It is only a type—it is only a shadow, and not the very image. In the millennial day there will be no Haman. Till that day come, whatever may be the vivid picture of coming blessing, there is always a dark shadow. There is an enemy; there is one that tries to frustrate all the plans of God: and, of all the races of the earth, there was one that was particularly hostile to God's people of old—the Amalekites—so much so that. Jehovah swore and called upon His people to carry on perpetual war against that race. He would blot them out from under heaven. The Amalekites were the peculiar object of God's most righteous judgment, because of their hatred of His people. Now this Haman belonged not only to Amalek, but even to the royal family of Amalek. He was a descendant of Hammedatha the Agagite, as it is said, and Ahasuerus advances this noble to the very highest place. But in the midst of all his thick honors there was one thorn! Mordecai bowed not. The consequence was that Mordecai became an object of reproach. The king's servants asked him, “Why transgressest thou the king's commandment” And after this went on for a time Haman hears of it. “He told them that he was a Jew.”
There was the secret. God does not appear. There is no intimation in this history that God had spoken about him. Yet here was the secret reason; but the only public reason that appears is that Mordecai was a Jew. “And when Haman saw that Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence, then was Haman full of wrath. And he thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone, for they had showed him the people of Mordecai; wherefore Haman sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus, even the people of Mordecai” (3:5, 6); and Haman accomplishes it in this manner. He reports to the king, as being the principal noble in favor, that there was “a certain people scattered abroad among the peoples in all the provinces... their laws are diverse from all people, neither keep they the king's laws; therefore, it is not for the king's profit to suffer them. If it please the king, let it be written that they may be destroyed; and I will pay ten thousand talents of silver to the hands of those that have the charge of the business, to bring it into the king's treasures.” (vers. 8, g).
The king, according to the character I have already described, made very small difficulty of this tremendous request of Haman. He took his ring from his hand, he gave it to Haman, and told him to keep his silver. He sent out the scribes to carry out this request, to that the posts went throughout all the king's provinces. The Persians, you know, were the first originators of the postal system that we have continued to this day. “Letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month.” The king and his minister sat down to drink, but the city of Shushan was perplexed.
Well might there be a great cry going forth from the Jew. Their doom was sealed. So it appeared. The more so as it was always one of the maxims of the Persian empire that a law once passed was never revoked— “according to the law of the Medes and Persians that altereth not.” Nothing then, it might appear, could possibly have saved the people. The master of 127 provinces had given his royal word, signed with his seal, and sent it out by posts throughout the whole length and breadth of the empire. The day was fixed; the people named. Destruction seemed to be certain; but Mordecai rends his clothes and puts on sackcloth, and goes into the midst of the city, and cries with a loud and bitter cry (4:1), and if God's name is not written and does not appear, God's ears, none the less, heard. Mordecai came unto the king's gate, for none might enter into the gate clothed with sackcloth. He came before it, not within it, and Esther heard. They told her, and the queen was exceeding grieved, little knowing the cause of the grief. And Esther sends, through one of the chamberlains, and Mordecai tells him of all that had happened unto him, and of what Haman had promised to pay, and the destruction that was impending over the Jew.
Esther upon this, we are told, gives Hatach commandment to Mordecai telling him the hopelessness of the case. The object was that she might go and make supplication to the king. But how? It was one of the laws of the Persian empire that nobody could go into the king's presence. The king must send, and the king had not sent for the queen for thirty days. It was against the law to venture there. Accordingly Mordecai sends her a most distinct but severe message. “Think not with thyself,” said he, “that thou shalt escape in the kings house more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place.” Not a word about God. He is hidden. He means God, but so perfectly is there a preserving of the secrecy of God that he only vaguely alludes to it in this remarkable manner— “Then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place;” —for God would look down from heaven; but Mordecai only speaks of the place and not of the person— “but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”
Esther, accordingly, is brought to a due sense of the situation. She enters perfectly into Mordecai's feeling for the people and his confidence of the enlargement that would come from another place. So she bids Mordecai “Go, gather together all the Jews that are present in Shushan, and fast, ye for me, and neither eat nor drink three days, night or day.” She also, as she says, will do this. “I also and my maidens will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king.” Not a word about the perfumes now. Not a word about the sweet odours to prepare herself for the presence of the king. To that she had submitted; it was the king's order; but now, although she does not mention God, it is evident where her heart is. She goes with this most singular preparation, but an admirable one at such a time—fasting—a great sign of humiliation before God; yet, even, here, God is not named. You cannot doubt that God is above, and that God is behind, the scenes; but all that appears is merely the fasting of man and not the God before whom the fasting was. “And if I perish, I perish.” Her mind was made up.
