CRITICAL NOTES.]
Esther 3:12.] The scribes of Xerxes are mentioned more than once by Herodotus. They appear to have been in constant attendance on the monarch, ready to indite his edicts, or to note down any occurrences which he desired to have recorded.—Rawlinson. אַתַשְדַּוְפָנִים and פַחוֹת are here placed together, the satraps of the larger provinces and the rulers among the separate peoples of the provinces. The שָרִים are the native so-called born princes of the different people.
Esther 3:13.] By the runners, by whom they were sent, are meant the posts, the angari or preasmen, who were posted on the main roads of the empire at definite distances from each other, from four to seven parasangs, and who rapidly expedited the royal (mails) letters or commands. The three verbs—to destroy, to kill, and cause to perish—are combined to give strength to the expression. שְׁלָלָם is their property, which is called spoil because it was delivered up to plunder.
Esther 3:14.] By the issue of the decree at this time (the first month) the Jews throughout the empire had from nine to eleven months’ warning of the peril which threatened them. So long a notice is thought to be “incredible,” and the question is asked, Why did they not then quit the kingdom? In reply we may say,
(1) That many of them may have quitted the kingdom; and,
(2) That those who remained may have believed, with Mordecai, that enlargement and deliverance would arise from some quarter or other. As to its being improbable that Haman should give such long notice, we may remark that Haman only wished to be quit of Mordecai, and that the flight of the Jews would hare served his purpose quite as well as their massacre.—Rawlinson.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH. Esther 3:12-14
FRUITLESS PREPARATIONS
Haman had no regard to the contingency of human affairs. He was blind to the fact that it is not in man’s power to control events, and arrange for the future. He had not learnt the wise man’s lesson—“Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” To-morrow is a humiliating term often to those who have far-reaching designs. To-morrow never comes when we work under the guidance of human arrogance. It never comes exactly as we purposed. The seed may flourish to-morrow, but the sower has perished; or the seed which he has sown flourishes to his destruction. Enjoy thyself, Haman, to-day, call forth thy scribes, send forth thy bloody edicts, for to-morrow is coming with crushing doom! We all need to look into the future in order to read the lesson of our weakness.
I. Here is unseemly haste. No sooner had Haman received the king’s permission than he goes forth to his work of revenge. He is in a hurry to set in operation the plans which should work to the destruction of the despised race. There would have been propriety in Haman pausing and considering well before sending forth the orders which were intended to work such vast mischief. Better still if Haman had said, “This scheme is an unworthy one. I am compromising my dignity and my manhood. I will go back to the king, and undo the evil I have sought to accomplish.” Better think twice before committing ourselves to an unworthy action.
II. Here are inconsistent precursory measures. The bad are always inconsistent. Their lives are not harmonious. Wickedness renders a man inconsistent. The good in man, or at least the voice of conscience, works against or speaks against the evil. There would be times when Haman would feel the dreadful nature of the enterprise upon which he had set his heart. Revenge impelled to action, but conscience still spoke in reproving tones. We have pictured Haman as the revengeful man, being willing to wait in order that there might be the more signal display of his malicious power; but here we find him proceeding in regular method, as if to justify his deeds. It may be, however, that Haman was afraid of his own position. If we have given him credit for too much conscientiousness, we cannot easily charge him with too much selfishness. All must be done according to law, that Haman’s enemies may not in the future have the power of charging him with open-handed crime. Obedience to the eternal law of right is the only method by which human lives can be rendered consistent and harmonious.
III. Here is a low estimate of human life. This is one of the strange anomalies, that great men, as the world accounts greatness, think so little of human life. Is ambition to be fed?—human lives must be slaughtered. Is revenge to have its way?—human lives must be sacrificed. Kings, conquerors, and statesmen have regarded no life as precious which stood in the way of their ambitious schemes. Haman was bad, but there are more Hamans than we think of in the historical records. The low estimate of life is here shown—(a) In the unmethodical nature of the slaughter designed. The three terms—to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish—may be employed to give intensity to the barbarous decree. But they also set forth the dreadful fact that the poor people were to be killed anyhow. Let the servants of revenge do their work after any fashion, so that it is done effectually, and the hated race are removed from the face of the earth. (b) In the indiscriminate nature of the slaughter designed. “All Jews, both young and old, little children and women.” Revenge would glut itself. The young and the fair, the beautiful and the innocent, the wise and the virtuous, must be slain, These bleating lambs, what have they done that the light of life must be quenched in its very dawn? (c) In the rapacity after property. The spoil of the slaughtered is to be taken for a prey. Life versus property. This decree is one of the unwritten decrees of modern civilization. Let the spoil of the slaughtered be taken for a prey. Men and women, fair maids, and even little children are slaughtered in order to increase property.
