Original Meaning

THIS HIGHLY CHARGED scene begins innocuously enough with: “So the king and Haman went to dine with Queen Esther.” Little did either know what awaited them there! While drinking wine Xerxes asks Queen Esther for the third time to reveal her request and again assures her of his positive and generous response (cf. 5:3, 6). Esther now begins the delicate and dangerous task of accusing Haman without incriminating the king who had, after all, sealed Haman’s decree of death with his full knowledge and approval. She has to incite the king against his friend and closest advisor without bringing the king’s wrath down on herself. Once set in motion, the scene moves with breathtaking speed toward Haman’s destruction.

King Xerxes repeats exactly his words spoken at the previous banquet, “What is your petition? . . . What is your request?” In the king’s rhetoric, the two words “petition” and “request” refer to the one and the same desire of Esther. Her reply is rhetorically structured exactly as was his question: “. . . grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request.” By framing her response using the king’s rhetoric, Esther is saying that her life and the life of her people are one and the same. Her destiny is one with her people.

Esther continues her brief but skillful reply to the king, “I and my people have been sold for destruction and slaughter and annihilation.” Esther quotes the exact words of Haman’s edict (cf. 3:13), but by using the passive voice, she delays mentioning Haman’s name or the fact that it was the king himself who sold the Jewish people for ten thousand talents of silver (cf. 3:9, 11). This oblique tactic is not unlike that used by Nathan the prophet when confronting David with his sin in 2 Samuel 12. Nathan circumvented David’s defense mechanism by first arousing David’s indignation and his resolve to see justice done before revealing that David himself was the evil man. The same tactic works for Esther, and Xerxes’ indignation and anger erupt with the demand that she tell him, “Who is he?” and “Where is the man . . . ?” Apparently the death edict has made so little an impression on the king that Esther’s quotation of it does not even ring a bell.

Although lost in English translation, the king’s fury is effectively communicated in the Hebrew words, which sound like machine-gun fire when pronounced aloud. His honor is offended that someone would attempt injury to his queen and her people. The emotion and anger of Esther’s reply are also lost in the bland English translation. In the Hebrew, her words ring out with staccato cadence. Esther answers both the “who” and the “where” with her succinct accusation: “A man hateful and hostile! This wicked Haman!” (pers. trans.).

Esther’s words send Xerxes into an enraged quandary that drives him out of the banquet room and into the garden. In his commentary, M. Fox reads the questions circulating in Xerxes’ mind: “Can he punish Haman for a plot he himself approved? If he does so, won’t he have to admit his own role in the fiasco [and lose face]? Moreover, he has issued an irrevocable law; how then can he rescind it?”1 The king’s dilemma will soon be resolved by Haman’s further folly.

Clearly Haman realizes that the king’s fury is upon him. He also knows Xerxes well enough to realize that the king never made his own decision. It was the manipulative agenda of others that drove his actions, a ploy Haman himself had used so successfully in the past. Thus, his only chance of survival lies in the hands of Esther, whom he begs to intercede with the king for his life.

Harem protocol dictated that no one but the king could be left alone with a woman of the harem. Haman should have left Esther’s presence when the king retreated to the garden, but where could he have gone? His choice was either to follow the king, who had bolted in anger from his presence, or to flee the room, suggesting guilt and inviting pursuit. Haman is trapped. Even in the presence of others, a man was not to approach a woman of the king’s harem within seven steps.2 That Haman should actually fall on the couch where Esther is reclining is unthinkable! Haman’s untoward behavior is so unimaginable that in the Aramaic Targum of Esther he falls on the queen’s couch only because the angel Gabriel has given him a firm shove, sealing his fate. It is Haman’s final, fatal action.