Accordingly, on the third day (chap. 5.), Esther put on her royal apparel, “and stood in the inner court of the king's house, over against the king's house, and the king sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the gate of the house. And it was so, when the king saw Esther the, queen standing in the court, that she obtained favor in his sight; and the king held out to. Esther the golden scepter that was in his hand,” for faith was great in the goodness of God. All that appears is merely man, yet the unseen hand was there. This she looked for, and this she found. “So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the scepter. Then said the king unto her, what wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom.”
So Esther answers, “If it seem good unto the king, let the king and Haman come this day unto the banquet that I have prepared for him.” God gave her wisdom. She does not at once bring out what was so heavy a burden on her heart. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” The unseen God who was the object of her trust enabled her soul to wait. She asks not only for the king to the banquet, but the king and Haman. How constantly this is the case. So with the Lord when He gives Judas the sop even before that terrible betrayal which leads to the cross. Little did Haman know what the God who did not appear was preparing for him. And at the banquet the king again returns to the question, for he right well knew that there was something more than the banquet in the mind of queen Esther. “What is thy petition and it shall be granted thee. What is thy request? Even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed.”
Again the queen asks that she may have their company at another banquet. “And I will do tomorrow as the king hath said.” So Haman goes forth that day “joyful and with a glad heart,” but when he sees Mordecai the Jew and that he did not stand up or move for him, he was full of indignation against Mordecai. Nevertheless, Haman refrained himself. When he goes home to his wife and his friends, and tells them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all the things wherein the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king, he names as the crown of all the special honor paid, in queen Esther's inviting him to a banquet where none came but the king himself. “And to-morrow” says he, “Am I invited unto her, with the king also. Yet all this availeth me nothing” —such was the bitterness of his heart and hatred— “so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate.” So the wife with the weakness that belongs to her nature suggested that a gallows should be made for this wicked Mordecai. “Let a gallows be made of fifty cubits high, and to-morrow speak thou unto the king that Mordecai may be hanged thereon; then go thou in merrily with the king unto the banquet.” The thing pleased Haman well, and it was done.
But the unseen God was at work that night. The king could not sleep (chap. 6.), else there had been a bitter feast for Esther before the feast with the king. “On that night the king could not sleep.” He asked for the record of the kingdom. The providence of God was at work. It was found written that Mordecai had told of the treacherous chamberlains, and the king asks, “What honor and dignity hath been done to Mordecai?” “Nothing,” said the servants. At that very moment Haman comes to the court. He wanted to see the king, to ask for Mordecai's life. Little did he know what was in the king's heart. He is ushered into the presence of the king, at his request, and the king, full of what was in his own heart, was providentially led to ask, what he was to do for one that he wished to honor. “What shall be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor?”
Haman had no thought of any one but himself. Thus he was caught in his own snare. He asked with no stint. He suggested to the king the highest honors—honors higher than ever had been given to a subject before. “For the man whom the king delighteth to honor, 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 honor, 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 honor” (vers. 7-9). So the king at once says to Haman, “Make haste, and take the apparel and the horse as thou hast said, and do even so to Mordecai the Jew, that sitteth at the king's gate; let nothing fail of all that thou hast spoken.”
Oh, what a downfall! What horror of horrors must have filled the heart of this wicked man, that he whom he most hated of all men living, was the very one whom he himself as the chief noble of the empire was compelled to pay this honor to, according to his own suggesting! However it was impossible to alter the king's word. “Then took Haman the apparel, and the horse and arrayed Mordecai, and brought him on horseback through the street of the city, and proclaimed before him, Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honor.” Very differently did Haman return to his wife and friends that day. “Haman hasted to his house mourning, and having his head covered. And Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his friends everything that had befallen him. Then said his wise men and Zeresh his wife unto him, If Mordecai be of the seed of the Jews, before whom thou hast begun to fall, thou shalt not prevail against him, but shalt surely fall before him.” Such is the secret feeling of the Gentile as to the Jew. It may be all very well for the Gentile, as long as the Jew is driven out of the presence of God, but when the day comes for exalting the Jew, Gentile greatness must then disappear from the face of the earth. The Jew is the intended lord here below. The Jew will be the head—the Gentile, the tail.
(To be continued) [W.K.]