IV. Here is wickedness bolstered up by human authority. “The copy of the writing for a commandment to be given in every province was published unto all people, that they should be ready against that day.” Wickedness wears a mask; it shrinks from the exposure of its own deformity. State policy requires the enormous sacrifice. Capital must have its due return. Business is business. The law of supply and demand must have its way, though that may be through human blood. These are some of the flimsy and false excuses with which sin dresses up itself in order to make a respectable appearance.
Great men should try to get a true idea of the importance of life. Such an idea might save them from mad and wicked enterprises. God has crowned life with an excellent glory. To preserve life nature yields her million products, and pours into the lap of man her myriad fruits;—to promote its welfare the sun bathes the world with his influences, and the component parts of the atmosphere are blended together in relative proportions;—and to increase its pleasures the flowers give forth their fragrance and show their beauty, hills and mountains rise in grandeur, sweet dales rest in their encircling embrace; the birds make the air vocal with their songs of praise; and the stars gem the midnight sky, forming a glorious canopy for man. For the development of man’s whole life time is not adequate, and eternity is the sphere in which an ever-expanding life shall work on to unknown heights of blessed perfection. Life is great, and high estimates ought to be formed of its worth. Statesmen should remember that the true wealth of a community is its men.
“Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.”
All ought to remember that life is ignoble when passion is allowed to rule. How many lives are thus rendered inglorious! Lives with fair opportunities for development are blasted by an overmastering passion. Lives with extensive prospects for usefulness are crushed by the influence of ignoble motives. What a position was that to which Haman was raised! How many might have blessed his memory! His name might have been lauded by the national orators, and sung by the national poets. But his name is scouted, and his memory is covered with opprobrium. The name of the wicked shall rot. The memory of the just only is blessed. Let passion then be subordinated to principle. Let the ambition be to be good and to do good. Let the honour that cometh from God be the supreme concern. And then, whether men bow or refuse to bow, the soul will be unruffled.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Esther 3:12-14
The very circumstance which is urged as an objection to the truth of the narrative is rather to be regarded as an evidence of its trustworthiness. The Book of Esther does not contain any record of miraculous events. There are no wonders and prodigies in it, at which infidelity might carp, and with reference to which it might say that the writer must have drawn so largely upon his fancy in some places as to render suspicious what appears to be the record of simple matters of fact. The whole tenor and style of the book indicate that the writer of it acted the part of a historian who was concerned only to relate what actually took place; and if he had been a deceiver he certainly would not have laid himself open to an objection so very palpable as that under review, when it was in his power, by the mere alterations of dates, to make the whole narrative so plausible that not a flaw could be found in it. In a word, I consider the difficulty before us as an argument for the truth of the history. But further, it must be kept in mind that though the king’s scribes were called on the thirteenth day of the month to write the decree, it does not follow that the work was finished in a day. King Artaxerxes reigned over one hundred and twenty-seven provinces, as we read in the first chapter. Diverse languages and dialects were spoken in many of these provinces. The edict was given forth, we are told, “to the rulers of every people of every province, according to the writing thereof, and to every people after their language.” The document had to be translated, then, into different languages, and a translation sent with the Persic original; and besides, there would, no doubt, be private communications dictated by Haman to the governors of the different provinces, containing directions as to the manner in which the bloody work was to be executed, and the spoils of the Jews disposed of; so that some considerable time would elapse before the royal decree could be sent out to the provinces. We learn, indeed, from the eighth chapter that it was the twentieth day of the third month before Mordecai obtained permission to counteract the design of Haman; and, making allowance for distance and modes of travelling, we may suppose that the sentence against the Jews had not even reached the more remote parts of the empire when the remission of it was resolved upon. But again, and more particularly, it is very obvious that we have to regard the whole transaction here as overruled in the providence of God for the good of his people and the confusion of their enemies. It is easy to say that there is an air of improbability in the whole story, because, even with a few months’ warning, the Jews would have had time to remove from the places where they were doomed to perish. But whither could they have gone? is one question. The Persian empire was so extensive that it would have been difficult for them to escape beyond its bounds and find a refuge elsewhere. Besides, how could they have fled, when no doubt there were orders issued to prevent their flight? We know that in persecuting times in France, and in our own country also, while the victims of persecution were warned that within a certain period no mercy would be shown to them, there were steps taken to prevent their escape; and even the attempt to escape was denounced as criminal. In the case which we have before us in the text the whole matter turns upon this point—that Haman got what he considered the favourable day for his enterprise fixed by a superstitious practice which he revered and believed to be infallible. Then, after this, he felt as if all were secure; and with a recklessness—or, as we might call it, an infatuation—such as there are many examples of in the perpetrators of heinous crimes, he proceeds to accomplish his purpose in a way which one would say was calculated to render it abortive, and to ruin himself.—Davidson.