Precisely at this moment of impropriety Xerxes returns and finds his quandary about what to do with Haman resolved. It is unlikely that Haman is actually attempting to physically assault or sexually molest the queen, even though that seems to be the spin Xerxes conveniently puts on it. Regardless of intent, Haman has undeniably violated harem protocol, a serious affront to the king himself and reason enough to condemn him to death. When Harbona suggests that Haman be hanged on the gallows he had built for Mordecai—the Mordecai who, by the way, had saved the king from assassination—Xerxes concludes that Haman perhaps had secret sympathies with his attempted assassins. This fine point of court intrigue is amplified in the Greek version, which emphasizes that Haman, the king’s closest advisor, will be executed in disgrace for treason.

The English word “gallows” connotes death by asphyxiation on a wooden stand with a rope noose around the neck. This word is chosen in the NIV because there is in English no exact equivalent for the form of execution practiced in ancient Persia. Both from the written witness of Herodotus and from excavated stone reliefs, we know that the Persians built “gallows” that were wooden stakes on which they impaled, not asphyxiated, their victims.3 When the death of an enemy occurred by some other means, the bodies of the slain often would be impaled (i.e., “hung”) on gallows for public display and further humiliation.

Bridging Contexts

IRONY. THIS SCENE is about who gets life and who does not. Both Esther and Haman plead for their lives in this chapter. Neither is in control of their respective destinies. Both are caught up in a complicated web of intrigue that has taken on a life of its own. Esther’s destiny lies with that of her people. Haman’s destiny overtakes him like a thief in the night.

The scene is steeped in irony. Consider how the entire conflict between Haman and the Jewish people begins when Mordecai the Jew dishonors Haman the Agagite by refusing to fall before him. In his final scene, Haman falls before a Jew (and a Jewish woman at that!), whom he has unknowingly condemned to death, to plead with her for his life! On the couch of this Jewish queen he “falls” all the way from his exalted position as second over the empire to an ignominious death as a traitor. The enemy of the Jews is executed for being an enemy of the king. This sudden reversal of expected outcomes gives Haman’s story a tragic irony. All of a person’s best laid plans can in an instant be turned to produce the opposite of the intent. It is especially ironic when that person has all the power of a great empire behind him and when his downfall begins with something as insignificant as someone’s night of insomnia.

Esther and holy war. Esther has been criticized for being hardhearted in not forgiving Haman and not interceding with the king on his behalf. After all, Haman did not know that the queen was Jewish when he sent out his decree of death because Esther herself had concealed her identity, so why should she take the decree so personally now? Moreover, she knew that he was not attempting to assault her when he fell upon her couch, so why did she let the king believe the worst? Surely she could have manipulated the clueless king to pardon Haman.

Apparently looking for an exemplary role model in Esther, L. B. Paton writes in his commentary:

Esther has now a chance to intercede for Haman, but she does not take it. All his entreaties are in vain, and she looks on in silence while he is condemned to death . . . it must be admitted that her character would have been more attractive if she had shown pity toward a fallen foe.4

The author gives us no insight into Queen Esther’s mind at that moment, but is her lack of pity on Haman really the moral of the story? Is pity always a virtue? And is the lack of it always a character flaw (especially in a woman)? Perhaps it is in this very moment that Esther exhibits her greatest strength of character and fulfills her highest calling.

From chapter 5 onward, Esther is portrayed as queen of the world’s mightiest empire. She comes into her own as queen only after she decides to align herself with God’s covenant people. She is no longer a trophy wife, a queen in name only, but by putting on her royal robes in defense of her people she takes up the power of her position. Recall Mordecai’s words to Esther in 4:14, “And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?” (emphasis added). Esther is portrayed by the author in her royal power, not in her personal character. Being queen of Persia made Esther the ruling monarch of the Jews, including those who had returned to Judah to rebuild the temple.

By designing the death of Haman the Agagite, Queen Esther has succeeded where her ancestor King Saul had failed, whether or not she was aware of it (see 1 Sam. 15; see also comments on 3:1). Esther is the Jews’ queen during this time of holy war. Holy war is a troubling concept to modern readers, and the role of the monarch in holy war is unfamiliar to most.5 In Scripture, holy war was initiated by God for his own purposes, and Israel’s king was to be the leader of God’s army and responsible to wage holy war according to the divine initiative.

