Haman

Haman receives the highest seat among the princes and immediately encounters a man who will not bend. The king can order the court to honor him, but the order does not produce complete agreement. The Book of Esther places a very large promotion beside a very small physical refusal. One upright figure interrupts a whole arrangement of lowered heads.

The other servants make the refusal a daily matter before bringing it to Haman. Mordecai has told them that he is a Jew, so Haman receives more than the name of an uncooperative courtier. He receives the identity of a people. What he does with that information is the decisive movement of the paragraph.

He thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone. The restraint is not mercy. Attacking a single man seems too small, and the proposed violence expands until it reaches Jews throughout the kingdom. The offense remains one man's refusal to bow; the target becomes an entire population. No new wrongdoing by those people is reported between the two. The gap is filled entirely by Haman's decision. Royal advancement has given that decision room to become more than a private rage.

Haman conducts an inventory of everything he possesses and then declares the total worthless. Riches, children, promotion, precedence over other princes, exclusive admission to the queen's banquet, another invitation for tomorrow: the list is substantial. Yet all this availeth me nothing. The Book of Esther does not need to invent a private dissatisfaction. He announces it himself.

The missing item is one man's movement. Mordecai neither stands nor stirs for him, and the honor of the banquet loses its value at the gate. Haman has been admitted where other men were not admitted, but the privilege cannot survive the sight of someone who will not rise. His arithmetic has a peculiar rule: one seated Jew cancels everything else.

Zeresh and his friends do not challenge that rule. They recommend a fifty-cubit structure and a request for royal permission to kill Mordecai, followed by a cheerful return to dinner. The sequence is appalling in its ease. Execution is proposed as a way to improve an evening's enjoyment. Haman is pleased and orders the construction. The only thing in the paragraph that grows taller than his list of honors is the device prepared for another man's death.

Haman asks a Jewish woman to spare the life of the man who has arranged the destruction of her people. The reversal is already complete in the direction of the plea. He remains with Esther because he sees that the king has determined harm against him. The account states his recognition of danger, but it records no confession of the wrong he has planned.

When the king returns, Haman has fallen on Esther's couch. The king calls the scene an attempted assault. That accusation must not be confused with the explanation the passage has just supplied: Haman is begging for his life. His position is disastrous, but the Book of Esther does not say that he actually attempted to rape the queen. Fear and an accusation are enough without inventing another crime.

Harbonah then names the structure Haman prepared and, in the same sentence, identifies Mordecai as the man who spoke good for the king. The intended victim's loyalty enters the judgment against the intended executioner. Hang him thereon requires no new construction. The labor Haman ordered is already available, and its destination changes. His own preparation becomes the instrument of his death.