Multitudes may have been in such a state of bondage as to make it impossible for any great number of them to escape; and as for others, it may have been expected and desired that some of them would leave the kingdom. But such as Mordecai, whom Haman especially wished to destroy, could not leave the kingdom, any more than Nehemiah, without permission from the king. It was also in keeping with Haman’s character to cause all the anguish and horror possible to the Jews in anticipation of the dreadful slaughter. Then we must remember that a wise Providence so overruled this whole procedure as to bring to nought the plans of the Jews’ enemy, and make his malignant hatred of the Jews the occasion of his ruin.—Whedon’s Commentary.
If the chronicles of Persia thus record an intended massacre of the Jews which appals us in its extent and atrocity, the chronicles of Spain, Italy, and France contain records of massacres of Protestants which equal it in unmitigated barbarity. Let us thank God that our lot has been cast in times of comparative quiet, when the spirit of persecution and bloodshed is afraid to manifest itself; and when the exhortation of the apostle is not rendered hard by a “reign of terror”—“Fear God, honour the king.”—McEwan.
“Where,” one is ready to ask, “will rulers find persons willing to execute such unreasonable and barbarous orders?” Executioners have seldom been wanting. Many are accustomed to do blindly whatever their superiors require, without inquiring whether it be right or wrong. Others act under the influence of fear; while a thousand passions—selfishness, avarice, malice, envy, strife, hatred to godliness, and the innate love of cruelty—take the opportunity of gratifying themselves under the covert of authority, and the pretext of executing its mandates.—McCrie.
Esther 3:13. The malice of Haman could no more frustrate the ancient oracles relating to the Jews than it could pull the sun out of the firmament, and deprive the world of the light of day. “The sceptre was not to depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh should come.” The Shiloh was not yet come. Judah must, therefore, continue a distinct nation, under governors that proceeded from himself. Haman’s malice will be so far from finding the means of extirpating Judah, that the glory of that people, though eclipsed, must again shine forth as the morning.
Esther 3:14. Haman caused the edict against the Jews to be published in the language of every people, that they might all be prepared to bear their part in the destruction of the Jews. But the enemies of Israel had one thing in view, and the God of Israel quite another. Haman intended to make the destruction of Judah as sure as possible, but God intended to make all nations attentive witnesses of his power and wisdom displayed in counteracting the designs of their enemies, and accomplishing their salvation. The effect of such an edict would be the fixing of all men’s attention on the event; and the event was to make it evident that there was no God like the God of Israel, nor any people on the earth so much the care of heaven as that nation which was held in abhorrence by Haman.—Lawson.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
Esther 3:13. The deliverance of Hubert de Burgo. We read in our Chronicles, that when King Henry III. had given commandment for the apprehending of Hubert de Burgo, earl of Kent, he fled into a church in Essex. They to whom the business was committed, finding him upon his knees before the high altar, with the sacrament in one hand, and a cross in the other, carried him away, nevertheless, unto the Tower of London. The bishop, taking this to be a great violence and wrong to the Church, would never leave the king until he had caused the earl to be carried back to the place whence he was fetched. This was done; and although order was taken he should not escape thence, yet it gave the king’s wrath a time to cool, and himself leisure to make proof of his innocency; by reason whereof he was afterwards restored to the king’s favour, and former places of honour. And the like befell these Jews ere the thirteenth of Adar; but Haman, blinded with pride and superstition, could not foresee it.—Trapp.
Esther 3:13. Soldiers, not butchers. At the famous Bartholomew’s massacre, when the King of France sent his orders to the commanders in the different provinces to massacre the Huguenots, one of them returned him this answer: “In my district your Majesty has many brave soldiers, but no butchers.” That virtuous governor never felt any effects of the royal resentment. It is to be feared that few of the Persian governors would have given such proofs of virtuous courage if the king’s edict had not been reversed. We find none of all the governors of the provinces of the Babylonian empire that refused to bow their knees to the graven image which Nebuchadnezzar the king set up. The subjects of princes who rule with unlimited dominion are for the most part slaves both in body and in soul. They are taught from their earliest days, by the examples which they see around them, to consider their princes as gods on earth, whose will must not be disputed.—Lawson.
Esther 3:14. Executioners. There is abundance of evidence that, in the middle ages, the office of public executioner was esteemed highly honourable all over Germany. It still is, in such parts of that country as retain the old custom of execution by stroke of sword, very far from being held discreditable to the extent to which we carry our feelings on the subject, and which exposed the magistrates of a Scotch town,—I rather think no less a one than Glasgow,—to a good deal of ridicule, when they advertised, some few years ago, on the occasion of the death of their hangman, that “none but persons of respectable character” need apply for the vacant situation. At this day, in China, in Persia, and probably in other Oriental kingdoms, the Chief Executioner is one of the great officers of state, and is as proud of the emblem of his fatal duty as any European Lord Chamberlain of his golden key.—Note to Anne of Geierstein.
No doubt very many of the subjects of Ahasuerus would be willing to become executioners, in order to secure the favour of the monarch, and to get a share of the spoil. They would get themselves ready against that day of intended slaughter.