CRITICAL NOTES.]
Esther 7:7.] The king went into the palace garden in order to recover from the first burst of anger, and to consider what was to be done with Haman. He stood up and besought Esther to shield him from the king’s fury.
Esther 7:8. Haman was fallen upon the bed] In the wild emotion and alarm of the moment he had thrown himself upon the couch or divan on which Esther reclined at the banquet, and was supplicating for his life. Will he force the queen] 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. Covered Haman’s face] The covering of the face was probably the beginning of the execution of the death sentence. (Compare Curtius: They brought Philetas with covered head into the palace.) Even old interpreters remind us of the sentence in Cicero: Lictor, bind his hands, veil his head, hang him on the hapless tree. However, only mentioned here as a Persian custom.
Esther 7:9. Harbonah … said] This eunuch had been many years in Xerxes’ service. Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, &c.] 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; but, from Harbonah’s views, 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 for the king by revealing the plot against the king’s life, he intimates that it was more fit for Haman to grace the gallows than the one for whom it was originally erected.—Lange. In all the range of literature we find no more signal display of righteous retribution than in the death of Haman.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH. Esther 7:7; Esther 7:10
THE FEAR, THE FOLLY, AND THE DOOM OF THE EVIL-DOER
After Ahasuerus had heard Esther’s accusation, he went out into the palace garden. Wrath was in his countenance; wrath in his hasty tread. The sweet air of the palace garden, laden with rich odours, did not allay his anger. No soft music was found strong enough to drive away the evil spirit. Angry he went forth, and angry he returned. The offence was of too grave a character to be thus easily forgotten. It is not for us here to conjecture how far Ahasuerus might have gone on the line of forgiveness. Perhaps it was needful for the interests of his government that this bad man (Haman) should be at once brought to judgment. In human codes the boundary line of forgiveness is soon reached. In the Divine administration there is the exercise of forgiveness on a vast scale. But even there we seem to find a limit. If men reject all the Divinely-appointed means for obtaining pardon, there only remaineth “a certain fearful looking for of judgment.” “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” Men must not trifle with the Divine nature. God is merciful, but God is just. “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found.”
I. The evil-doer receives warning. “Haman saw that there was evil determined against him by the king.” At present Haman had not ascertained the extent and the nature of the evil; but he clearly heard the sound of the avenging deity, though his feet might be shod with wool. The wrath on the king’s countenance and the guilt in Haman’s soul both tended to give him awful warning. Evil-doers receive warning. Nature gives warning. She declares that evil-doing must bring damage sooner or later. She is stern, and will not suffer her great laws to be violated with impunity. Revelation gives warning. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” “The wages of sin is death.” History gives warning. The warnings too are given long before it is too late. The evil-doer when meeting the doom of his crimes will not be able justly to say, Had I known only in time! had some voice only spoken early enough to arrest me in the career of crime! The voices do speak, but the evil-doer turns a deaf ear. Oh, let us listen to every warning voice; let us be wise in time. Haman now heard the warning voice, but it was almost too late. But it may not yet be too late for us. “Hear, and your soul shall live.”
II. The foolish evil-doer works his own destruction. Perhaps anything that Haman could have done at this crisis would not have been efficacious to avert his awful doom. May we not suppose, however, that if Esther had seen the signs of genuine repentance in Haman, and had heard from his lips a sincere confession of his baseness and of his guilt, she would have done something for his pardon? But he did not take this course. He was found by the king in a position that tended to excite still more the king’s wrath. The very means that Haman took to save his life was the means of bringing about his speedy execution. All through this history Haman is seen working for his own destruction, though he thought he was working for the destruction of his enemies. Sinners work their own destruction, and bring upon themselves their own awful doom. In this connection we may rightly speak of the inexorable nature of law. It is a dreadful thing to sin against the great laws of nature and of revelation. “Our God is a consuming fire.” We bring upon ourselves our own punishment. In this sense we are the dread arbiters of our own fearful fate.
