CRITICAL NOTES.]
Esther 9:6. In Shushan the palace the Jews slew … five hundred] Shushan the palace is here evidently to be taken in the sense of the place or city of the palace, equivalent to in or at Shushan, as in Esther 9:15. It is not to be supposed that the work of slaughter was carried on within the palace itself.—Whedon’s Com.
Esther 9:7-9.] These names of Haman’s ten sons are written in Hebrew MSS. in perpendicular columns, and it is said that the reader in the synagogue is required to pronounce them all at one breath. The Targum says they were all suspended, one above another, upon one cross, fifty cubits high, which Mordecai had prepared for the purpose. Most of these names are of Persian origin, a fact which has great weight in showing the genuineness of the Book of Esther.—Whedon’s Com. Jewish rabbis have found these names indicative of a representative importance, and have taken the individual traits to mean something prophetic.
Esther 9:10. On the spoil laid they not their hand] To show that they only sought the safety of their own lives, and had no desire to enrich themselves by the goods of their fallen foes.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH. Esther 9:5-11
THE FATE OF EVIL-DOERS
JUSTICE ought to be tempered by mercy. But there may be a danger of degenerating into what we may call sentimentalism. We seem to see the working of this feeling in the present day. We would not deal harshly, but we must deal justly, with the criminal classes. We must have respect to the welfare of society as a great whole. In reading some of the Old Testament accounts of slaughters and battles, we must not follow our own modern feelings; and we must make all due and proper allowance for the difference of times and of dispensations. After all proper allowances have been made, there will still be about those accounts that which is to us inexplicable on modern and even New Testament principles. Here are great slaughters that may well appear to us very strange. However, the narrative does not warrant the assumption that there was anything vindictive on the part of Esther or Mordecai. The Jews slew in self-defence. They killed only the men; they did not kill for personal enrichment, for on the spoil laid they not their hand. Let us seek to gather instruction from the whole narrative.
I. The destruction of evil-doers. The enemies of the Lord and of the Lord’s Church must meet with retribution sooner or later. The haters of the Jews were visited with slaughter and destruction. Even in the gospel dispensation it is written, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” It is a fearful thing for the hardened and the finally impenitent thus to fall. He that being often reproved, and hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. But Jesus Christ came to provide a way of escape from final destruction. The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. Thus, through Christ Jesus, the stroke of retribution may be averted. By his stripes penitent and believing sinners may be healed and saved. If, then, we would escape the ministers of vengeance, we must lay hold on the hope set before us in the gospel. Let us at once lay hold on the blessed hope. Let us penitently bow at the foot of the cross. Let us believingly apply to the one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
II. The infamy of evil-doers. The ten sons of Haman receive an unenviable notoriety. Their names are recorded and handed down to all the ages, and thus branded, as it were, with undying infamy. Far better to go down to the grave unknown than to occupy that place in history which is occupied by these ten men. Better still to go down to the grave along the pathway of righteous endeavour to keep God’s commandments. Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord. These ten men were damaged by parental influence, but we do not read that they made any effort to rise superior to the evil influence of their circumstances. It is sometimes very convenient to blame parents, and to blame our circumstances. The question will arise, Have we done the best we could in spite of our circumstances? Have we shown the noble sight of men bravely battling with and against adversity? Faithful endeavour cannot be altogether lost. Men will be judged according to their light, their opportunities, their circumstances, and their talents. Be wise in time.
