Haman and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

“So the king and Haman came to banquet with Esther the queen.” Chapter seven of the book of Esther opens with King Ahasuerus and Haman his grand vizier arriving as the second banquet in two days that she personally requested at considerable risk. But to not go before her king unbidden as Esther did in chapter five would have denied her the opportunity to save her people, the role her cousin and king’s judge Mordecai warned her that God (though not named, verses thirteen and fourteen in chapter four are clear that somehow the Jews would be delivered). At this second banquet Esther held that she requested her royal husband and the grand vizier attend to reveal what she wanted, there was no reason for either man to be on guard.

Haman himself probably was not in a very festive mood. After parading Mordecai through the streets of Susa that day (more details in chapter six) at their king’s command for Mordecai’s saving his life and being honored how Haman wanted to be, he was not in a good mood. Hanging Mordecai from the gallows he’d had built in his backyard would be doubly delightful, and that’s what he’d originally
come to the king to ask permission for. But that didn’t happen, and now Haman’s wife and the wise men in his house tried to warn him going against the Jews such as Mordecai was going to end up hurting him. During this verbal barrage, the king’s chamberlains reminded Haman on the banquet the queen had prepared for him and the king. This may have been one more chance for him.

As this banquet of wine, after they’ve been seated and fed, King Ahasuerus asks Queen Esther what she wants. She promised at last night’s banquet she would reveal what she wanted, and so she does. Verses three and four use flowery language, but basically Esther asks for her people – she identifies herself as a Jew for the first time in verse four – to be spared. Esther’s words “although the enemy could not countervail the king’s damage” also brought the king into it directly. After all, who signed the decree to exterminate a group of people within the empire (more details in chapter three) is as much at fault as the person who planted the idea in the king’s head. The jig was up when Esther, at her royal husband’s request in verse five, identified “this wicked Haman.”

Verse six says Haman was afraid before the king and queen; I can understand that. The fact that Ahasuerus doesn’t order action against him right then and instead rises “in his wrath [and goes] into the palace garden” – partly that Persian custom to reconsider decisions made drunk while sober, partly frustrated at being duped by his chief vizier when he put his royal seal on the decree (again, see
chapter three) – gives Haman a smidgen of hope. Awkwardly, he goes before Esther to plead for his life; I say awkwardly because we’re told in verse eight that Ahasuerus came back and found Haman “fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was.” A bed in this context being a couch on which one reclined, Ahasuerus thought what any man walking in on this situation would.

“Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house?” Ahasuerus already felt forced that his power had been used by Haman to endorse a decree of genocide, but for Haman NOW to – what it looked like to him – assault his own wife (perhaps echoing his own possible ambition to become king himself by laying claim to all that is the king’s), violating a fundamental law of hospitality. Of course Haman, Ahasuerus, and Esther weren’t the only ones present when the banquet was taking place; upon hearing the king shout, “they covered Haman’s face” – that is, they put a hood over his head – to lead him to be executed. On the very gallows Haman had made to execute
Mordecai on, at chamberlain Harbonah’s suggestion and on Ahasuerus’ order.

“Then was the king's wrath pacified.” Chapter seven of Esther ends with the death of the scheming villain, and celebration abounds throughout the Persian Empire at the deliverance of the Jews from extermination at the hands of imperial officialdom. Sounds great, but only the first half of this is true. I find myself thinking of Oscar Wilde here who said, “The good end happily, and the bad end unhappily. That is what fiction means.” And there are three more chapters of the book of Esther, so it’s safe to say there’s more to the story than just killing the architect of a heinous plan. The plan itself to kill all the Jews in the Empire is still out there.

(David Alvin, from the Bible study The Persian Trilogy, ISBN 9781489502254)