had but added to his own discomfiture by explaining the purpose of his early visit to some of the chamberlains before being summoned to the royal presence. The attendant mentions now the fact of the gallows having been erected, and the reason for it. Mordecai would have been strung up there had not Providence interfered. The king, hearing of it utters but three words, Hang him thereon, and the Amalekites doom is sealed.

It is not the only time in Scripture history that in Gods governmental dealings such a thing has occurred. Daniel furnishes us with a similar instance. Saved himself by Almighty power from the lions jaws, his accusers are cast into the den and destroyed. David wrote of the wicked; Behold he travaileth with iniquity and hath conceived mischief, and brought forth falsehood. He made a pit and digged it, and is fallen into the ditch which he made. His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate (Psa 7:14-16). So shall it be with the personal Antichrist, the Jews enemy of the future, of whom Haman, if not a type, is at least an illustration. At the moment when his power shall seem to be supreme, and all hope for deliverance for the Remnant of Israel, who in that dark day shall cleave to the Lord, will have practically fled away, the warrior of the 19th of Revelation shall descend and hurl the impious usurper alive into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.

So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the kings wrath pacified (ver. 10). The sentence, as soon as uttered, is carried out. Haman is hanged as one accursed of God. Thus the righteous is delivered out of trouble, and the wicked cometh in his stead (Pro 11:8). Riches profit not in the day of wrath; His wealth and power availed him nothing. In one moment all is manifested as being altogether lighter than vanity. He has gone out into eternity naked and alone; and as a later revelation tells us, It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment (Heb 9:27). That stark, cold body suspended to the gallows preaches loudly, to all who will give heed, of the evanescent character of all earths baubles, and the importance of living for eternity.

I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found (Psa 37:35, 36).

Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets

THE SECOND BANQUET AND HAMANS MISERABLE END

CHAPTER 7

1. The second banquet and Esthers petition (Est 7:1-4)

2. Hamans exposure (Est 7:5-6)

3. Hamans miserable end (Est 7:7-10)

Est 7:1-4. Esther at this second feast knew that the God of her fathers was at work and that all the hatred against her race came not from the heart of the king, but centered in Haman. In the events of the sleepless night and what followed she must have seen the display of the hand of God. And now she utters her delayed petition. Her petition is that her life may be spared as well as her people. How astonished the king must have looked as he gazed upon his beautiful wife and learned from her lips that her life was in danger. And still greater must have been his surprise when he hears, For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. What a scene! The handsome queen, her marvelous earnestness and eloquence in pleading for her life and for her people; the darkening, astonished countenance of the king, the blanching face of Haman and the others in the banquet hall in great excitement.

And her heart-rendering plea, perhaps mingled with tears which coursed down her cheek, did not fail to produce the desired effect.

Est 7:5-6. The king must have been more than astonished he must have been angry. Who dared to plot against the life of the beautiful queen and deprive him of her? Who dared to sell her and her people for slaughter? Even then before he hears from Esther the name of the man, he must have realized, that the crouching Haman is the man. Who is he, and where is he that durst presume in his heart to do so? Her answer is brief but eloquent. With flashing eyes and pointing her finger to the guest at her side she said, An adversary and an enemy, even this wicked Haman! The scene is beyond comparison. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen. He anticipated the fearful storm which would break over his head.

Est 7:7-10. The king arose in his wrath. Close to the banquet hall was the garden. There the king went in the heat of his wrath and the great excitement which had seized upon him and made him speechless. When an oriental king or sultan arises angry from his own table, then there is no mercy for him that causeth it. (See Rosenmueller Oriental Studies on Esther.) In the meantime Haman begs cowardly for his life. He must have fallen at her feet with weeping and wailing. And Esther did not open her lips. Then Haman in his agonizing plea falls upon the couch where Esther was. At that moment the king re-entered the banquet hall. He has regained his speech and when he beholds Haman on the couch he utters a word of bitter sarcasm, as if he had designs upon the honour of the queen. No sooner had the king spoken the word, the attending servants covered Hamans face. This was a Persian custom. The face of a criminal was covered to indicate that he was no longer worthy to behold the light and that darkness of death would be his lot.