III. The report of the fate of evil-doers. On that day the number of those that were slain in Shushan the palace, was brought before the king. An account was kept. The report has a solemn voice. If strict accounts are kept on earth, strict accounts are kept in heaven. The dead, both small and great, must stand before God, and the books will be opened. Oh, who shall be able to stand when the books are opened? How very many would shrink from the exposure of the outward acts and the inward thoughts and feelings of one year of their sinful lives? What a dark scroll! Let me not brave the opening of the books in that great day. Let me, O my Saviour, find in that day that thy precious blood has been sprinkled upon the pages of the great book, and all the black record of my misdoings has been wiped clean away, and nothing is to be seen but clear pages. May I be found at last washed in the blood of the Lamb.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Esther 9:5-11
It is one thing to take revenge of one’s self, another to do so on the order of authority; not the latter, but the former, is forbidden. The simple command of a government will justify such an act only in so far as it is a guaranty against pure thirst for revenge. Everything here depends upon the disposition of mind. But we would certainly misjudge the temper of the then Jews, were we to assume that because the people were but a religious community, we are at liberty to apply a Christian standard to them. It would be unjust to deny them the privilege, which they as an independent people formerly enjoyed, of rejoicing in a victory over their enemies; and it would be little to the purpose, if instead of aiming at their conversion, we acquiesced in their destruction. Instead of justifying the complaint that we do not pay sufficient regard to Old Testament national conditions, we must also remember that Old Testament saints could not well avoid often taking a stand-point opposed to their enemies, just as we are still allowed to assume a position at variance with those in enmity against God. Besides, we are not to forget that, for those who will not join themselves to the kingdom or people of God, whatever its form or degree of development, this very hostility is a ground of condemnation. All things that cannot be employed for a good end will finally issue in destruction and extinction. This is still true, and will be true to the end of time. In the same manner even the angels in heaven could not have acted differently from Esther with regard to those enemies in the city of Shushan. We would be more just to Esther, to the Jews spoken of in our book, and to the book itself, if, in what was done in Shushan as well as in all Persia, we would see an anticipation of the judgments connected and paralleled with the progress of the kingdom of God on earth, and especially of the final judgment. If the animus of the Old Testament with respect to the destruction of enemies seems to us terribly vindictive, rather than mild, yet this may not only be excusable, but may even be a prophetic intimation. The fact, so prominently and emphatically expressed, in the present instance, that the Jews did not stretch out their hands after the goods (spoils) of their enemies, proves to us that they meant to conduct this contest as a measure of self-protection, or better, as a holy war, the sole purpose of which was the removal of their enemies.—Lange.
“This example, however, is set before us not that we should take it upon ourselves to avenge injuries, according to our own judgment, but that we may recognize the severity of the Divine wrath against the impious persecutor of the people of God, and that in persecution we might most confidently expect deliverance through faith, and be obedient to the calls of God.”—Brenz.
“This is written in admonition of parents, in order that they may be incited to cultivate piety, lest along with themselves they may also drag their children down into destruction. Such severity of God is stated in the Decalogue: ‘Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those that hate me.’ ”—Brenz.
We may learn from this part of the history how dangerous it is to enter on a wicked course, especially in concert with others. Persons go on from evil to worse; they encourage one another in mischief. This is especially true as to those practices which originate in malice, as to which the devil, who was a murderer from the beginning, exerts a peculiar influence, in urging his children to the most violent extremes. “This is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” But in addition to the considerations mentioned, we should stand in awe of the righteous judgment of God, who gives up wicked men to the uncontrolled corruption of their own hearts, and to the suggestions of the evil one, so that they often rush with their eyes open upon ruin. “Whom God means to destroy, he first infatuates.”
This was remarkably exemplified in the case before us. In spite of all the discouragements thrown in their way, and though heaven and earth both frowned upon them, the enemies of the Jews persisted in their hostile intentions, and assumed an offensive posture on the long looked-for day.—M‘Crie.
It may appear strange that the Jews now found any enemies bold enough to contend with them in battle. The king was their friend, God was their friend, what could those expect who sought their lives, but destruction to themselves? It is indeed wonderful, but not uncommon, for men to value the gratification of their malignant passions above their best interests, and above their safety. At the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, it is well known that the Jews themselves did more mischief to one another, than all the harm they suffered from the fury of their conquerors. The different parties, when they found respite from the Romans, destroyed their provisions, and then brought upon themselves a famine, which destroyed them by thousands. But we need not look seventeen hundred years back to see the tyrannizing power of malice and hatred over the minds of men. Are there not many who subject themselves to bitter remorse, to ruinous fines, or to an ignominious death? Are there not many more who subject themselves to the curse of God, merely to gratify their accursed spite against their fellow-men?