III. The evil-doer raises striking evidence of his own guilt. “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.” Crafty as Haman might be, he was not crafty enough to keep his vile purpose a secret. It was evidently well known for whom the gallows was intended. Haman in raising the gallows was preparing a terrible and irresistible evidence against himself. Facts are stubborn things, and whatever poor Haman might attempt to say in his own defence, he could not talk down the gallows raised fifty cubits high. There it was to speak for itself, and to condemn the guilty Haman. How often in life do we see the evil-doer making a gallows fifty cubits high! The sinner unwittingly writes bitter things against himself, and the writing is brought forth in an evil hour to his condemnation. “Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked servant. Thou knewest that I was an austere man, taking up that I laid not down, and reaping that I did not sow: wherefore then gavest not thou my money into the bank, that at my coming I might have required mine own with usury?”
IV. The evil-doer is practically his own executioner. “So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.” We must pity Haman in his direful doom; still we feel as if there was a certain fitness in the case. Our natures approve the law of retribution. We seem to feel that unblushing crime should not go unpunished. The course and the doom of Haman may not be the exact counterpart of every evil-doer’s course and doom; yet there is here portrayed a great general law which we would do well to note with all seriousness. When we come to harm on account of our sins, we are too apt to blame our fellows, to blame our circumstances, to blame the devil. We ought to blame ourselves. We only get hung on the gallows we ourselves have erected. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Let us at once proceed, by repenting of our pride, our hate, and our jealousy, to destroy the gallows. Let us look by faith to the cross, and all that is signified thereby, and then any other cross raised by sinful folly will be diverted of its power to do us lasting damage.
“Then was the king’s wrath pacified.” The flattering minion was removed out of his sight. The projector of wholesale murder was himself destroyed. Ahasuerus himself was not safe so long as Haman was allowed to exist. Wrath, however, is cruel, and nothing but Haman’s death could pacify the angry king. If it must needs be that capital punishment be the portion of certain transgressors, the sentence should not be carried out in order to pacify wrath, but to meet the demands of justice, as a deterrent to crime, and to promote the public safety. Well were it if we could dispense with the gallows. Well were it if strict justice tempered by mercy always administered the law to transgressors. God’s laws are always wisely and righteously administered. Never yet can it be said that God’s wrath was pacified by the execution of any sinner. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was not an exhibition of Divine wrath, but of Divine love. It was the method by which God could be just, and yet the Justifier of the believer. It may be a mystery, but there is in the remedial scheme of the gospel more mercy than mystery.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Esther 7:7-10
The king indeed is unjust in fixing this calumny upon Haman; but 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.”—Feuardent.
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 honours, before which all bowed in adoration to the earth, he should himself be elevated above all other people that were hung.—Starke.
Said before the king.] Not a man opens his mouth to speak for Haman, but all against him. Had the cause been better, thus it would have been. Every cur is ready to fall upon the dog that he seeth worried; every man ready to pull a branch from the tree that is falling. Cromwell had experience of this when once he fell into displeasure by speaking against the king’s match with Lady Catherine Howard, in defence of Queen Anne of Cleve, and discharge of his conscience, for the which he suffered death, Stephen Gardiner being the chief engineer. Had Haman’s cause been like his, albeit he had found as few friends to intercede for him as Cromwell, yet he might have died with as much comfort as he did. But he died more like to the Lord Hungerford, of Hatesby, who was beheaded together with the noble Cromwell; but neither so Christianly suffering nor so quietly dying for his offence committed against nature, viz., buggery. Cromwell exhorted him to repent, and promised him mercy from God; but his heart was hardened, and so was this wicked Haman’s. God, therefore, justly set off all hearts from him in his greatest necessity; and now, to add to his misery, brings another of his foul sins to light, that he might be the more condignly cut off.—Trapp.
It was an excellent saying of Ambrose, “If thou canst not hide thyself from the sun, which is God’s minister of light, how impossible will it be to hide thyself from him, whose eyes are ten thousand times brighter than the sun!” You know what Ahasuerus, that great monarch, said concerning Haman: “What,” saith he, “will he force the queen before me in the house?” There was killing emphasis in the words “before me.” Will he force the queen before me? What, will he dare to commit such villany, and I stand and look on? O sirs, to sin in the sight of God is a thing that he looks upon as the greatest affront, and as the highest indignity that can possibly be done unto him.—Brooks.