The gallows which Haman had prepared for Mordecai is used for his own execution. Critics point out the statement that the gallows 50 cubits high (80 feet) stood in Hamans house and they raise the question How could an 80 foot long pole be gotten into any ones house? But the word gallows means in the Hebrew tree. Probably a tree standing in the garden of Haman was made ready with a rope to hang the hated Jew. It is characteristic of the critics to take such minor things to discredit the accuracy of Scripture.

Typical Application

Haman illustrates the work and the ignominious end of the final Anti-christ who troubles Israel. Haman had almost succeeded. But when the proper moment came God acted in behalf of His people and Haman falls forever. So that coming man of sin will almost succeed, but in the end of the great tribulation, the final 1260 days or three years and a half, with which this age closes, the power of God will be displayed in the complete victory over this enemy of God and man. Hamans end came by the decree of the king and the Anti-christ will be destroyed by the coming of the King of kings and Lord of Lords.

Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)

banquet: Heb. drink, Est 3:15, Est 5:8

Reciprocal: Amo 6:7 – and the

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

Est 7:4. The kings damage, in the loss of subjects and of revenue.

Est 7:8. They covered Hamans face; an indignity done only to persons condemned to die.

Est 7:9. Hang him thereon. The LXX read, crucify him.

REFLECTIONS.

We come now to the instructive close of this tragedy. It was, if we may consult the feelings of human nature, no small calamity, that while Haman was overwhelmed with mortifications, and assailed with desponding predictions from his friends, the royal attendants were at his gates to conduct him to the queens banquet; for when the heart is sick, it is difficult to counterfeit a cheerful countenance. While the attendants were waiting, they had the curiosity to enquire for whom the adjacent gallows was erected: for executions are interesting subjects, and a gallows so lofty they concluded could be designed for no common offender. They were told, servants being often prodigal of their masters secrets, that Mordecai, whom their master had just been obliged to honour, was the victim. So Haman was conducted in state to the banquet, but the knowledge of the crime was conveyed with the man. By spending an evening in feasting and wine, he hoped to chase from his soul the painful recollections of the morning. But the banquet presented new sorrows. The parties were scarcely seated, before the king, urgent to know the request which afflicted his favourite queen, handsomely opened the way by requesting her to speak. And what was his astonishment when she prostrated, and in all the eloquence of a wounded heart, asked, neither honours for herself, nor promotion for her friends, but implored life for herself and for her people. Haman himself, if he could pity, was moved at her distress; for she had not told any one that she was a Jewess. The king, all indignant against the unknown traitor, demanded his name. The adversary and the enemy, it was replied, who has done all this, is no other than this wicked Haman, thy bosom friend. He has imposed on my lord by falsehood and lies; he has bought us for money, and devoted a whole people to destruction. Now Haman tasted Esthers banquet. It was indeed a bitter cup; but bitterer still was his own guilt. The king, too indignant to bear the sight of the culprit, rushed into the garden. Harbonah, a eunuch and the chamberlain, confirmed all the words of Esther, by acquainting the king with the gallows erected for the faithful Mordecai, and advising him to hang the guilty on the very gallows he had erected for the innocent. Nec lex est justior ulta, quam necis artifices arte perire sua. Nor was there ever a juster law than that the insidious assassin should perish by his own art. The king, struck with the equity of the proposition, spake, and it was done.

From this history we may learn many valuable lessons.

(1) How awful are insupportable pride and implacable malice!

(2) How unwise and inhuman is it to persecute honest men for scruples of conscience. Mordecai bowed not to Haman, but he gave his reason; he said, he was a Jew; and consequently he refused not to bow, provided the idolatrous parts of the ceremony were removed. We may also add

(3) that they who persecute the church, however ignorant of what they do, or however specious their political pleas, fall into Hamans errors, and Hamans ruin. They seek the destruction of the kings nearest relatives and dearest friends.

(4) But to see this man, this haughty minister, who held the world by a glance of his eye, and was but an hour before the greatest favourite of his master, hanging on the gallows erected for Mordecai, was a most instructive spectacle to Shushan, and the whole empire. Surely there is a God, and a providence, which shall render to every man according to his works.

(5) If a scene so tragic occurred in an earthly court, what must it be in the general day of account, when the innocent shall accuse the guilty, and bring to light a world of crimes which had passed with men for virtues. What must it be when truth shall raise her voice aloud, strip the base coin of its tinsel, and confound the delinquents; when the eyes of the king shall sparkle with fire, when his looks shall be terrific as the fiercest tempest, and when his voice, as the roaring of a lion, shall utter the accents of vengeance and eternal death. Be instructed, oh my soul, and abide by the cause of simplicity, equity and truth. Be instructed, oh ye kings, be wise, ye judges, to treat the humblest subject at the bar according to law and equity.

Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Esther 7. Esther Accuses Haman, and he is Hanged on the Gibbet he had Prepared for Mordecai.On the same day, at her second drinking-feast, Esther suddenly bursts out in impassioned denunciation of Haman (Est 7:6), and in cries for help from his murderous intent against her and ail she loves. A passage here (Est 7:3 f.) has fretted students, but it is simple when simply translated. We are sold, cries Esther, I and my race, to death and utter ruin! Would that it had been for slaves and handmaids we were sold! Then had I been silent. But in our adversary there is lacking everything that will equal the kings loss. She means that slaves sold bring in cash, but murdered subjects bring none. The kings eyes are opened: in his rage at Haman he can scarce restrain himself. When the wretched Haman, in his terror, appeals to the Jewish queen, and seems to be dishonouring her by kneeling at her couch, the king has him hurried out and away to death by impalement on the very stake he had prepared for Mordecai. The king then confers on Esther all the immense wealth that Haman had amassed, and makes Mordecai Grand Vizier. So the apocalyptic faith that Israel would receive material exaltation is fulfilled in some senses (Est 8:1 f.).

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

HAMAN HANGED ON HIS OWN GALLOWS

(vv. 1-10)

At Esther’s second banquet the king asked her to make whatever petition she desired, with the promise that he would grant it to her.What a surprise it would be to both the king and Haman that she asked that she and her people might be spared from total destruction! (v. 3).”For,” she said, “we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. Had we been sold as male and female slaves, I would have held my tongue, although the enemy could never compensate for the king’s loss” (v. 4). What astonishing words these would be to the king!Haman however would realize (with astonishment too) that Esther must be a Jewess, whose nation he plotted to destroy.

The king, not yet connecting Haman’s recent edict with the Jewish nation, asked indignantly, “Who is he, and where is he, who would dare presume in his heart to do such a thing?” Esther’s response was brief, but like a lightning bolt, “The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman!”(v. 6). The king was wise enough not to erupt in an outburst of anger toward Haman at the moment, but taking time to think in quietness, he went into the palace garden.Haman remained with Esther, pleading for his life, for he knew the king would not pass by an evil so great as he was guilty of (v. 7).When the king was composed sufficiently to return, he found Haman fallen across the couch where Esther was.Though he was no doubt mistaken in thinking that Haman intended to assault the queen, yet this appeared to him to be the case, and when he so spoke,the servants covered Haman’s face (v. 8), for Hamanhad forfeited all title to see the light.

The situation was so electric that at that moment the king would be ready to act without hesitation, and immediately one servant took the opportunity to announce to the king that Haman had made a gallows on which he planned to hang Mordecai.This would increase the tension, and The king did not hesitate to command, “Hang him on it!” (v. 9).Thus the evil that Haman planned came back violently on his own head, as Ecc 10:8 warns, “He who digs a pit will fall into it.”

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

3. Haman’s fall ch. 7

The plot of the story reaches a climax in this chapter "in which Haman comes to the end of his rope." [Note: Wiersbe, p. 737.] . The fate of Haman reversed when Esther identified him as the person responsible for the plan to destroy her and her people.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Esther’s plea 7:1-6

This banquet probably took place in the afternoon, since Haman had already led Mordecai around Susa on a horse that day, and since Haman died later that day.

Esther was in a very dangerous position. Not only did she now identify herself with a minority group that Haman had represented to the king as subversive, but she also accused one of his closest confidential advisers of committing an error in judgment. Nevertheless she appealed to the king to do what was in his best interests (Est 7:4). Ahasuerus saw at once that his enemy, whoever he was, was going to rob him of his queen and his wealth. When Esther finally named the culprit, Ahasuerus had already decided to punish him severely.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

