Esther 3:1-6
He thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone
Full of wrath at one man who will not bow, he asks who the man’s people are and then decides the target is the people rather than the man.
People of the Bible
Haman
Was so offended by one man that he bought a decree against an entire people, and died on the gallows he built for him.
Haman is promoted above all the princes and given the king’s ring. He is an Agagite, which links him to the Amalekite king Saul was told to destroy, so the quarrel with a Benjamite in the gate is very old. He is told that Mordecai will not bow and that Mordecai is a Jew, and he decides that laying hands on one man is beneath him. He casts lots for a date, offers ten thousand talents of silver into the treasury, and gets the ring without the king ever asking which people it is.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Haman
- 01
- 02
Esther 3:7-11
Ten thousand talents of silver
The lot is cast for the day, eleven months ahead. The argument to the king names no nation, only a certain people scattered abroad whose laws are diverse. The king gives him the ring.
- 03
Esther 5:9-14
A gallows fifty cubits high
He goes home joyful, counts his riches and his children and his invitations, and says all this avails him nothing while he sees Mordecai in the gate. His wife suggests the gallows.
- 04
Esther 6:6-11
Whom the king delights to honour
Asked what should be done for such a man, he thinks in his heart that it must be himself, and describes the robe, the horse and the crown. Then he is told to do all of it for Mordecai.
- 05
Esther 7:7-10
On his own gallows
The king goes out into the garden in his wrath and Haman falls on the queen’s couch to beg. A servant mentions the gallows standing in his own house, and he is hanged on it.
Why it matters
The book tracks him through the sharpest reversal in Scripture, and it does it on his own logic. He builds a gallows fifty cubits high on his wife’s advice, goes in to ask for it, and is asked instead what should be done for a man the king delights to honour. He assumes it is himself and describes the greatest possible honour, and then has to lead the horse. The month of the decree becomes the feast of Purim, named for the lots he cast.
10 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