The thought which is at once suggested to our minds in connection with Haman’s execution on the gallows which he had himself prepared for Mordecai, is that of a righteous retribution in providence, a subject which cannot be too delicately handled, nor too cautiously and reservedly applied. There are some who are always ready to interpret calamity as a retribution in providence, with the greatest self-blindness as to their own sins. Let a terrible accident happen to a railway train travelling on sabbath day, and some will be found to describe it as a retribution in providence against sabbath desecration. Alas! Do they never desecrate the sabbath, that they should be so ready to give a stone for bread to the wounded and mourning? Let a theatre, or some other place of public resort not generally approved of, be destroyed by fire, and many lives lost, and some will discourse upon it, in like manner, as a retribution in providence. Do they not reflect that buildings devoted to useful manufacture, and even to the worship of God, have been destroyed in the same way, and with similar disastrous results? If they would not venture to apply the rule in the one case, why should they do it in the other? Cowper has put the doctrine of a universal providence in two lines, with which we must all agree:—
“Happy the man who sees a God employed
In all the good and ill that chequer life.”
But when men sit in judgment upon God’s judgments, and apply the law of retribution in particular cases, according to their own notions of things, they are in danger, like Job’s friends, of mistaking the chastisement of God’s children for signal marks of his disapprobation, or, like the barbarians on the island of Melita, who conceived that Paul must be a murderer when the viper had come out of the fire and fastened on his hand, but who, when he had shaken it off and suffered no harm, changed their minds, and said that he must be a god. Better for us rather to make the personal application of all the calamities which occur in the providence of God recommended in the Gospel by Luke, and read therein these words of solemn warning:—“Nay; but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”
But whilst we cannot consent to men becoming the interpreters of God’s judgments in particular cases, we have a great law of retribution clearly indicated as well in the Bible as in profane history. We may call the illustrations of it which might be adduced simply coincidences; but the sin is so conspicuously stamped on the punishment that we can hardly avoid connecting the one with the other in providence. The guilty Agagite takes the place of the unoffending Jew, and bears the punishment which he had prepared for him. Joseph’s brethren sold Joseph into Egypt, and by-and-by they were themselves carried down into Egypt. Adoni-bezek had the thumbs and great toes of threescore and ten kings cut off, and when he himself was taken in battle Judah and Simeon had his own thumbs and great toes cut off, moving him to make this confession: “As I have done, so God hath requited me.” Herod the Great massacred the innocent little children of Bethlehem, and he himself was overwhelmed with agonizing physical disease, and his numerous family was extinct in a hundred years. Pontius Pilate, who condemned Christ to death; Judas, who betrayed him; and Nero, who slew thousands of early believers, committed suicide, though the last had to call in the aid of others to complete what he had begun. Almost all the prominent persecutors of the Church have died deaths of violence. Maximum put out the eyes of thousands of Christians, and afterwards he himself died of a fearful disease of the eyes, in great agony. And Valens, who caused fourscore presbyters to be sent to sea in a ship and burnt alive, himself, defeated by the Goths, fled to a cottage where he was burnt alive. Still more comprehensively we have the Apostle Paul declaring, with reference to those who “received not the love of the truth that they might be saved,” that they would be smitten with judicial blindness; “and for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.”
In avoiding Scylla we must beware of falling into Charybdis; in refusing to become interpreters of particular calamitous providences, we must be on our guard against denying a retributive providence altogether. No doubt this specialty in providence comprehends both nations and individuals, noiselessly overtaking evil-doers and causing them to reap as they had sown, according to the proverb—“The feet of the avenging deity are shod with wool.” Without commotion or tumult the punishment grows out of the sin, and the transgressor is visited according to his iniquity. In most instances it requires no direct interference of the Almighty, but follows, surely and directly, from the operation of great natural and spiritual laws. “Fret not thyself because of evil-doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity; for they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.”