QUEEN ESTHER

Est 4:1-5; Est 7:1-4; Est 9:12-13

THE young Jewess who wins the admiration of the Persian king above all the chosen maidens of his realm, and who then delivers her people in the crisis of supreme danger at the risk of her own life, is the central figure in the story of the origin of Purim. It was a just perception of the situation that led to the choice of her name as the title of the book that records her famous achievements, Esther first appears as an obscure orphan who has been brought up in the humble home of her cousin Mordecai. After her guardian has secured her admission to the royal harem-a doubtful honour we might think, but a very real honour in the eyes of an ancient Oriental-she receives a years training with the use of the fragrant unguents that are esteemed so highly in a voluptuous Eastern court. We should not expect to see anything better than the charms of physical beauty after such a process of development, charms not of the highest type-languid, luscious, sensuous. The new name bestowed on this finished product of the chief art cultivated in the palace of Ahasuerus points to nothing higher, for “Esther” (Istar) is the name of a Babylonian goddess equivalent to the Greek “Aphrodite.” And yet our Esther is a heroine-capable, energetic, brave, and patriotic. The splendour of her career is seen in this very fact, that she does not succumb to the luxury of her surroundings. The royal harem among the lily-beds of Shushan is like a palace in the land of the lotus-eaters, “where it is always afternoon,” and its inmates, in their dreamy indolence, are tempted to forget all obligations and interests beyond the obligation to please the king and their own interest in securing every comfort wealth can lavish on them. We do not look for a Boadicea in such a hot-house of narcotics. And when we find there a strong, unselfish woman such as Esther, conquering almost insuperable temptations to a life of ease, and choosing a course of terrible danger to herself for the sake of her oppressed people, we can echo the admiration of the Jews for their national heroine.

It is a woman, then, who plays the leading part in this drama of Jewish history. From Eve to Mary, women have repeatedly appeared in the most prominent places on the pages of Scripture.

The history of Israel finds some of its most powerful situations in the exploits of Deborah, Jael, and Judith. On the side of evil, Delilah, Athaliah, and Jezebel are not less conspicuous. There was a freedom enjoyed by the women of Israel that was not allowed in the more elaborate civilisation of the great empires of the East, and this developed an independent spirit and a vigour not usually seen in Oriental women. In the case of Esther these good qualities were able to survive the external restraints and the internal relaxing atmosphere of her court life. The scene of her story is laid in the harem. The plots and intrigues of the harem furnish its principal incidents. Yet if Esther had been a shepherdess from the mountains of Judah, she could not have proved herself more energetic. But her court life had taught her skill in diplomacy, for she had to pick her way among the greatest dangers like a person walking among concealed knives.

The beauty of Esthers character is this, that she is not spoiled by her great elevation. To be the one favourite out of all the select maidens of the kingdom, and to know that she owes her privileged position solely to the kings fancy for her personal charms, might have spoilt the grace of a simple Jewess. Haman, we saw, was ruined by his honours becoming too great for his self control. But in Esther we do not light on a trace of the silly vanity that became the most marked characteristic of the grand vizier. It speaks well for Mordecais sound training of the orphan girl that his ward proved to be of stable character where a weaker person would have been dizzy with selfish elation.

The unchanged simplicity of Esthers character is first apparent in her submissive obedience to her guardian even after her high position has been attained. Though she is treated as his Queen by the Great King, she does not forget the kind porter who has brought her up from childhood. In the old days she had been accustomed to obey this grave Jew, and she has no idea of throwing off the yoke now that he has no longer any recognised power over her. The habit of obedience persists in her after the necessity for it has been removed. This would no have been so remarkable if Esther had been weak-minded woman, readily subdued and kept in subjection by a masterful will. But her energy and courage at a momentous crisis entirely forbid any such estimate of her character. It must have been genuine humility and unselfishness that prevented her from rebelling against the old home authority when a heavy injunction was laid upon her. She undertakes the dangerous part of the champion of a threatened race solely at the instance of Mordecai. He urges the duty upon her, and she accepts it meekly. She is no rough Amazon. With all her greatness and power, she is still a simple, unassuming woman.

