Then said Esther, If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews which are in Shushan to do to morrow also according unto this day's decree, and let Haman's ten sons be hanged upon the gallows.
Let it be granted to the Jews which are in Shushan to do tomorrow also according unto this day's decree.
Their enemies, adroitly concealing themselves for the first day, might have returned on the next, when they imagined that the privilege of the Jews was expired; so that that people would have been surprised and slain. The extension of the decree to another day, at the queen's special desire, has exposed her to the charge of being actuated by a cruel and vindictive disposition. But her conduct in making this request is capable of full vindication, on the ground:
(1) that Human's sons having taken a prominent part in avenging their father's fall, and having been previously slain in the melee, the order for the exposure of their dead bodies on the gallows was only intended to brand them with public infamy for their malice and hatred to the Jews; and
(2) the anti-Jewish party having, in all probability, been instigated through the arts or influence of Human to acts of spiteful and wanton oppression, the existing state of feeling among the natives required some vigorous and decisive measure to prevent the outbreak of future aggressions.
The very circumstance of their killing 800 Jews in the immediate vicinity of the court (Esther 9:6; Esther 9:15) is a proof of the daring energy and deep-rooted malice by which multitudes were actuated against the Jews. To order an extension, therefore, of the permissive edict to the Jews to defend themselves, was perhaps no more than affording an opportunity for their enemies to be publicly known; and though it led to so awful a slaughter of 75,000 of their enemies, there is reason to believe that these were chiefly Amalekites, in the fall of whom on this occasion the prophecies (Exodus 17:14; Exodus 17:16; Deuteronomy 25:19) against that doomed race were accomplished.