Esther (12) - The Riddle of the Book of Esther
Adams, First and Last
(Bible Study - May 2004)
When Haman is initially introduced in the book of Esther, he is brought into the narrative adjacent to Mordecai. This is quite deliberate: the two characters are to be viewed in parallel. Yet a choice must be made. Even though Mordecai shows his loyalty to the worldly authorities, the king of this world nevertheless chooses Haman as his highest official. In process of time, Mordecai, too, will eventually fill the role, for as Haman’s counterpart, Mordecai must tread where the Agagite has gone before.
But the initial choice is in favour of Haman. No surprises there. The world recognises and rewards its own. The flamboyant Haman, gaudy and bawdy and full of himself, is exactly the sort of person who impresses. The stoic and reserved Mordecai will have to wait his turn.
Theme of contrast expanded
There are great parallels and contrasts
between Haman and Mordecai, and some of these have been brought out in
the study of the moment of reversal at Esther 6 (last month). But
seeing the two men as rival and contrast figures is so vital that it deserves
an additional article to do more justice to the theme.
Both are men — an obvious enough point — but they are also symbolic of types of men, a first Adam and a last Adam. Just as Adam in the beginning, both are given glory and honour; both are given power to rule and control. But how differently they exercise that dominion! And how great the contrast between the Lord Jesus Christ and all other men who have gone before him.
Haman the worldly one
Turning to Haman for a more detailed exploration,
he is a character so clearly drawn that he is almost a caricature or parody
of worldliness. He is supremely obvious in all that he does, and
his fundamental insecurity and desire for affirmation is painfully obvious
also. Nowhere is the emptiness of his ambition better illustrated
than when he is asked by Ahasuerus what should be done to the man whom
the king delights to honour. His own ego so dominates his own thinking
that he cannot conceive of the possibility that the king would want to
honour anyone but him, so he reinterprets the question to mean ‘What would
you really like, more than anything else in the world?’ The one
thing he would really like, of course, is to be king himself. But
that is the one thing he can’t have, so he must settle for the next best
thing.
At least his response is honest and transparent, yet it is pitiable for its emptiness. There is nothing that he wants more than to be paraded around the city on horseback wearing the king’s clothes, and for it to be proclaimed before him, ‘Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour!’ Yet the whole experience, his greatest wish, will be over in a matter of hours! How transient the fulfilment and the rewards of which this world conceives:
Let the royal apparel be brought which the king useth to wear, and the horse that the king rideth upon, and the crown royal which is set upon his head: and let this apparel and horse be delivered to the hand of one of the king’s most noble princes, that they may array the man withal whom the king delighteth to honour, and bring him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaim before him, Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honour (6:8,9).
A
passing moment
What he wants is to play ‘Let’s pretend.’
He wants pantomime. To play the king, even if it is only for a few
short hours. To pretend and parade under the illusion of having
that which he does not have. To wear the king’s clothes, to ride
the king’s horse, to wear the king’s crown, to be led by one of the king’s
mighty princes — to transcend himself and be for a moment that which he
can never be. And yet even in the very proclamation that he wishes
the official to cry, he recognises that what he wants, others besides
him can have also (‘thus shall it be done to the one — whoever — the king
delights to honour’). Today he might be the one, but the next day
it might be someone else — and what will he do then? Too bad for
him that it turns out that he is not now, and will never again
be the one the king delights to honour. Thus he never gets to experience
even one of these wishes. He has wished for the wind, for something
which can never be.
It is amazing that this is the best that he can think of, the best that Persian culture and excess can offer him! How empty and foolish his ambition, and yet how many are those who tread in his path. Despite his exaltation by Ahasuerus in the preceding chapters, despite the power which he wields and the king’s ring which he uses, it is simply not enough. It will never be enough. He will never be satisfied.
Contrast in use of authority
But there is another who, in turn, is exalted
even as Haman was, and with matchless honours crowned. What will
he do with the king’s ring? We know only too well what the
first man did with that dominion, but what of the second?
Both men have a chance to wear the king’s ring and to exercise rulership. One uses his station to destroy and annihilate, the other to obtain salvation and then to remember that deliverance in regular celebration. The decrees of Mordecai are worlds apart from those of Haman.
Contrast in final end
Another theme in which there is supreme
contrast between Haman and Mordecai is the matter of shame and death,
and its interface with exaltation and glorification. The crucial
question is, which comes first? For Haman it would always be the
glory. He seizes at the glory with both hands, but the shame, when
it comes, will outlive the glory and continue to eternity. He seeks
honour and brings forth shame, whereas Mordecai treads the opposite path.
The one who mourned and donned sackcloth is now exalted with glorious
majesty. He began with shame but trades it for honour.
We shall finish with the glorification of Mordecai, but first we must dispense with Haman. There are two passages which bring out the shame which he came to experience:
And Mordecai came again to the king’s gate (after Haman had led him in procession about the city.) But Haman hasted to his house mourning, and having his head covered (6:12).
Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the word went out of the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face. And Harbondah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who had spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon (7:8b-9).
The one who paraded himself and sought only his own ends returns home with his head covered. No sooner does he uncover it than it is covered up for him once again only the next day as he is frog-marched out of the king’s presence, never to return.
How are the mighty fallen! — and quite literally, too, as he hangs from the enormous gallows he has constructed. Haman is a satan-figure, representing sin, the world, and worldly ambition. He is ‘the enemy of all the Jews,’ and the enemy of all men who would seek a relationship with God (9:24). But now he falls from a great height (the gallows he built being somewhere around ten times an average man’s height; perhaps now he wishes he had not made it with quite such extravagance!). Larger than life in his pride, menacing and monstrous in his cruelty, Haman is now a mere speck as he swings on his vast gallows.
But what of Mordecai? He too faced death, along with all his people, as the news of Haman’s edict reached his ears. He rent his clothes, donned sackcloth and ashes and refused to be comforted. He cried with a loud and bitter cry; he was ensnared; he offered up strong crying and tears; it seemed impossible that the cup should pass from him.
Yet the Lord God of heaven delivered him from that death, and with him his people. He highly exalted him, and gave him a great name before which men feared. The path of shame had been endured, and now he stood, glorified, using the powers that were delegated to him for the good of his people as he spoke words of peace and gladness.
The seal upon Mordecai’s exemplary character is found at the end of the book. The book of Esther closes with an accolade of Mordecai which is, in the phrases at the end of the passage, a marvellous pointer forwards to our Saviour the Lord Jesus:
The declaration of the greatness of Mordecai, whereunto the king advanced him, [is it] not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Media and Persia? For Mordecai the Jew was next unto king Ahasuerus, and great among the Jews, and accepted of the multitude of his brethren, seeking the wealth of his people, and speaking peace to all his seed (10:2-3).
Mark Vincent (Series concluded)