Esther 3:1

Esther 3:1-6. Haman offended by Mordecai's refusal to make obeisance

1. After these things i.e. between the seventh (Esther 2:16) and the twelfth (Esther 3:7) years of Xerxes" reign.

Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite Haman's name has been held to be another form of Hummanor Humban, an Elamite deity, and that of his father to be connected with the Persian mâhand data, thus signifying given by the moon. The description of Haman as an -Agagite" is perplexing. The following views have been held.

(a) Josephus (Ant.xi. 6. 5) and the Targum understand the statement literally to mean that Haman was descended from Agag, king of Amalek, the latter availing itself of the opportunity of giving a complete genealogy through Amalek to Esau (see Genesis 36:12). If we accept this explanation of the word, we can see the significance which it bears for the narrator. He desires to place Mordecai and Haman before the reader in the guise of hereditary enemies, the one the descendant of Kish, and thus connected with the first king of Israel, the other the descendant of Agag, Saul's conquered foe. As then, so now, it is a case of a contest between the Jew and his adversary.

(b) The title -Agagite" may be an allegorical nickname, and intended to indicate a spiritual rather than a natural descent, one whose attitude to the chosen nation was that of the Amalekite king of earlier days.

(c) It may, however, denote a place or family otherwise unknown.

For -Agagite" the LXX. here and in (Esther 9:10 and) Esther 12:6 have Bugaean(Βουγαῖος), and in Esther 9:24 and Esther 16:10 the Macedonian(ὁ Μακεδών). The former has been explained as originating in a mistake in reading the first letter in the Heb., or as arising from confusion with Bagoas, a favourite of Alexander the Great (Curtius vi. 5. 23). Either of two other explanations, however, is decidedly to be preferred, viz. (a) that it means bully, braggart, as it occurs twice in this sense in Homer (Il.xiii. 824, Od.xviii. 79), many of whose words were revived by writers of Alexandrian Greek, or (b) that it is a word denoting eunuch, and afterwards any court official. See Schleusner, Lexicon Vet. Test. s.v. The latter title -Macedonian" either (a) points to the time when the Greek power, rendered dominant in the East by Alexander of Macedon (died b.c. 323), had become through Antiochus Epiphanes (died b.c. 164), who inherited Alexander's conquests in Syria, the type of hostility to the nation of the Jews, or (b) is meant to indicate Haman as a traitor to the Persian power.