The Amalekites had tried to destroy the infant nation of Israel shortly after they left the land of Egypt (Ex. 17:8–15). Because of this, God instructed Israel’s first king, Saul, to attack and destroy the Amalekites, sparing not even women and children. The similarity of these words with those of the edict of Haman against the Jews in Persia, as well as the words of Mordecai’s later counter-edict, is striking (cf. Est. 3:13; 8:11). Saul was to spare not even one of the Amalekites and to show no pity. But when Saul had the opportunity to kill their king, Agag, king of the enemies of God’s people, he spared his life instead. This act of disobedience in holy war disqualified Saul from being Israel’s king.

When Samuel heard of Saul’s “mercy” on Agag, the enraged prophet killed Agag in obedience to God’s command, but according to rabbinical tradition, not before Agag slept one last time with his wife. The son conceived in that union had a descendent generations later named Haman, who turned the power of Persia against the exiled nation of King Saul. Because of Saul’s failure, the Amalekites continued to plague Israel throughout its history.

Haman the Agagite wore the signet ring that endowed him with the king’s authority, and he effectively acted as the king of the enemies of God’s people. In the Diaspora setting, God no longer fought holy war through Israel’s king and army, for Israel no longer had either a king or an army. Would God’s people still be protected by his covenant promises without holy war? The story of Esther demonstrates that God worked providentially through Mordecai and Esther to fulfill a promise of protection that previously would have been fulfilled through holy war. Queen Esther killed Haman with her cunning, as surely as King Saul could have, and should have, killed Agag with the sword. Commentators who criticize Esther for her lack of pity on Haman seem to have missed this connection to Israel’s monarchy and its role in God’s promise of destruction against those who oppose his redemptive work.

Esther’s role as queen of the Jews in this story makes it inappropriate to use exemplary exegesis as the key to understanding this book. Esther is not portrayed as the ideal woman of God living out her relationship with the Lord as a direct example for women today. Her role as the Jewish queen of Persia in a specific stage of redemptive history and biblical theology means that no other woman can or should try to emulate directly her character or behavior, just as no Christian man today would emulate David when he killed two hundred Philistines for their foreskins as the bride price for Saul’s daughter (1 Sam. 18:24–30).

Was Haman’s death justified? Over time, Mordecai, not Esther, was understood in Jewish interpretation to be the hero who finally finished the job Saul had left undone. In fact, during the Hellenistic period Purim came to be called Mordecai’s Day. Mordecai’s role is certainly essential to the deliverance. The author of Esther introduces him as a second Saul by specifying both were Benjamites and descendants of Kish (see comments on 2:5). But although Mordecai’s part was essential in the deliverance, it was Queen Esther who wore the crown of monarchy and who had the more direct part in Haman’s death. The later Greek additions to this book portray Esther and Mordecai as partners in righteousness, together praying for and achieving God’s redemptive purposes. On the other hand, the ancient Greek version, which was translated in Egypt during the reigns of a number of the Ptolemaic queens named Cleopatra, greatly diminishes Esther’s overall role in the saga and magnifies Mordecai’s.

This trend is also found in the Aramaic targums of Esther, which are amplified translations of the story. In an embellishment of this scene, one of the later targums explains that the king gave Mordecai the privilege of personally killing Haman. As Haman faces death, he begs Mordecai for mercy in words still dripping with pride:

And Mordecai spoke to Haman, saying, Come with me, Haman, thou foe and wicked enemy and oppressor of the Jews, that we may hang thee upon the gallows which thou hast erected for thyself. Then the wicked Haman answered the righteous Mordecai, Before they bring me to the gallows, I beg thee, righteous Mordecai, that thou wilt not hang me as they hang common criminals. I have despised great men, and governors of provinces have waited upon me. I have made kings to tremble at the word of my mouth, and with the utterance of my lips I have frightened provinces. I am Haman; my name was called Viceroy of the King, Father of the King. I beg thee, righteous Mordecai, not to do to me as I thought to do to thee. . . . Do not remember against me the hatred of Agag, nor the jealousy of Amalek.6