Many of the enemies of the Jews, doubtless, were overawed by the power of Mordecai, and either sat quiet in their dwellings, or joined with the Jews. Many chose rather to be quiet than to venture their lives in battle with enemies that were sure to be victorious. But there were others, not in small numbers, who chose to venture, or rather to sell their lives, and the lives of all that were dear to them, rather than lose the opportunity given them by law, of attempting to destroy a race of men whom, though innocent, they hated with a deadly hatred. These men combined in the different cities to fight against the Jews. But their confederacy was against the God of heaven, who spoiled them of their courage, and gave them into the hands of the Jews, to do to them as they would. They were so far from gaining their malicious purposes at the expense of their lives, that victory, and triumph to their hated enemies, were the fruit of their cruel attempt. Vain it is to fight against God, or against those whom he loves and protects. If God be against us, who can be for us? If we harden ourselves against the Almighty we cannot prosper. It were better for us to dash our heads against the craggy rock, than to rush upon the thick bosses of the buckler of the Almighty.
Why should men fight against God? And yet there are too many who fear not to carry the weapons of an unrighteous warfare against their Maker and their Judge. “Whatever ye have done, or not done, to one of the least of my brethren,” says Christ, “ye have done, or not done, to me.” Enmity against God himself; and surely “all that are incensed against him shall be ashamed.”
Even in Shushan the royal city, under the eye of the king, there were more than five hundred men that combined, in defiance of the king’s known sentiments, to attack the Jews. But they meddled to their own hurt. When we consider the audacity of that behaviour, to which their malice prompted them, we see that Mordecai had too much reason to tell Esther that she would not be safe in the king’s palace, if she did not intercede with the king. The men that could take the pretence of a law to attack the Jews to their certain destruction, might have been prompted by the same outrageous malice to attack Esther in the palace, when they could plead the king’s authority for the enterprise.
These five hundred men in Shushan, who sold their lives in this desperate cause, were doubtless some of Haman’s creatures, who had learned from him to hate the Jews with a bloody hatred. Haman’s ten sons were at the head of them, and shared in their fate. They were doubtless trained up by their father in the hatred of that nation, and his miserable end, instead of opening their eyes, irritated their resentment to their own destruction.
It was natural, some will say, for Haman’s sons to account that people their enemies, by the means of whom their father suffered an ignominious death. It was natural, it must be confessed; but it does not follow that it was right. Children are to honour their parents while they live, and venerate their memory when they are dead, but not to follow their example in anything that is evil. The children of wicked parents ought to remember, that their Maker must have the precedency to all other duties; and that to rebel against God, because their parents rebelled against him, is not more excusable than for a man to be a thief, or a traitor, or an adulterer, because his father was so before him. God commanded his people, when they were carried away captives for their transgression, to confess their own iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers. The holy son of the wicked Ahaz made a full confession of the sins committed by his father, and by the people under his influence, and deserved high praise for reversing all his wicked institutions. Jeroboam had only one son in his house who discovered a dislike of his father’s conduct, and was the only member of the family who died in peace. “Fill ye up the measure of your fathers,” said Jesus to the Jews; warning them that their fathers’ example would be so far from justifying their wicked conduct, that the vengeance of Heaven was brought the nearer them, that their sins were but a continuation of the sins of their progenitors.
Parents, pity your children, if you will not pity yourselves. You know what force the example and influence of parents have. If you profess bad principles, you of course train up your children in the profession of the same. If you openly practise wickedness, you teach your children to practise it likewise. Thus you pull down vengeance, not only upon yourselves, but upon your houses. You see that Haman was the enemy of the Jews, and of the God of the Jews, and the punishment of his wickedness fell heavy, not only on himself, but upon all his family, which was probably rooted out of the earth. His sons might have been suffered to live in obscurity, if they had been willing to live peaceably. But they had drunk deep of their father’s spirit, and followed his example, and ten (probably all of them) perished on that fatal day, on which their father, a few months before, had hoped to feast his eyes with the blood of those whom he chose to account his enemies.—Lawson.
But on the spoil laid they not their hand.—Lest the king should be damnified, or themselves justly taxed of covetousness and cruelty. “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the Church of God.” This is oft-repeated in this chapter, to their great commendation; that, although by the king’s grant they might have taken the spoil, yet they did it not.
1. To show that they were God’s executioners, not thieves and robbers.
2. To gratify the king for his courtesy towards them by leaving the spoil wholly to his treasury.
3. It is not unlikely, saith an interpreter, that Mordecai and Esther had admonished them how ill Saul had sped with the spoil of the Amalekites, and Achan with his wedge of gold, which served but to cleave his body and soul asunder, and his Babylonish garment, which proved to be his winding-sheet.—Trapp.