Then a reflection of a different kind is suggested by the feelings of the king after the execution of Haman: “Then was the king’s wrath pacified.” Modern theology is apt to drift away into mere sentimental views of the character of God. It may be a reaction from the harsh and terrible aspects in which the Divine character was presented in a former age, giving to childhood and youth such an idea of God as was fitted rather to excite terror than inspire with reverence and love. From one extreme, however, we must be careful not to dart to another, equally false and dangerous. We must not conceive of God as simply all love and mercy. We cannot indeed exalt too highly these perfections of his nature, but we must not allow them to shut out from view other attributes of his being. Let these alone have possession of our minds, and we might suppose that there was no need for God being reconciled to sinners, but only of them being reconciled to him; that he is all love and mercy toward them if they would only return to him, and that he will be their Father if they will only submit to be his children. There is a measure of truth in this kind of reasoning, but it is only a half-truth; and a half-truth is sometimes more perilous than unmitigated error. He assures us that he is “angry with the wicked every day;” that he is a “consuming fire;” and that he will “by no means clear the guilty.” Though his wrath against the wicked has nothing of vindictiveness or revenge in it, yet is it none the less, but the more, wrath—tremendous wrath. If a king is merciful and loving, as well as just and righteous, his wrath is all the more to be dreaded; and whilst God is infinitely loving and merciful, he cannot allow his love and mercy to overreach his justice, righteousness, and truth. So long as we keep in view only the paternal aspects of the Divine character, we might see in the cross of Christ nothing more than an exhibition of love and mercy, to attract, if possible, the regards of mankind sinners; no real satisfaction offered for sin—“the just for the unjust”—but only a proof and pledge that God was kindly disposed toward them if they would only return to him. How defective and misleading would be such a contemplation of the cross of Christ! Besides the expression of love, it is the endurance by One who was able to bear it, because he had no sin, of the penalty and curse of sin in the room of all who believe. So that only when we come to God, presenting in faith the atonement for sin which Christ made on Calvary, is God’s wrath pacified, and the sinner not simply reconciled to him, but he also to the sinner. The claims of his law and the demands of his righteous government are only and fully satisfied in Christ. Accordingly, we cannot tell the sinner that God’s wrath is pacified towards him so long as he has not accepted Christ, and is not to be found in him. It is true that God is all loving and merciful; but his love and mercy cannot reach him so long as he is outside of Christ. Apart from Christ, through unbelief, he cannot be otherwise surveyed than as exposed to wrath—a wrath which shall find its full manifestation in the decisions and allotments of the final day. But in Christ, received by faith, that wrath has already emptied itself and been exhausted in him, and for the true believer there are only love and mercy—love and mercy, the fulness of which can be measured only by the greatness of the sacrifice made, in order that they might rest with him for ever. “He hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” “Then was the king’s wrath pacified.”—McEwan.
As of one crucified, whose visage spake
Fell rancour, malice deep, wherein he died;
And round him Ahasuerus the great king;
Esther his bride; and Mordecai the just,
Blameless in word and deed.
Carey’s Dante.
Thus Pharaoh drowns the Hebrew males in a river; therefore is drowned himself with his army in a sea. He had laid insupportable burdens on Israel; God returns them with full weight, number, measure. When Israel cut off the thumbs and great toes of Adoni-bezek, hear the maimed king confess the equity of this judgment: “Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table; as I have done, so God hath requited me.” As proud Bajazet threatened to serve Tamerlane, being conquered,—to imprison him in a cage of iron, and carry him about the world in triumph,—so the Scythian, having took the bragging Turk, put him to the punishment himself had lessoned; carrying and carting him through Asia, to be scorned of his own people. Thus Haman is hanged on his own gallows. Perillus tries the trick of his own torment.—Adams.
When Haman desires the ruin of the Jews, procures the king’s commission, sends despatches to all the governors of the provinces, sets up a gibbet for Mordecai, and wants nothing but an opportunity to request the execution, he tumbles down to exchange his prince’s favours for an exaltation on the gallows. When the serpent increased his malicious cruelty, and cast out a flood against the Church, God makes the earth, the carnal world, to give her assistance, and repel the force that Satan used against her. “The earth helped the woman.” When “multitudes shall gather together in the valley of decision,” then shall “the Lord roar out of Sion, and be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.” And when spiritual Egypt shall make a war against Christ, who sits upon the white horse, and combine all their force for the destruction of his people, then shall the beast and the false prophet be taken, and brought to their final ruin, and their force be broken in a lake of fire, as that of Egypt was in a sea of water. The time of their greatest fierceness shall be the time of Christ’s fury.—Charnock.