But when Esther has assented to the demands of Mordecai, she appears in her peoples cause with the spirit of true patriotism. She scorns to forget her humble origin in all the splendour of her later advancement. She will own her despised and hated people before the king, she will plead the cause of the oppressed, though at the risk of her life. She is aware of the danger of her undertaking, but she says, “If I perish. I perish.” The habit of obedience could not have been strong enough to carry her through the terrible ordeal if Mordecais hard requirement had not been seconded by the voice of her own conscience. She knows that it is right that she should undertake this difficult and dangerous work. How naturally might she have shrunk back with regret for the seclusion and obscurity of the old days when her safety lay in her insignificance? But she saw that her new privileges involved new responsibilities. A royal harem is the last place in which we should look for the recognition of this truth. Esther is to be honoured because even in that palace of idle luxury she could acknowledge the stern obligation that so many in her position would never have glanced at. It is always difficult to perceive and act on the responsibility that certainly accompanies favour and power. This difficulty is one reason why “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” For while unusual prosperity brings unusual responsibility, simply because it affords unusual opportunities for doing good, it tends to cultivate pride and selfishness, and the miserable worldly spirit that is fatal to all high endeavour and all real sacrifice. Our Lords great principle, “Unto whom much is given, of him shall much be required,” is clear as a mathematical axiom when we look at it in the abstract, but nothing is harder than for people to apply it to their own cases. If it were freely admitted, the ambition that grasps at the first places would be shamed into silence. If it were generally acted on, the wide social cleft between the fortunate and the miserable would be speedily bridged over. The total ignoring, of this tremendous principle by the great majority of those who enjoy the privileged positions in society is undoubtedly one of the chief causes of the ominous unrest that is growing more and more disturbing in the less favoured ranks of life. If this supercilious contempt for an imperative duty continues, what can be the end but an awful retribution? Was it not the wilful blindness of the dancers in the Tuileries to the misery of the serfs on the fields that caused revolutionary France to run red with blood?

Esther was wise in taking the suggestion of her cousin that she had been raised up for the very purpose of saving her people. Here was a faith, reserved and reticent, but real and powerful. It was no idle chance that had tossed her on the crest of the wave while so many of her sisters were weltering in the dark floods beneath. A clear, high purpose was leading her on to a strange and mighty destiny, and now the destiny was appearing, sublime and terrible, like some awful mountain peak that must be climbed unless the soul that has come thus far will turn traitor and fall back into failure and ignominy. When Esther saw this, she acted on it with the promptitude of the founder of her nation, who esteemed “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt,” but with this difference, that, while Moses renounced his high rank in Pharaohs court in order to identify himself with his people, the Queen of Ahasuerus retained her perilous position and turned it to good account in her saving mission. Thus there are two ways in which an exalted person may serve others. He may come down from his high estate like Moses, like Christ who was rich and for our sakes became poor, or he may take advantage of his privileged position to use it for the good of his brethren, regarding it as a trust to be held for those whom he can benefit, like Joseph, who was able in this way to save his father and his brothers from famine, and like Esther in the present case. Circumstances will guide the willing to a decision as to which of these courses should be chosen.

We must not turn from this subject without remembering that Mordecai plied Esther with other considerations besides the thought of her mysterious destiny. He warned her that she should not escape if she disowned her people. He expressed his confidence that if she shrank from her high mission deliverance would “come from another place,” to her eternal shame. Duty is difficult, and there is often a call for the comparatively lower, because more selfish, considerations that urge to it. The reluctant horse requires the spur. And yet the noble courage of Esther could not have come chiefly from fear or any other selfish motive. It must have been a sense of her high duty and wonderful destiny that inspired her. There is no inspiration like that of the belief that we are called to a great mission. This is the secret of the fanatical heroism of the Madhist dervishes. In a more holy warfare it makes heroes of the weakest.

