Esther 9:1-32
1 Now in the twelfth month, that is, the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of the same, when the king's commandment and his decree drew near to be put in execution, in the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to have power over them, (though it was turned to the contrary, that the Jews had rule over them that hated them;)
2 The Jews gathered themselves together in their cities throughout all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, to lay hand on such as sought their hurt: and no man could withstand them; for the fear of them fell upon all people.
3 And all the rulers of the provinces, and the lieutenants, and the deputies, and officersa of the king, helped the Jews; because the fear of Mordecai fell upon them.
4 For Mordecai was great in the king's house, and his fame went out throughout all the provinces: for this man Mordecai waxed greater and greater.
5 Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.
6 And in Shushan the palace the Jews slew and destroyed five hundred men.
7 And Parshandatha, and Dalphon, and Aspatha,
8 And Poratha, and Adalia, and Aridatha,
9 And Parmashta, and Arisai, and Aridai, and Vajezatha,
10 The ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the enemy of the Jews, slew they; but on the spoil laid they not their hand.
11 On that day the number of those that were slain in Shushan the palace was brought before the king.
12 And the king said unto Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the palace, and the ten sons of Haman; what have they done in the rest of the king's provinces? now what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: or what is thy request further? and it shall be done.
13 Then said Esther, If it please the king, let it be granted to the Jews which are in Shushan to do to morrow also according unto this day's decree, and let Haman'sb ten sons be hanged upon the gallows.
14 And the king commanded it so to be done: and the decree was given at Shushan; and they hanged Haman's ten sons.
15 For the Jews that were in Shushan gathered themselves together on the fourteenth day also of the month Adar, and slew three hundred men at Shushan; but on the prey they laid not their hand.
16 But the other Jews that were in the king's provinces gathered themselves together, and stood for their lives, and had rest from their enemies, and slew of their foes seventy and five thousand, but they laid not their hands on the prey,
17 On the thirteenth day of the month Adar; and on the fourteenth day of the same rested they, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
18 But the Jews that were at Shushan assembled together on the thirteenth day thereof, and on the fourteenth thereof; and on the fifteenth day of the same they rested, and made it a day of feasting and gladness.
19 Therefore the Jews of the villages, that dwelt in the unwalled towns, made the fourteenth day of the month Adar a day of gladness and feasting, and a good day, and of sending portions one to another.
20 And Mordecai wrote these things, and sent letters unto all the Jews that were in all the provinces of the king Ahasuerus, both nigh and far,
21 To stablish this among them, that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar, and the fifteenth day of the same, yearly,
22 As the days wherein the Jews rested from their enemies, and the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy, and from mourning into a good day: that they should make them days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor.
23 And the Jews undertook to do as they had begun, and as Mordecai had written unto them;
24 Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had devised against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast Pur, that is, the lot, to consumec them, and to destroy them;
25 But when Esther camed before the king, he commanded by letters that his wicked device, which he devised against the Jews, should return upon his own head, and that he and his sons should be hanged on the gallows.
26 Wherefore they called these days Purim after the name of Pur.e Therefore for all the words of this letter, and of that which they had seen concerning this matter, and which had come unto them,
27 The Jews ordained, and took upon them, and upon their seed, and upon all such as joined themselves unto them, so as it should not fail,f that they would keep these two days according to their writing, and according to their appointed time every year;
28 And that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation, every family, every province, and every city; and that these days of Purim should not failg from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed.
29 Then Esther the queen, the daughter of Abihail, and Mordecai the Jew, wrote with all authority,h to confirm this second letter of Purim.
30 And he sent the letters unto all the Jews, to the hundred twenty and seven provinces of the kingdom of Ahasuerus, with words of peace and truth,
31 To confirm these days of Purim in their times appointed, according as Mordecai the Jew and Esther the queen had enjoined them, and as they had decreed for themselvesi and for their seed, the matters of the fastings and their cry.
32 And the decree of Esther confirmed these matters of Purim; and it was written in the book.
The Jews Successful against their Enemies. Adar 13th, the dreadful day, comes at last. What were the Jews to do? There were many partisans of Haman, some 500 at least in the city alone; there were thousands more in the land, ready to carry out the first decree. Should Mordecai and all Jews sit still and see their wives and children butchered, and be butchered themselves? The Hamanites attack: the Jews defend themselves. There fell of those who attacked, in Shushan itself, some 500, and in all the empire 15,000 as the LXX says, although the Heb. exaggerates and says 75,000. Was this mere wanton bloodshed on the Jews-' part? The tale rather pictured for the suffering people of Judah how their brave comrades, the Maccabees, had faced and fought and felled the cruel armies of Antiochus under Nicanor. And now the writer adds a touch of fine national self-respect, saying: No Jew took booty of the fallen men's goods. The Jew believed it would be base thus to steal, as the Persians had meant to do. We see what sort of society Jesus arose among, and sought to bless.