Notwithstanding, the worst passions of some had been roused, and neither the king’s wish nor the awe of Mordecai availed to restrain them. In the capital, five hundred men, led by Haman’s ten sons, threw away their lives in the attempt to injure the Jews. It is not easy to pity them. If they had ceased from hating their neighbours and resisting God they would have been safe; but when they would not, there was nothing left but to kill them. In the rest of the provinces seventy-five thousand persons perished in the same way. An accurate report must have been gathered by the prime minister, now Mordecai, of the result in each city. The victory was uniform and complete from India to Ethiopia. The lesson of God’s care over his people was thus taught over the known world in one day, and with greatly more effect than if an equal number of enemies had fallen under the walls of Jerusalem. And another lesson was taught by the unlooked-for self-restraint of the peculiar people. “But on the spoil laid they not their hands.” You can imagine the widows and weak ones who were left in the houses of the foolhardy, after cowering in terror of massacre, or worse, all through the thirteenth of Adar, and perhaps the next day also, at length beginning to breathe freely. “How strange these Jews are! They care not for spoil, they insult us not, they rob us not, they have no revenge; they can fight,—that is proved,—but they fight only for liberty to live and worship their God.” Yes; the whole transaction was ordained to vindicate the right of God’s people to live as such on his earth; and this was all the more effectively done when the humane and unworldly character of their religion was so strikingly manifested.—Symington.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO Chapter S 9, 10
The Alpine Travellers. Three tourists were ascending the Alps. After they had gone a considerable distance, and were getting nearer to the eternal snows, and thus the danger increased, it was considered necessary to attach the company by ropes to one another and to the guides. But one of the tourists, an old traveller, was self-confident and self-reliant. He carried the doctrine of self-help too far, and refused to help his neighbours. He fell down the precipice and lost his life. We often best help ourselves by helping others.
Mutual help, need of. As an apple in the hand of a child makes other children run after and consort with him and share his sports, so does he convert affliction, and the need we have of each other’s aid, into a girdle of love, with which to bind us all together; just as no one country produces all commodities, in order that the different nations, by mutual traffic and commerce, may cultivate concord and friendship. How foolish they are who imagine that all the world stands in need of them, but they of nobody; that they know and understand all things, but others nothing; and that the wit of all mankind should be apprenticed to their wisdom.—Gotthold.
Whitfield. An old woman relates, that when she was a little girl Whitfield stayed at her father’s house. He was too much absorbed in his work to take much notice of, and pay much attention to, the little girl. She did not remember any of his eloquent utterances. She was, however, observant, and noticed the great preacher when he did not think that any one was observing his conduct. And the impression made upon her mind by his holy and cheerful demeanour, by his patience under trials and difficulties, and his evident consecration to his work, was of a most lasting and salutary character. Well were it if all great preachers would preach at home! We must be great in the palace of home, and then let our influence work outwards in all directions. Home religion is powerful.
The young Switzer. There was a young man among the Switzers that went about to usurp the government and alter their free state. Him they condemned to death, and appointed his father for executioner, as the cause of his evil education. But because Haman was hanged before, his sons (though dead) should now hang with him. If all fathers who had given an evil education to their sons were punished there would be a large increase of the criminal classes. At the present time the State is doing much in the way of educating; but the State cannot do that which is the proper duty of the parent. By precept, and even by the fear of penalty, should we enforce upon parents the duty of seeing faithfully to the true up-bringing of their children.
Faith of parents. An aged minister of Christ had several sons, all of whom became preachers of the Gospel but one. This one lived a life of dissipation for many years. But the good father’s faith failed not. He trusted God that his wicked son, trained up in the way he should go, in old age should not depart from it. In this sublime faith the aged father passed away. Five years after, this son of many prayers sat at the feet of Jesus.
Influence of parents. The last thing forgotten in all the recklessness of dissolute profligacy is the prayer or hymn taught by a mother’s lips, or uttered at a father’s knee; and where there seems to have been any pains bestowed, even by one parent, to train up a child aright, there is in general more than ordinary ground for hope.—The experience of a Prison Chaplain.
Says the venerable Dr. Spring: “The first afflicting thought to me on the death of my parents was, that I had lost their prayers.”
