Esther 9:15

The king’s first words are a report: “The Jews have slain and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the palace, and the ten sons of Haman.” This follows the account of the first day’s fighting in the capital (Esther 9:1–10). The two verbs are hârag, to smite with deadly intent or to kill, and ʼâbad, which properly means to wander away and be lost, and so to perish, or in this form to destroy. Joined as hârog wᵉʼabbêd, the pair says that the enemies in the capital were wholly defeated and left no threat behind them.

“Shushan the palace” is Shûwshan with bîyrâh, a word of foreign origin for a castle or palace. It names the fortified royal citadel of Susa, one of the capitals of the Persian Empire, as distinct from the wider city. So the fighting the king describes took place at the very centre of his rule, close to his own residence and under his eye.

Ahasuerus moves straight from the report to an offer: “now what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: or what is thy request further? and it shall be done.” The two nouns are close in meaning. Shᵉʼêlâh, petition, is something asked for, and it can also mean a loan. Baqqâshâh is a request. Saying the offer twice, with “granted” and then “done”, shows how open his favour to the queen has become. He trusts her judgment and stands ready to give whatever she asks.

The king has good reason to go on offering. Esther’s courage had brought Haman’s treachery to light, and Ahasuerus had himself authorised Haman’s decree without knowing what it meant for her people. A Persian king’s decree was irrevocable (Esther 8:8, Daniel 6:8), so Haman’s edict still stood, and the Jews’ safety rested on the second decree, which let them defend themselves (Esther 8:11), and on the king’s continued favour. Now he is prepared to grant whatever is needed to make them fully secure and to uphold his own honour.

Esther answers with the same courtesy she has always shown the king: “If it please the king.” The word under “please” is ṭôwb, good, so she asks for what is good in his sight. Even with all his favour behind her, she frames her request within his authority.

She asks “to do to morrow also according unto this day’s decree.” The word for decree, dâth, is of uncertain and perhaps foreign origin and means a royal edict or statute, a binding law carrying the full weight of the throne. “This day’s decree” is the counter-decree the king had sent out in Esther 8:11–13, which gave the Jews the right to defend themselves. By asking for it to cover one more day, Esther makes sure that what the Jews of Shushan do on the fourteenth is lawful self-defence under the king’s own sanction, with nothing in it of rebellion.

Esther’s reason is left unstated. Either the danger in Shushan was especially concentrated, with enemies still at large in the capital, or she wanted to be sure that every enemy left in the city was dealt with, so that no new plot or reprisal could rise there. On either reading her aim is the lasting safety of her people at the heart of the empire. The extra day is for Shushan alone.

“And the king commanded it so to be done.” The verb behind “commanded” is ʼâmar, the ordinary word for saying, and for a melek, a king with the power of Ahasuerus, to say a thing was to command it. He answers without debate or delay. The same king had once handed Haman his signet ring and let the decree against the Jews go out (Esther 3:11), and now he acts just as readily for them.

His promise in verse 12 is kept in the same words. “It shall be done” and “commanded it so to be done” both use ʻâsâh, to do or make, and “granted” in verses 12 and 13 and “given” here are all nâthan, to give. “The decree was given at Shushan” makes Esther’s request a formal decree, the same word dâth as in verse 13, proclaimed publicly in the capital, so the hanging was carried out under law. “And they hanged Haman’s ten sons” closes the matter, and the ruin Haman planned for others has fallen on his own house.

On the fourteenth of Adar the Jews of Shushan “gathered themselves together” again. The verb qâhal means to call together or assemble, so this was an organised, united defence. Adar, ʼĂdâr, is the twelfth month of the Hebrew year, and the word “also” ties this day to the day before. They “slew three hundred men”, and the verb is hârag again, as in verse 12. Three hundred more shows that a real threat still remained in the capital after the first day.

These two days in Shushan, with the one day in the provinces, lie behind the feast of Purim, the lasting memorial of this deliverance (Esther 9:20–22). The whole of Esther 9 moves from the fighting to that feast.

The note that the Jews took no spoil comes back in verses 10, 15 and 16. The word for prey, bizzâh, is booty or spoil, the goods and wealth of a defeated enemy. The verb under “laid” is shâlach, to send, so the Hebrew says they did not send out their hand on it. Yâd, hand, stands here for taking possession. Elsewhere the same word, with a preposition, means “by the hand of” anyone through whom something is done.

Verse 16 turns from the capital to “the other Jews that were in the king’s provinces”. A province, mᵉdîynâh, is properly a jurisdiction, a district under a ruler, and the king’s provinces stretched “from India even unto Ethiopia” (Esther 8:9). These communities had one day of fighting, the thirteenth of Adar, the same day as the first day in Shushan.

They “gathered themselves together”, qâhal again, as the Jews of Shushan did, so the same united action was taken across the whole empire. They “stood for their lives”. The verb ʻâmad is to stand, and nephesh is a living, breathing being, a life. They faced their attackers together, with courage, because their survival was at stake. Nehemiah’s charge to fight for your brothers (Nehemiah 4:14) called for the same courage in another hour of danger.

“And had rest from their enemies.” The word for rest, nûwach, means quiet or rest. To have rest from enemies is to live in peace and security once the threat is gone, and in Scripture it is often a blessing from God. The day appointed for their destruction ended in their safety. Both words for the other side carry hatred. “Enemies” is ʼôyêb, one who hates, an adversary, and “foes” is sânêʼ, from the verb to hate. These were people who had set themselves against the Jews to destroy them.

They “slew of their foes seventy and five thousand”. The châmêsh in that number means five and nothing more. The total shows how wide and how deep the hatred against the Jews ran across the empire, and how complete their deliverance was. And again, “they laid not their hands on the prey”.

God is never named in the book of Esther, yet these verses show him keeping his people. A decree of death against every Jew in the empire ends with Haman’s house fallen, the Jews secure, and a feast of joy. God works here through a pagan king, a royal court and the courage of Esther and Mordecai, and through them he keeps covenant with his people in exile. Long before, he had promised through Moses to lay curses on the enemies of his people (Deuteronomy 30:7) and to give them victory over those who rose against them (Deuteronomy 28:7). Proverbs says the righteous are delivered out of trouble (Proverbs 11:8), and Paul writes that a man reaps what he sows (Galatians 6:7). Psalm 124 is the song of a people who know where they would be if the LORD had been absent from their side (Psalm 124).

The book’s silence about God’s name only makes his rule clearer. “The LORD reigneth” (Psalm 93:1) over Persian courts and royal decrees as much as over the temple, and he works all things together for good for those who love him (Romans 8:28).

Esther pleaded with the king at great risk to herself and turned aside a decree of death against her people. Christ, our High Priest, lives always to plead for those who come to God through him (Hebrews 7:25), and he stands between us and the death that sin brings. The king’s “what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee” is a faint picture of the access we have to God through his Son, who promises that whatever we ask in his name he will do (John 14:13).

The tree on which Haman’s sons were hung was a place of shame and curse. Christ bore the curse of our sin on a tree, and there he “spoiled principalities and powers” and “made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:14–15). Through death he destroyed the devil, who had the power of death, and set free those who all their lives were slaves to the fear of death (Hebrews 2:14–15). Lifted up on the cross, he draws all people to himself (John 12:31–32). God has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his Son (Colossians 1:13), and Christ will reign until every enemy is under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25). In him we are “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37).

The Jews’ clean hands also point to him. Christ’s kingdom is “not of this world” (John 18:36), and he came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45), seeking no spoil for himself. The rest the Jews had from their enemies points to the rest he gives to all who are weary and burdened and come to him (Matthew 11:28). Esther’s deliverance was for one people at one time. The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and his victory is for ever.

These verses show a God who keeps his people when the law of the land is set against them. He turns the plans of those who hate them back on their own heads, and he brings a day meant for death to an end in rest. He works through ordinary means, a king’s favour, a queen’s careful words and a people standing together, and his hand is there even where his name goes unspoken. The Jews’ refusal of the plunder shows that God’s people may defend their lives and still keep their hands clean. And the deliverance in Shushan and the provinces is a small picture of the one God has given in Christ, whose victory over every enemy is complete and whose rest is offered to all who come.