Weekly devotion no 22

Weekly Devotion no 22
28 August 2020

Bible reading – Esther 3[1]

After those events, King Xerxes honoured Haman. Haman was the son of Hammedatha. He was from the family line of Agag. The king gave Haman a higher position than he had before. He gave him a seat of honour. It was higher than the positions any of the other nobles had. ²All the royal officials at the palace gate got down on their knees. They gave honour to Haman. That’s because the king had commanded them to do it. But Mordecai refused to get down on his knees. He wouldn’t give Haman any honour at all.

³The royal officials at the palace gate asked Mordecai a question. They said, “Why don’t you obey the king’s command?” ⁴Day after day they spoke to him. But he still refused to obey. So they told Haman about it. They wanted to see whether he would let Mordecai get away with what he was doing. Mordecai had told them he was a Jew.

⁵Haman noticed that Mordecai wouldn’t get down on his knees. He wouldn’t give Haman any honour. So Haman was very angry. ⁶But he had found out who Mordecai’s people were. So he didn’t want to kill only Mordecai. He also looked for a way to destroy all Mordecai’s people. They were Jews. He wanted to kill all of them everywhere in the kingdom of Xerxes.

⁷The lot was cast in front of Haman. The lot was called Pur. It was cast in the first month of the 12th year that Xerxes was king. That month was called Nisan. The lot was cast to choose a day and a month. The month chosen was the 12th month. That month was called Adar.

⁸Then Haman said to King Xerxes, “Certain people are scattered among the nations. They live in all the territories in your kingdom. They keep themselves separate from everyone else. Their practices are different from the practices of all other people. They don’t obey your laws. It really isn’t good for you to put up with them. ⁹If it pleases you, give the order to destroy them. I’ll even add 375 tons of silver to the king’s officials for the royal treasures.”

¹⁰So the king took his ring off his finger. The ring had his royal seal on it. He gave the ring to Haman. Haman was the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite. Haman was the enemy of the Jews. ¹¹“Keep the money,” the king said to Haman. “Do what you want to with those people.”

¹²The king sent for the royal secretaries. It was the 13th day of the first month. The secretaries wrote down all Haman’s orders. They wrote them down in the writing of each territory in the kingdom. They also wrote them in the language of each nation. The orders were sent to the royal officials and to the governors of the territories. And the orders were also sent to the nobles of the nations. The orders were written in the name of King Xerxes himself. And they were stamped with his own official mark. ¹³They were carried by messengers. They were sent to all the king’s territories. The orders commanded people to destroy, kill and wipe out all the Jews. That included young people and old people alike. It included women and children. All the Jews were supposed to be killed on a single day. That day was the 13th day of the 12th month. It was the month of Adar. The orders also commanded people to take everything that belonged to the Jews. ¹⁴A copy of the order had to be sent out as law. It had to be sent to every territory in the kingdom. It had to be announced to the people of every nation. Then they would be ready for that day.

¹⁵The king commanded the messengers to go out. So they did. The order was sent out from the fort of Susa. Then the king and Haman sat down to drink wine. But the people in the city were bewildered.

Reflection

And so we meet Haman, the fourth main character in this story. He has clearly done well in the Persian kingdom and so has been elevated to the highest position under the king. It was common in the culture to bow down to those in high positions, but Mordecai chose not to bow down in honour of Haman. Haman came from a family with a long history of being enemies of God’s people, the Jews.

And it turns out that Mordecai’s understanding of the situation was spot on. Because Haman’s reaction to Mordecai’s actions was not to punish Mordecai, but to aim to eliminate his whole ethnic group. Haman goes to King Xerxes to persuade him to issue a decree to this effect. But notice, he doesn’t tell King Xerxes that it is the Jews that he wants to eliminate. Instead, he refers to a people who are ‘different’ and who don’t obey the laws of King Xerxes. This plea involves deception and exaggeration – definitely an example of fake news! Only one person had broken one law. Hardly a reason for genocide. But to add injury to insult, Haman also attempts to bribe the king to ensure his plan is successful. The actions of Haman are evil and despicable.

But King Xerxes is equally despicable – he doesn’t question any of the information that Haman has given him. He just hands over his complete power to Haman by providing him with his signet ring. The use of this ring as a seal meant that even the king could not retract or reverse this decree in future. He therefore determined the future death of all the Jews in his kingdom (which was essentially all the Jews in the world) in a moment. And following this Xerxes and Haman celebrate with a drink, whilst the people are bewildered. Not surprisingly, they don’t understand what has happened or why. This is such an extreme response to one person’s actions.

It’s challenging to observe the extent of evil in this part of the story. But sadly it’s not hard to imagine, given that it’s only 75 years since we have seen a similar attempt to eliminate the Jewish nation. How must the Jews in this story have felt when they were effectively told they had just 11 months until they would be murdered? Their ‘difference’ to the Persians was their faith in God. The sense of persecution for their faith must have been intense. There was no option for escape: there must have been a strong sense of the impending doom. Was there a sense of desperation in that time and did it feel that the day of the massacre was coming too quickly? Did they lament and ask God ‘how long will you leave us and forget us?’? We’re not told the answer to these questions, but we’ll see next week that God was working to save his people. But in the meantime, he continued to be present with them in their distress.

The antidote to such evil can only be pure goodness. The only person who has never sinned or done any evil act is Jesus, God’s only Son. It is only through Jesus that evil can be overcome. We hear in 1 John 3: “The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”[1] Sin and evil can only result in death. But Jesus won victory over death and over sin and evil through his own death and resurrection. We may feel overwhelmed by the evil in this world, but we can be assured of our victory in Christ!

[1] 1 John 3:8b

Hymn

Verse 1

O Jesus, I have promised
to serve thee to the end;
be thou forever near me,
my Master and my Friend;
I shall not fear the battle
if thou art by my side,
nor wander from the pathway
if thou wilt be my guide.

Verse 2

O let me feel thee near me!
The world is ever near;
I see the sights that dazzle,
the tempting sounds I hear;
my foes are ever near me,
around me and within;
but Jesus, draw thou nearer,
and shield my soul from sin.

Verse 3

O let me hear thee speaking
in accents clear and still,
above the storms of passion,
the murmurs of self will.
O speak to reassure me,
to hasten or control;
O speak and make me listen,
thou guardian of my soul.

Verse 4

O Jesus, thou hast promised
to all who follow thee,
that where thou art in glory
there shall thy servant be;
and, Jesus, I have promised
to serve thee to the end;
O give me grace to follow,
my Master and my Friend.

Prayer

Lord,

we beseech you to keep your family, the church, in continual godliness,

that through your protection

it may be free from all adversities,

and devoutly given to serve you in good works,

to the glory of your name;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Prayer Book for Australia 1995

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