Great men Just as the traveller whom we see on yonder mountain height began his ascent from the plain, so the greatest man of whom the world can boast is but one of ourselves standing on higher ground, and in virtue of his wider intelligence, his nobler thoughts, his loftier character, his purer inspiration, or his more manly daring, claiming the empire as his right.—Hare.
True greatness. The truly great consider, first, how they may gain the approbation of God; and, secondly, that of their own consciences. Having done this they would willingly conciliate the good opinion of their fellow-men.—Cotton.
The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is the calmest in storms, and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, on God, is the most unfaltering.—Dr. Chening.
Distinguishing, great men. I think it is Warburton who draws a very just distinction between a man of true greatness and a mediocrist. “If,” says he, “you want to recommend yourself to the former, take care that he quits your society with a good opinion of you; if your object is to please the latter, take care that he leaves you with a good opinion of himself.”—Cotton.
Thus Mordecai was truly great, considering, first, how to gain the approbation of God; and, secondly, that of his own conscience. He rises above others by virtue of his wider intelligence, his nobler thoughts, his loftier character, and his more manly daring.
A good name. A name truly good is the aroma from character. It is a reputation of whatsoever things are honest, and lovely, and of good report. It is such a name as is not only remembered on earth, but written in heaven. Just as a box of spikenard is not only valuable to its possessor, but pre-eminently precious in its diffusion; so, when a name is really good, it is of unspeakable service to all who are capable of feeling its aspiration. Mordecai’s fame went out throughout all the provinces.—Dr. J. Hamilton.
Eastern hospitality. Nehemiah charges the people thus: “Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared.” Also in Esther: “Therefore the Jews made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.” An Oriental prince sometimes honours a friend or a favourite servant, who cannot conveniently attend at his table, by sending a mess to his own home. When the Grand Emir found that it incommoded D’Arvieux to eat with him, he politely desired him to take his own time for eating, and sent him what he liked from his kitchen at the time he chose. So that the above statements must not be restricted to the poor.—Paxton’s ‘Illustrations.’
The heaviest taxes. “The taxes are indeed heavy,” said Dr. Franklin on one occasion, and if those laid on by the Government were the only ones we had to pay, we might more easily discharge them; but we have many others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly; and from these taxes the commissioners cannot ease or deliver us by allowing any abatement.
Safeguard of nations. France tried to go on without a God in the time of her first revolution; but Napoleon, for reasons of State, restored the Catholic religion. M. Thiers gives this singular passage in his history: “Napoleon said, ‘For my part, I never hear the sound of the church bell in the neighbouring village without emotion.’ ” He knew that the hearts of the people were stirred by the same deep yearnings after God which filled his own, and so he proposed to restore the worship of God to infidel France. Later, and with deeper meaning, Perrier, successor to Lafayette as prime minister to Louis Philippe, said on his death-bed, “France must have religion” (C. D. Fors). So we may say, the nations, if they are to live, must have religion.
Punishment of nations. It was a sound reply of an English captain at the loss of Calais, when a proud Frenchman scornfully demanded, “When will you fetch Calais again?” “When your sins shall weigh down ours.”—Brooks.
Nations. In one sense the providence of God is shown more clearly in nations than in individuals. Retribution can follow individuals into another state, but not so with nations; they have all their rewards and punishments in time.—D. Custine.
England’s privileges.—It’s the observation of a great politician, that England is a great animal which can never die unless it kill itself; answerable whereunto was the speech of Lord Rich, to the justices in the reign of king Edward VI: “Never foreign power,” said he, “could yet hurt, or in any part prevail, in this realm but by disobedience and disorder among ourselves; that is the way wherewith the Lord will plague us if he mind to punish us.” Polydor Virgil calls Regnum Angliæ, Regnum Dei, the kingdom of England, the kingdom of God, because God seems to take special care of it, as having walled it about with the ocean, and watered it with the upper and nether springs, like that land which Caleb gave his daughter. Hence it was called Albion, quasi Olbion, the happy country; “whose valleys,” saith Speed, “are like Eden, whose hills are as Lebanon, whose springs are as Pisgah, whose rivers are as Jordan, whose wall is the ocean, and whose defence is the Lord Jehovah.” Foreign writers have termed our country the Granary of the Western World, the Fortunate Island, the Paradise of Pleasure, and Garden of God.—Clarke’s ‘Examples.’