Having once accepted her dreadful task, Esther proceeded to carry it out with courage. It was a daring act for her to enter the presence of the king unsummoned. Who could tell but that the fickle monarch might take offence at the presumption of his new favourite, as he had done in the case of her predecessor? Her lonely position might have made the strongest of women quail as she stepped forth from her seclusion and ventured to approach her lord. Her motive might be shamefully misconstrued by the low-minded monarch. Would the king hold out the golden sceptre to her? The chances of life and death hung on the answer to that question. Nehemiah, though a courageous man and a favourite of his royal master, was filled with apprehension at the prospect of a far less dangerous interview with a much more reasonable ruler than the half-mad Xerxes. These Oriental autocrats were shrouded in the terror of divinities. Their absolute power left the lives of all who approached them at the mercy of their caprice. Ahasuerus had just sanctioned a senseless, bloodthirsty decree. Very possibly he had murdered Vashti, and that on the offence of a moment. Esther was in favour, but she belonged to the doomed people, and she was committing an illegal action deliberately in the face of the king. She was Fatima risking the wrath of Bluebeard. We know how Nehemiah would have acted at this trying moment. He would have strengthened his heart with one of those sudden ejaculations of prayer that were always ready to spring to his lips on any emergency. It is not in accordance with the secular tone of the story of Esthers great undertaking that any hint of such an action on her part should have been given. Therefore we cannot say that she was a woman of no religion, that she was prayerless, that she launched on this great enterprise entirely relying on her own strength. We must distinguish between reserve and coldness in regard to religion. The fire burns while the heart muses. even though the lips are still. At all events, if it is the intention of the writer to teach that Esther was mysteriously raised up for the purpose of saving her people, it is a natural inference to conclude that she was supported in the execution of it by unseen and silent aid. Her name does not appear in the honour roll of Heb 11:1-40. We cannot assert that she acted in the strength of faith. And yet there is more evidence of faith, even though it is not professed, in conduct that is true and loyal, brave and unselfish, than we can find in the loudest profession of a creed without the confirmation of corresponding conduct. “I will show my faith by my works,” says St. James, and he may show it without once naming it.

It is to be noted, further, that Esther was a woman of resources. She did not trust to her courage alone to secure her end. It was not enough that she owned her people, and was willing to plead their cause. She had the definite purpose of saving them to effect. She was not content to be a martyr to patriotism; a sensible, practical woman, she did her utmost to be successful in effecting the deliverance of the threatened Jews. With this end in view, it was necessary for her to proceed warily. Her first step was gained when she had secured an audience with the king. We may surmise that her beautiful countenance was lit up with a new, rare radiance when all self-seeking was banished from her mind and an intense, noble aim fired her soul, and thus, it may be, her very loftiness of purpose helped to secure its success. Beauty is a gift, a talent, to be used for good, like any other Divine endowment; the highest beauty is the splendour of soul that sometimes irradiates the most commonplace countenance, so that, like Stephens, it shines as the face of an angel. Instead of degrading her beauty with foolish vanity, Esther consecrated it to a noble service, and thereby it was glorified. This one talent was not lodged with her useless.

The first point was gained in securing the favour of Ahasuerus. But all was not yet won. It would have been most unwise for Esther to have burst out with her daring plea for the condemned people in the moment of the kings surprised welcome. But she was patient and skilful in managing her delicate business. She knew the kings weakness for good living, and she played upon it for her great purpose. Even when she had got him to a first banquet, she did not venture to bring out her request. Perhaps her courage failed her at the last moment. Perhaps, like a keen, observant woman, she perceived that she had not yet wheedled the king round to the condition in which it would be safe to approach the dangerous topic. So she postponed her attempt to another day and a second banquet. Then she seized her opportunity. With great tact, she began by pleading for her own life. Her piteous entreaty amazed the dense-minded monarch. At the same time the anger of his pride was roused. Who would dare to touch his favourite queen? It was a well-chosen moment to bring such a notion into the mind of a king who was changeable as a child. We may be sure that Esther had been doing her very best to please him throughout the two banquets. Then she had Haman on the spot. He, too, prime minister of Persia as he was, had to find that for once in his life he had been outwitted by a woman. Esther meant to strike while the iron was hot. So the arch-enemy of her people was there, that the king might carry out the orders to which she was skilfully leading him on without the delay which would give the party of Haman an opportunity to turn him the other way. Haman saw it all in a moment. He confessed that the queen was mistress of the situation by appealing to her for mercy, in the frenzy of his terror even so far forgetting his place as to fling himself on her couch. That only aggravated the rage of the jealous king. Hamans fate was sealed on the spot., Esther was completely triumphant.

After this it is painful to see how the woman who had saved her people at the risk of her own life pushed her advantage to the extremity of a bloodthirsty vengeance. It is all very well to say that, as the laws of the Medes and Persians could not be altered, there was no alternative but a defensive slaughter. We may try to shelter Esther under the customs of the times; we may call to mind the fact that she was acting on the advice of Mordecai, whom she had been taught to obey from childhood, so that his was by far the greater weight of responsibility. Still, as we gaze on the portrait of the strong, brave, unselfish Jewess, we must confess that beneath all the beauty and nobility of its expression certain hard lines betray the fact that Esther is not a Madonna, that the heroine of the Jews does not reach the Christian ideal of womanhood.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary