Esther 8:15

Only a little earlier Haman’s plot to destroy the Jewish people had reached its height, with a royal decree for their destruction sent throughout the empire (Esther 3:13). Queen Esther went before King Ahasuerus, Haman was exposed, and he was hanged on the very gallows he had prepared for Mordecai (Esther 7:10). Mordecai has now been given Haman’s place and great authority. Haman’s decree still stood, because a Persian royal decree, once sealed, could be revoked by no one (Esther 8:8), the same law of the Medes and Persians found in Daniel 6:8. So the king let Mordecai write a second decree, giving the Jews the right to gather, defend themselves and destroy any who attacked them on the day Haman had set for their destruction (Esther 8:11–12).

Verse 15 is the first public sight of that change. The verb for “went out”, yâtsâʼ, is the ordinary word for going or coming out. Mordecai comes from the king’s presence into the streets, and the whole capital sees what the king has done for him. The last time Mordecai was seen in public he was in sackcloth and ashes, mourning the decree of death (Esther 4:1). Now he wears the clothes of the court.

Scripture has told of this kind of honour before. When Pharaoh raised Joseph over Egypt, he clothed him in fine linen as the sign of his new rank (Genesis 41:42), and in both stories a faithful man among a foreign people is lifted from danger to the second place in the kingdom. Esther itself adds an irony. In chapter 6 Haman, sure that he was the man the king delighted to honour, described the royal display he wanted for himself, and it went to Mordecai, the man he despised and meant to destroy (Esther 6:6–11). The honour Haman pictured for himself now rests on Mordecai for good.

The verse ends, “and the city of Shushan rejoiced and was glad.” Shushan, or Susa, was the capital and the centre of imperial rule. The verb for “rejoiced”, tsâhal, means to gleam, and so to be cheerful, and it is also used of a clear sound, crying aloud or shouting. This was joy that could be seen and heard across the city.

People ask whether the whole city rejoiced or only its Jews. The verse names the city, so the gladness reached beyond the Jewish community. Haman’s self-serving rule had probably brought fear and unrest to many in the capital, and his fall and Mordecai’s rise meant justice and stability for them as well. Proverbs puts it in a line: “When it goeth well with the righteous, the city rejoiceth: and when the wicked perish, there is shouting” (Proverbs 11:10).

Verse 16 gathers what the Jews now had into four nouns, and each answers something they had lost. When Haman’s decree first went out, there was great mourning among the Jews in every province, with fasting, weeping and wailing (Esther 4:3). Now the same people have light, gladness, joy and honour.

“Light” is ʼôwrâh, a word for brightness that is used figuratively of prosperity. Here it pictures well-being and hope after the shadow of death had hung over them. Isaiah uses light the same way when he calls God’s people to arise and shine because their light has come (Isaiah 60:1).

“Gladness” is simchâh, joy, gladness or mirth, a state in which people both feel and show great joy. “Joy” is sâsôwn, cheerfulness or rejoicing, which can also carry the sense of welcome. The two words sit side by side, and their pairing gives the full measure of the Jews’ delight. Joy like this is God’s gift to his people, and in Nehemiah’s day the people were told that the joy of the LORD was their strength (Nehemiah 8:10).

“Honour” is yᵉqâr, a word for value and costliness, and so for dignity and honour. A people who had been held in contempt and marked for destruction are now held in esteem. Their good name is restored, and the people around them can see it, as the next verse shows.

Verse 17 carries the joy out from the capital to “every province, and in every city”, across an empire of 127 provinces that stretched from India to Ethiopia. Wherever the king’s commandment and his decree arrived, the reversal of Haman’s plot arrived with it.

The same two words for joy come back here. The simchâh of verse 16 is now translated “joy”, and the sâsôwn is translated “gladness”. To them the verse adds “a feast and a good day”. “Good” is ṭôwb, good in the widest sense: pleasant, joyful, a time of welfare. With yôwm, “day”, it names a day of celebration and blessing. This feasting is the first taste of the celebration that is later fixed as the yearly feast of Purim (Esther 9:20–22), after the victory told in Esther 9. Through all of this God keeps faith with his covenant people, preserving the nation through whom the Messiah would come.

The verse gives its own reason: “for the fear of the Jews fell upon them.” The word for fear, pachad, means dread or terror. That dread rested on the Jews because of the power so plainly at work on their behalf. Their enemies had been turned back, their accuser hanged and their kinsman raised to the second place in the empire, and the people around them could see the hand of the God who protected them. Scripture tells of this before. Moses sang that “fear and dread shall fall upon them” as the nations heard of God’s deliverance at the Red Sea (Exodus 15:16), and Rahab told the spies, “your terror is fallen upon us” (Joshua 2:9–11).

“Became Jews” is a single verb in Hebrew, yâhad, made from the name of Judah (Yᵉhûwd), meaning to become Jewish. These people publicly identified themselves with the Jewish people, their customs and their God. The verse leaves the depth of each person’s change open. For some it was a true turning to the God of Israel. For others it may have been a public alignment with a people now plainly in favour, made for safety, and in many it was likely a mixture of both. Either way, the people who were to be wiped out became a people others wanted to join, and the fear Haman meant the Jews to feel now falls on those around them.

God’s name is never written in the book of Esther, and neither is a prayer or a miracle. Yet these verses are full of his work. A string of events that look like coincidences, a decree that could not be undone, the courage of Esther and the faithfulness of Mordecai all come together for the deliverance of his people. In this way the book teaches us to see God’s hand in ordinary events and in places far from his temple, where he rules history for the good of his people as surely as anywhere. Paul says the same of every believer’s life: “all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28). The psalmist’s thanks fits Mordecai exactly: “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing: thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness” (Psalm 30:11).

Mordecai goes from sackcloth under a decree of death to royal splendour, and his rise brings joy and deliverance to his people. In this he points to Jesus Christ. Christ “made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6–7), humbling himself even to death on a cross. Then God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name (Philippians 2:9), clothing him in glory and authority.

The Jews in Esther faced a decree of death, and so did we, for “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Esther risked her life to plead for her people, while Jesus, the good shepherd, laid his life down for his sheep (John 10:11). By his death and resurrection he brought in a new covenant, a better decree of grace and life (Hebrews 8:6–13). Through him God’s people are called out of darkness into his marvellous light (1 Peter 2:9). They know the joy announced at his birth as good news of great joy (Luke 2:10–11), the honour of being made children of God (John 1:12), and a living hope of an inheritance that cannot perish (1 Peter 1:3–4). The Jews were allowed to stand against their enemies, and Christ has disarmed the powers of darkness and triumphed over them by the cross (Colossians 2:15).

The people of the land who joined the Jews look ahead to the Gentiles from every nation who are grafted into God’s people through faith in Christ (Romans 11:17–24). Those who were once far off become fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household (Ephesians 2:19). The feast and good day of Esther point to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7–9), and Shushan’s joy to the joy of the day when God dwells with his people and wipes away every tear, when death, mourning, crying and pain are gone for ever (Revelation 21:3–4). Mordecai’s deliverance was partial and for a time. Christ’s is complete and eternal.

These verses show a God who keeps his people when every law of the empire is set against them, and who turns sackcloth into royal robes, mourning into feasting and contempt into honour. His work here is quiet, carried out through a queen’s courage and a king’s decree, yet the result is light and gladness in every city the news reaches. The joy he gives is also a witness. When the people around the Jews saw what had been done for them, many wanted to belong to them and to their God. The same God has given us, in Christ, a deliverance that no decree can undo and a joy that will reach its fullness at his table.