Today’s reading: Esther 3; Ephesians 5
The last sentence of Esther 3 is amazing to me in just how effective the author is at communicating so much, and so well, with so few words.
“And the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion.”
I remember, years ago, when someone pointed out, in a teaching about Joseph, that his brothers, after throwing him in a pit and planning to murder him, sat down for lunch. The biblical authors don’t add extra details like that just for literary flair, but to communicate something important, and in that case, it was the sheer callousness of Joseph’s brothers. He pointed out the fact that, when you do something wrong and are feeling guilty about it, you don’t have an appetite, but your stomach is generally in knots. So the fact that they could sit down beside the pit, listening to their little brother’s screams, and enjoy lunch together while they chatted about what to do with him if they weren’t, in fact, going to murder him in cold blood like they wanted to, says so much about their state of mind and heart in the whole affair.
And as true as that is of the reference to Joseph’s brothers in Genesis, I think the same is true of this reference at the end of Esther 3, but this time it has a good bit more complexity to it.
When Joseph’s brothers sat down to eat, they were all of one mind, knowing what they were doing, and carrying it out for a shared purpose. When the king and Haman sit down to drink, their hearts are in completely different places.
It might be easy to think King Ahasuerus is a fault here, as well as Haman, but that’s not really the case. As king in an absolute monarchy, Ahasuerus had all the power in the land, and all decisions, great and small, would have to flow through him, or through those whom he granted authority. Rather than deal with every tedious detail of life in his kingdom, Ahasuerus has advisers and governors who can either help him make good decisions in areas he is less familiar, or who can make decisions on his behalf, without ever bringing them to him in the first place, and his trust in those advisers and governors is an essential part of running the kingdom. So when one such trusted adviser, Haman, approaches him about a people that is a seditious threat to the stability of his kingdom, why would Ahasuerus assume anything other than that Haman is honestly seeking to protect the kingdom from a legitimate threat? As such, when Ahasuerus sits down with Haman to drink, after sending out the edict, it is with the innocent satisfaction of a job well done, accomplishing the sometimes messy work of protecting his people and his kingdom.
For Haman though, he knows what he is doing, and his conscience really shouldn’t let him sit down and drink contentedly. Haman has, in response to a personal offense from a single person, decided to commit full scale genocide, and has lied and manipulated the king in order to accomplish that genocide. So for Haman to sit across from the man he has just manipulated into ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people, raising a toast to their eminent genocide, knowing that it was all due to a single man unwilling to bow to him, speaks volumes to the self-importance and absolutely seared conscience of Haman.
And all while Susa, in confusion and anger, is thrown into an uproar.
I actually wonder if the author is purposely mimicking the scene of Joseph and his brothers here. In both scenes, the future agent of God’s plans (Joseph / the Jews) is caught off guard, confused, and facing eminent death for having done nothing wrong, and in both scenes the aggressors sit by eating and drinking together. If this is a purposeful allusion to the Joseph story, then it should also communicate that, just as God worked to rescue Joseph from death and still used him in His broader plans, so too God will rescue the Jews and continue to use them in His broader plans.
Either way, it just amazes me how much the author is able to communicate with just a few choice words…
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