Day 143. Esther 5-10

The Book of Esther is a comedy, which sometimes degenerates into a farce. Startling coincidences and sudden reversals of fortune are the stuff of which comedy is, and the Book of Esther certainly has plenty of that. People perish, it's true, but they aren't the people we care about. And like all comedies, Esther ends with a sense of balance and harmony and the assurance that the world is going to go on.
The character of Esther, the Jewish maiden who becomes the queen of a great empire, is an empowering one for those facing oppression. She uses what she has--her physical beauty and wits--to overcome the enemies of her people (5:2). Notice that it is not the power of God that overcomes the evil Haman; the courage and resourcefulness of Esther and Mordecai are triumphant in the story.
As our reading begins Esther, who has been told the scheme to destroy the Jews, hosts a banquet for the king and the evil Haman. Her Jewish identity is, of course, the great secret of the story. She does not reveal her motives to either one, but instead puts her enemy off guard with an invitation to a second banquet the next day (5:8). She leaves Haman "happy and in good spirits" (5:9). Then he sees Mordecai at the gate and he neither rises nor trembles before him. Haman is infuriated. He goes home to his shrewish wife Zerech—she is a stock comic character—and all his friends bragging about his good fortune. Yet "all this does me no good so long as I see the Jew Mordecai sitting at the king's gate," he laments (5:13). But Zerech and his friends seek to console him; they urge him to have the gallows built "fifty cubits high" (5:14), and to go the next morning tell the king to have Mordecai hanged.
Exaggeration is an important part of ancient humor. We often see this kind of exaggeration in the parables of Jesus. A cubit is the length of a man forearm—18-20 inches. So the gallows Haman orders built will stand 75 feet tall! Talk about hanging Mordecai high. But it is all part of the fun, you see.
So Haman is pleased with his plan, but it so happens coincidently that that night the king cannot sleep and remembers the plot among the eunuchs from which Mordecai rescued him. (Actually, it was Esther who told him about the plot "in the name of Mordecai—2:22.) He is told that he never properly rewarded Mordecai. At that very moment—another coincidence—Haman comes to ask the king to hang Mordecai (6:4)—another ironic twist. The king asks him what should be done to honor a man. Haman thinks the king is thinking of honoring him and his response is fulsome indeed. Then the king orders him to honor Mordecai that way. Haman is forced to do honor to the very one he wishes to see hanged (6:10). It's a big joke. The big man gets his! You can imagine how the first hearers of the story would laugh. It's like a Punch and Judy show. When Haman goes home and tells his shrewish wife Zerech what has happened, she squeals with terror—"If Mordecai,
before whom your downfall has begun, is of the Jewish people, you will not prevail against him, but will surely fall before him" (6:13). And her outcry foreshadows the end of the story, which everyone knows.
Immediately, two eunuchs appear to hustle Haman off to Queen Esther's banquet. (But the fun is just beginning. Everyone can guess what is going to happen to the evil bully now. You can imagine how children would love all this broad comedy.) And at the banquet Esther denounces Haman to Ahasuerus for plotting to destroy her own life together with her people, and thus to do "damage to the king" (7:4).
How exactly does this do damage to the king? It deprives him of his beautiful and clever queen, that's true. But there is more to it. We have noted before that in the Bible the presence of Jews is seen as a blessing to any kingdom in which they are allowed to reside in peace. Haman has plotted to deprive the king of that blessing. The king leaves Esther's banquet in a huff, and Haman realizes that the jig is up. He throws himself on Queen Esther's couch to beg for mercy, and just then the king reenters and immediately draws entirely the wrong conclusion. "Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?" the king cries—more comic foolishness. Haman is dragged away to be hanged "on the very gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai" (7:10). This is the ironic climax of the tale; we are encouraged to clap and shout with its original hearers.
The story has a fairytale ending. All the good people—all the Jews—live happily ever after. Mordecai replaces Haman, becomes what Joseph was to Pharaoh, his second in command. He then sends out letters to the 127 provinces of the Persian Empire cancelling Haman's order to destroy the Jews. Indeed in yet another reversal the Jews are given the right to defend themselves and kill all their enemies on the very day on which Haman's massacre was to take place (8:10-14). The people are delivered; in every province there is "gladness and joy among the Jews, a festival and a holiday" (8:16).
Everything is turned up-side-down—that's what comedy is all about. They ones who were on bottom, are on the top, and the top ones are put down. It is not only a comic reversal of fortunes—it is a violent reversal as well (9:5). There is a general massacre of the enemies of the Jews. The ten sons of Haman are hanged. When we are told that the Jews strike down "all their enemies with the sword, slaughtering and destroying them, and [do] as they pleased to those who hated them," we are not likely to feel the same exultation that an ancient audience would have felt. But then we have not been threatened with genocide either. This is the savage justice that pleases children.
But the violence is not what is important. The point of the Book of Esther is to show that from the bravery and intelligence of people like Esther and Mordecai the Jews can gain "relief from their enemies" (9:16).
The command goes out from Mordecai to the Diaspora—the Jews scattered throughout the 127 provinces of the Persian Empire—to celebrate their deliverance with two days "of feasting and gladness, days for sending food to one another and presents to the poor" (9:22) because the fourteenth day of the month Adar and the fifteenth day have "been turned for them form sorrow into gladness" (9:23). This is the origin of the Feast of Purim, the most light-hearted of Jewish feasts. The word "Pur" means "the lot," because the enemies of the Jews cast "the lot" to destroy them (9:24). Purim is an occasion for feasting and for retelling the story of Esther and Mordecai and the evil Haman. Often it is acted out by children in costumes or with puppet plays. In times of tension and fear Purim has always been an opportunity to let off steam. It is not so much a religious feast as it is a celebration of national identity, and of the bravery by
which Jewish men and women in every time have "gained relief from their enemies."