When Haman appeals to “righteous” Mordecai for mercy, he implies that righteousness demands that Mordecai spare his life. But by his own admission, Haman’s unwillingness to forgive Mordecai’s affront to his honor and to spare Mordecai’s people from death reveals Haman as being unmerciful himself and therefore unrighteous by his own definition. The interpreter(s) who wrote this targum clearly implies that in this particular case “righteousness” did not mean mercy for Haman, anymore than Saul’s “mercy” on Agag was righteous. To be righteous meant being the agent of God’s command of death to Amalek. Mordecai, the righteous one, ignores Haman’s pleas and holds the “hatred” for Agag and the Amalekites against Haman because God had commanded they be destroyed, and Haman was one of them. To fulfill righteousness in this case Mordecai must kill Haman, not spare him.7

The irony of Haman’s downfall in Esther is especially unsettling when one realizes that Haman indeed got what he deserved, but for crimes he did not actually commit. He did not plot to assassinate the queen, nor was he attempting to molest her, though Esther allowed the king to conveniently take it that way. Yet the author does not allow us to feel sympathy for Haman, for at every step of the way, Haman’s own fatal pride moves him toward his own destruction.

The first-century Jewish historian, Josephus, comments:

And from hence I cannot forbear to admire God, and to learn hence his wisdom and justice, not only in punishing the wickedness of Haman, but in so disposing it, that he should undergo the very same punishment which he had contrived for another; as also, because thereby he teaches others this lesson, that what mischiefs any one prepares against another, he without knowing of it, first contrives it against himself.8

Contemporary Significance

HUMAN EVIL AND divine justice. Who gets life and who does not? In this chapter both Esther and Haman face death and plead for life. When Esther reveals Haman as her mortal enemy, she at the same time reveals herself to be Jewish. In so doing, she not only indicts herself for living a lie in the harem of the king, she also brings herself under the irrevocable decree of death against the Jews. Although Haman himself is dead by the end of the chapter, Esther’s plea for her life and for the life of her people remains unanswered. Despite the king’s assurance, stated three times over, that he will certainly grant her request, has Esther asked for something not even the ruler of Persia’s power and wealth can grant? The question remains to be answered.

The suddenness of Haman’s death and his inability to prevent it is unnerving. One day he was on top of the world, with all the wealth and power that attends high political rank. He could boast to family and friends about his position and favor with the king and queen. The very next day, he is executed in disgrace. Overnight, the tables have turned, and he did not see it coming.

Driven by uncontrollable pride and arrogance, Haman had plotted to slaughter the Jewish people because his lust for power over others could not be satisfied as long as Mordecai the Jew refused to bow to him. Given full reign, pride, like greed and lust, is insatiable. Haman does not appear to be anti-Semitic in the modern sense of the word, for he would probably have been willing to commit genocide against any population if it satisfied his megalomaniac pursuit of honor and power. His plan to take revenge on one man by annihilating his entire race was an evil of demonic proportions, regardless of who those people were. The enormous stature of Haman’s evil is pictured in the seventy-five-foot height of the gallows he unknowingly constructed for himself. His sudden and unpreventable destruction was the just reward of such an evil mind.

But the story moves to a new plane of theological significance precisely because the people he picked on happened to be the Jews, the people Yahweh had chosen as his own. Speaking better than she knew, Haman’s own wife, Zeresh, predicted that because Mordecai was Jewish, Haman could not stand before him, but would come to ruin (6:13). While inviting us to reflect on the question of who gets life and who does not, the author of Esther reveals the nature and destiny of human evil and the mysterious workings of divine justice.

Human evil, wherever it occurs and for whatever motivation, always sets itself against God, because God is the definition of goodness and righteousness. Divine justice inevitably and inextricably means the destruction of evil. The author of Esther shows that evil is personal. It is not some ethereal substance “out there”; evil does not exist apart from beings who are evil. Therefore, in order to deliver the Jewish people from annihilation as God promised in his covenant with them, God necessarily had to destroy the evil that threatened their existence. In this case that evil came in the person of Haman. Mercy on Haman would have been inconsistent with God’s covenant.