Haman missed of his plot; he fell into danger; he fell into the same danger which he contrived for Mordecai; and was the means of Mordecai’s advancement. It had been enough to have woven a spider’s web, which is done with a great deal of art, and yet comes to nothing; but to hatch a cockatrice’s egg, that brings forth a viper which stings to death, this is a double vexation. Yet thus God delighteth to catch the “wise in the imagination of their own hearts,” and to pay them in their own coin. The wicked carry a lie in their right hand; for they trust in man, who is but a lie; and, being liars themselves too, no marvel if their hopes prove deceitful, so that, while they sow the wind, they reap the whirlwind.
Mischievous attempts are successless in the long run; for did ever any harden themselves against God and prosper long? Let Cain speak, let Pharaoh, Haman, Ahithophel, Herod; let the persecutors of the Church for the first two hundred years, let all that ever bore ill-will towards Sion, speak, and they will confess they did but kick against the pricks, and dash against the rooks. The greatest torment of the damned spirit is, that God turns all his plots for the good of those he hates most. He tempted man to desire to become like God, that so he might ruin him; but God became man, and so restored him. God serveth himself of this arch-politician and all his instruments; they are but executioners of God’s will while they rush against it. Joseph’s brethren sold him that they might not worship him, and that was the very means whereby they came at length to worship him. God delights to take the oppressed party’s part. Wicked men cannot do God’s children a greater pleasure than to oppose them, for by this means they help to advance them.—Sibbes.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 7
Esther 7:7. The French king. By imploring mercy perhaps you may be saved, but by justifying the injury you cannot but be lost. As the French king, Francis the First, said to a woman kneeling and crying to him for justice, “Stand up, woman, for justice I owe thee; if thou beggest anything, beg mercy.” So if you request anything of God, let it be mercy, for he owes you justice; and in this point, God be merciful to you all.
Judge Jeffreys. Very cruel people are sometimes very cowardly. Judge Jeffreys could go through his black assize in the west of England, the terror of the land, manifesting the fury of a wild beast; but when the tide turned, and he saw nothing before him but ignominy and disgrace, he sank into a state of abject fear which was pitiable to see. “Haman was afraid before the king and the queen? “As he well may be. It is an awful moment. His life trembles in the balance. If the king keeps his couch he may be spared. If he rises up abruptly, and withdraws, he is doomed. The king’s retirement is like passing solemn judgment. The custom has descended to our times, and the Shah of Persia, or, if not he, certainly some of his immediate predecessors, have condemned men to death in this way.—Dr. Raleigh.
Case of retribution. Tamerlane the Great, having made war on Bajazet, Emperor of the Turks, overthrew him in battle, and took him prisoner. The victor gave the captive monarch at first a very civil reception; and, entering into familiar conversation with him, said, “Now, king, tell me freely and truly what thou wouldest have done with me, had I fallen into thy power?” Bajazet, who was of a fierce and haughty spirit, is said to have thus replied: “Had the gods given unto me the victory, I would have enclosed thee in an iron cage, and carried thee about with me as a spectacle of derision to the world.” Tamerlane wrathfully replied, “Then, proud man, as thou wouldest have done to me, even so shall I do unto thee.” A strong iron cage was made, into which the fallen emperor was thrust; and thus exposed like a wild beast, he was carried along in the train of his conqueror. Nearly three years were passed by the once mighty Bajazet in this cruel state of durance; and at last, being told that he must be carried into Tartary, despairing of then obtaining his freedom, he struck his head with such violence against the bars of his cage, as to put an end to his wretched life.—Dr. Cheever.
Innocence vindicated. It is stated as a singular circumstance in the history of the holy and devoted John Graham, of Ardclach, that he quoted these words not long before his death:—” If these men die the common death of all men, or if they be visited after the visitation of all men, then the Lord had not sent me.” He had been a victim to the foulest accusations, and driven from his ministerial charge. The utterance was fulfilled in mysterious ways. Those who had persecuted and calumniated him died off long ere old age; by accident, by sudden and fatal sickness, or by their own hands. Thus it has pleased God, on some occasions, to vindicate the reputation of a faithful servant by providences which none can dispute. Mordecai’s innocence was vindicated. His triumph was complete. Poor Haman was humiliated, defeated, and executed. If the history of human lives could be rightly interpreted and correctly written, startling and triumphant revelations would be made. It would be seen that the wicked do not always triumph. They cannot; for surely eternity will adjust the false measures of time, if time itself does not so rectify.