Esther 3:2

bowed down The Heb. expresses a more profound salutation, after the Oriental fashion, than the A.V. -bow."

the king had so commanded Bowing down before a superior was such an established custom that one would have thought the king's command needless. It may have been that Haman's elevation was so strongly contrasted with his origin that there was occasion for the order to be issued.

But Mordecai bowed not down What was his reason? Although we have Greeks (Spartan ambassadors) refusing to bow down to the Persian monarch (Herod. vii. 136) on the ground that it was not their custom to worship men, yet the Jews had no objection to the act in itself (2 Samuel 14:4; 2 Samuel 18:28; 1 Kings 1:16), and disobedience to the king's direction in such a matter was fraught with danger.

Two possible answers suggest themselves. (1) He considered Haman as the king's representative, and, as the Persian obeisance to the sovereign involved a belief that he was in some sort an incarnation of the Deity, Mordecai, as a Jew, refused to perform an act of idolatry. If so, however, we do not see how he could avoid bowing down, whenever he happened to be in the presence of the king himself, as in Esther 8:1. (2) Mordecai, as a Jew, refused to bow down to the hereditary enemy of Israel. See last note and cp. Numbers 24:7. A characteristic piece of Targum says that the king's servants pointed out to Mordecai that a conspicuous ancestor of his, Jacob, had bowed down before one of Haman's forefathers, Esau (Genesis 33:3). Mordecai, however, replied that he himself was not involved in this act, as being descended from Benjamin who at the time referred to was not yet born.