And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus, There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws [are] diverse from all people; neither keep they the king's laws: therefore it [is] not for the king's profit to suffer them.
Ver. 8. And Haman said unto king Ahasuerus] After that, by sortilegy (or sorcery, for it is no better, as the very name showeth, and Varro affirmeth), he had light upon a lucky day, wherein to speak to the king, and a black day, wherein to do execution, he taketh the boldness to move the king in it. Now Mr Perkins affirmeth, that, as men do put confidence in lot sorcery, or the like diabolical divinations, or else they cannot attain to any foreknowledge by them; so therein, explicitly or implicitly, they have confederacy with the devil. Oh that this were well considered!
There is a certain people] Not worth the naming.
Scattered abroad] But was that their fault? was it not their misery rather, that God had threatened them, Deuteronomy 3:2, and were they not, therefore, to be pitied, and not preyed upon? It is said of Queen Elizabeth, that she hated, no less than did Mithridates, such as maliciously persecuted virtue forsaken of fortune (Camd. Eliz. 531).
And dispersed among the people] And, therefore, the more dangerous, since every sect strives to spread their opinions, and these, being antimagistratical, may do much harm, and draw many from their obedience, prove seedsmen of sedition. It may very well be that the sect of the Essenes were now beginning among the Jews, who taught that God alone, and no mortal man, was to be acknowledged for Lord and Prince (Joseph. l. 18, c. 2). Hence they were called Esseni, or Hashoni, that is, rebels, and for their sakes the whole nation might be the worse thought of (as if they were all such), like as the Protestants were in France, for the Anabaptists' sake, in the reign of King Francis (Scultet. An. 454).
In all the provinces of thy kingdom] Quarum proventu gaudet, alitur, insolescit. Where they do no good, but devour grain, as vermin, as excrements in human society, and deserve to be knocked on the head, which may easily be done, because they are dejected, and not able to make headway against an adversary.
And their laws are diverse from all people] So they were, and better, their enemies themselves being judges, Deuteronomy 4:6,8. Prosper's conceit was, that they were called Iudaei, because they received Ius Dei, their laws from God, who might say to them, as once Joseph did to his brethren, Genesis 45:12, Behold, your eyes see, that it is my mouth that speaketh unto you. And, therefore, if Demosthenes could say of laws in general, that they were the invention of Almighty God (ευρημα του θεου); and if Cicero could say of the laws of the twelve tables in Rome, that they far exceeded and excelled all the libraries of all the philosophers, how much more true was all this of the laws of the Jews, given by God, and ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator, Moses! Seneca, though he jeered the Jews for their weekly Sabbath as those that lost the seventh part of their time, yet he could not but say that, being the basest people, they had the best laws, and gave laws unto all the world. Those holy Levites, Nehemiah 9:13, acknowledge, with all thankfulness, that God had given them right judgments, true laws, good statutes and commandments, whereby he severed them from all other people, as his own peculiar, and this was their glory wherever they came, though the sycophant in the text turneth their glory into shame, as one that loved vanity, and sought after leasing, Psalms 4:2 .
Neither keep they the king's laws] Mordecai indeed would not do him reverence, because it went against his conscience; no move would others of them keep the king's laws in like case, but obey God rather than man, where they could not do both. Otherwise they were charged, Jeremiah 29:7, to seek the peace of the cities where they abode, and to submit to their civil and municipal laws; and so they did, doubtless, for the generality of them. But this impudent liar represents them to the king as refractories and rebels, &c. The devil began his kingdom by a lie, and by lies he upholdeth it. He was a liar and a murderer from the beginning; but first a liar, and thereby a murderer. He cannot handsomely murder, except he slander first, Song of Solomon 5:6; the credit of the Church must first be taken away, and then she is wounded; traduced she must be, and thence persecuted. Thus David is believed to seek Saul's life; Elijah is the troubler of Israel; Jeremiah, the trumpet of rebellion; the Baptist, a stirrer up of sedition; Christ, an enemy to Caesar; Paul, a pestilent incendiary; the primitive Christians, a public mischief; the Reformed Churches, antimagistratical; this colour of right, yea, of piety, was laid upon the French Massacre, and by edicts a fair cloak sought to cover that impious fraud, as if there had been some horrid treason hatched by the Huguenots (Camd. Eliz.). The primitive persecutors used to put Christians into bears' and dogs' skins, or other ugly creatures, and then bait them; so wicked men put religion and its professors into ugly conceits and reports, and then speak and act against them.
Therefore it is not for the king's profit] Heb. It is not meet, equal, or profitable to the king to suffer them, ut insolescat per licentiam, so the Vulgate Latin rendereth it, but without warrant from the Orig. See how this sycophant fills his mouth with arguments, the better to achieve his desire. An elaborate set speech he maketh, neither is there a word in it but what might seem to have weight. He pretends the king's profit and the public good, concealing and dissembling his ambition, avarice, envy, malignity, that set him awork. Politicians, when they soar highest, are like the eagle, which, while aloft, hath her eye still upon the prey, which by this means she spies sooner, and seizes upon better. In parabola ovis capras suas quaerunt, as the proverb hath it. Haman holds it not fit there should be more religions than one in a kingdom, for preventing of troubles. Nebuchadnezzar was of the same mind when he commanded all men to worship his golden image. But must all, therefore, die that will not do it? and is it for the king's profit that the righteous be rooted out? Is not semen sanctum statumen terrae? the holy seed the stay of the State? Isaiah 6:13, the beauty and bulwark of the nation? See Jer 5:1 Ezekiel 2:2,10, Absque stationibus non staret mundus.