This chapter is full of repetitions, easily detected, as, e.g. thrice we read, The Jews took no booty. Erbt has suggested that only the following were in the original: Esther 9:1; Esther 9:5; Esther 9:16; Esther 9:24 f., Esther 9:29; Esther 9:31 a, Esther 9:32. All the rest are later marginal remarks, that have slipped into the text. The most unfortunate of the additions is Esther 9:13, which pictures Esther asking permission for the Jews to go on killing on a second day. The LXX is clearly the earlier and truer text: it has no hint that such a request was made. It is probably correct that Esther was represented by the novelist as asking that Haman's ten sons already dead be impaled like their father; and that is pitiable, although not so cruel as it looks, and it is not at all strange. It resembles our English use of the spikes of Temple Bar: it is the one hard feature imputed to any Jew.
Esther 9:20. Institution of the Feast of Purim. We come now to the establishment of the perpetual annual festival of Purim (p. 104), commemorating the great salvation. Quite possibly our tale was written to provide a short epic that could be read at the festival: and so Esther is read every year at the celebrations lasting from the 13th to the 15th of Adar. This festival had become very popular by the time of Josephus, A.D. 37- 100, and he repeats the story of it much as we find it in the Gr. version. He includes much which the Heb. has cut out (see Ant. xi. 6). In the Middle Ages, Purim became a central season of rejoicing, with all sorts of merry-making combined around it. Especially did the men and boys at the celebration services in the synagogues beat with wooden hammers on the benches, whereon was written in chalk the word HAMAN. We may see herein that the festival was a sort of sharing and rejoicing in the Maccabee victories, for the word Maccabee is the Heb. for Hammerer, as Maccab means a hammer. Judas hammered Antiochus and his hosts. [This popular explanation of the name is open to objections; see EBi. cols. 1947, 2850f. A. S. P.]
Our tale tells how there was a strong desire to prolong the time of festival, and so two days were devoted to it (Esther 9:21), whereon all provision of help was made for poor folk, and there were also mutual kindly treatings. Since we read in 2Ma_15:36 that the victory over Nicanor fell on the 13th of Adar, the day before the day of Mordecai, two days seem to have been employed from the first. Perhaps even three days were occupied in the great feastings, for Adar 13th was the day of victory, and while that was to be honoured says 2 Mac., with thanksgiving, the addition in Esther 9:17 says that the 14th and the 15th came to be honoured as the times of special festivities (p. 104). Then the 14th would come to be called specially Mordecai's Day. We need not be surprised that the Jews devoted two and even three days to these rejoicings: indeed they added ere long another celebration called Hanukkah (p. 104), in Chislew (December), three months earlier, to honour the earliest victories of Judas in 168- 166 and also his cleansing and restoration of the Temple after its sad desecration by Antiochus. The importance to the Jews of that great Maccabæ an salvation has not been fully realised by us. But it was indeed the re-establishment of the Throne of David, and it was also the initiation of those wonderful apocalyptic and Messianic movements which culminated in Christianity.
There is notably very little said about the Memorial Festival; and its name, the word Purim, is mysterious: perhaps it was made so purposely. There is no real Heb. explanation for it. An old Assyrian word, Puhru, was used long before as the name of the annual assembly of the Gods under the presidency of Marduk, the God of Fate; at which assembly were determined the fates of men for the year to come. The Assyrian empire had been destroyed c. 607 B.C., but this term Puhru may have remained in popular speech for centuries, to be adopted at last by the Jews. De Lagarde pointed out that LXX uses the word Phrourai, and not Purim; and he thought at one time that Phrourai represented the Persian Pharwardigan, which was a Festival for the Dead, a sort of All Saints-' Day at the close of the year. But he abandoned this view later on. [Driver (IOT 9, p. 485) says with reference to the LXX form of the word preferred by Lagarde, Whatever the etymological difficulties attaching to the term, the form Purim - is supported by the tradition of the feast itself. A. S. P.] In any case, the origin of the term seems to have been among a non-Jewish people, and this may account for the evident effort that the scribes made to discourage the festival. For some such reason they may have cut out of the original tale all its references to Yahweh, the God of Israel, and much else that was religious in the story.