Nevertheless, Haman’s death illustrates that the divinely appointed path to destruction is a path that proceeds step-by-step from the will of the wicked person. There is perhaps no better biblical illustration than Haman of the truth stated by the great Christian theologian John Calvin, “Man falls according as God’s providence ordains, but he falls by his own fault.”9

If God’s deliverance of his people in the book of Esther is by providence, so also is Haman’s destruction. Deliverance of one and destruction of the other are correlative in the book of Esther, shown as two sides of the same coin. Yet even though the deliverance providentially orchestrated by God necessarily implies the destruction of Haman, the author shows that Haman is responsible for each step that leads to his own death, even while mistakenly thinking he is safe in his power, wealth, and prestige.

Haman’s example shows that human evil is self-deceptive. It allows evildoers to believe themselves justified in their evil actions and clever enough not to get caught in their own web. Haman had all the resources of the empire on his side as he schemed and plotted—power, prestige, wealth—but it all came to nothing because of that one unforeseen, unpredictable night of the king’s insomnia. We have all read well-written mysteries of the “perfect” murder that is finally solved by some chance event the murderer could never have foreseen or prevented. People sin with the delusion that while others may get caught, they will not.

Evil is also self-deceptive because while it appears to provide well-being and safety, it feeds off impulses that blind us to the truth. Haman’s true, precarious situation was veiled to him by the darkness of his own thinking. The truth he could not see was that while he thought he was prescribing his own honor, it was really Mordecai’s (6:6–9). He constructed a gallows of colossal size, thinking it was for Mordecai, but in reality it turned out to be his own (5:14). Haman boasted to his friends of being honored by being invited alone to the queen’s banquet, not realizing the truth that it was an invitation to his own execution. For Haman, things were actually not what they appeared to be, even while he himself was doing them. Suddenly, without warning, the true destiny of human evil is revealed: destruction by the long-promised justice of God. On the final judgment day when the truth is revealed, the condemned will finally realize that they have no one to blame but themselves.

Identification with a people. While reflecting on who gets life and who does not, the author of Esther reveals that life and death are determined by identification with a people. In that moment of horror when Haman finally sees the truth and realizes the import and consequences of what he has done, he begs for life, but to no avail. Haman is an Agagite, and his destiny is with this people whom God has already condemned to destruction. By virtue of his identity as an Agagite, Haman comes to destruction, but is nevertheless a destruction he has built with his own hands as surely as he built the gallows.

Esther’s destiny also is one with her people. If they perish, she will perish. By virtue of her identity with them, Esther shares in the destiny of God’s people. Because God promised to deliver his people from the threat of Amalek, the destruction of Haman implies the salvation of the Jews. But at this point in the story, that deliverance is only implied and not realized.

In New Testament theology, life and death are also shown to be by identification with a people. The work of Jesus Christ is the consummation of God’s covenant promises to ancient Israel (2 Cor. 1:20). Thus, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to his people for protection from death is found in Jesus Christ. Identification with him constitutes a people who will be delivered from death and live forever, just as Jesus was. In John 14:19 Jesus says to his disciples, “Because I live, you also will live.” Conversely, to be outside of Christ is to be numbered among the people God has already condemned to death as defined in Genesis 3—humanity at large. The apostle Paul puts it this way: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22). Jesus Christ invites Jew and Gentile, people of all races, religions, and ethnic groups, to be born again into the people who will be saved by God’s grace from destruction, the church.

Fallen human nature set itself against God in the Garden of Eden and was condemned to death by God. That fallen nature is embodied in the book of Esther as the Agagite nature of Haman, but it is the universal condition of all who have not been reconciled to God in Christ. Haman, the powerful, wealthy Agagite, pridefully sets out to live in a way that seems right to him, but in the end finds out only too late that he has actually set himself against God and his people. Sadly, so it will be with those who are not in Christ on their own day of judgment.