Haman and Mordecai, Not So Opposite

This post could offend the Jews that I know and respect, but I hope it doesn’t. I do not wish to steal any good thing from the Jewish people. I hope they, and others, can read the deeper message. Jews delight in the story of Esther celebrated each year at Purim. They have made it fun for their kids to delight in the name of Esther and to despise the name of Haman. I would too; he was a monster who sought to annihilate them all. It’s understandable that Esther is the symbol of nationalistic pride and their power to prevail. And it is on just that point that Haman and Mordecai may yet have a message for them… and for everyone else. So please read this to the end.

The Book of Esther is an enigma. Few stories can match its tight plotline and split-second timing. It tells an important story with precision, paradox, and punch. The amazing turns of events could only be the work of God. He hovers in the background through the rapid-fire twists and turns. Yet, He is never mentioned. Not once. You may already know that Esther is the only book of the Bible that does not contain the name of God. But it’s weirder than that. Consider this: Religious thought is humanity’s effort to make sense of a complex and ironic world. The human mind is naturally drawn upward in times of grave threat. So as the Jew’s death decree goes out to the known world, the Jews pull out all the stops! Throughout the Hebrew settlements everyone fasts and… There it is. No mention of prayer, either.

The writer of Esther didn’t just fail to mention God, he or she seems to have excised any reference to requesting His help or acknowledging His deliverance. Fasting, in the Book of Esther, is not for the purpose of petitioning God, but it does seem to be an attempt to find remedy for the extreme danger they faced. And in the end they do make it through. Lesson: the Jews live a charmed life. The absence of the name and practice of God allows all Jews, from ultra-conservatives to merely cultural Jews, to celebrate a “Yea! We win!” moment. They need some of those. I’m not trying to take that away, but now let’s look at a dark and prophetic theme.

Haman is a proud man, whatever “proud” means. Like many psychological terms, pride is a complex thing. Haman’s pride, it becomes clear, is not simple. It would be more accurately described as a desperate wish to prove himself in the eyes of others, over and over and over. There is no honor great enough to satisfy Haman’s thirst for acclaim. He is desperate to make sure that people see his greatness; and he wants to see people seeing that. He is an approval addict. In the beginning of the third chapter, King Xerxes makes Haman the number one leader under the king. Haman is the most honored of the noblemen. You can’t go any higher without taking the place of the king, and in a story without God the king becomes a type for God.

Rather than being satisfied with nearly limitless power, Haman struts around looking for any who might not notice his exalted status. Hence, we say that he was proud. Haman finds a major irritant in Mordecai, the Jew, who will not bow to Haman. Haman could have decided to ignore this grumpy man at the gate, but it so eats at Haman’s insecurities that he plans the destruction of Mordecai and the genocide of his entire race! Haman wants to be sure there will be no refusal on the part of anyone to notice Haman’s glory. Haman probably did not feel proud; he felt threatened. This ultimate, over-the-top, murderous bully, was on the defense. He was defending and protecting his desperate, insatiable longing to be admired.

So Haman’s first fatal error was to take such drastic offense at Mordecai’s refusal to honor him. His second error was his outrageous genocidal response. His third error—the one that really moves the story along—is his designing his own “awards ceremony.” Believing there could be no other man the king would wish to honor, Haman describes exactly the excess to which he wanted the king to go in honoring Haman. He will be given all the king’s stuff, even the king’s clothing, and paraded around the capitol like a king in the king’s name. From that position all Haman would have to do to fulfill his lust for ascendancy would be to remove the king (who is like God in this story.)

Of course, the delicious twist is that the king doesn’t have Haman in mind, but Mordecai. And what a perfectly delivered punch line! After Haman makes the super-best “trophy” package of kingly honor, the king says, “Go at once. Get the robe and the horse and do just as you have suggested for… Mordecai… the Jew.” It must have made Haman’s head spin! A sickening slap of reality on a face formerly flushed with fantasies of favor. How innocently the king delivers this most painful and appropriate retribution.

So Haman’s lust for honor results in precisely the most dishonoring thing he could have designed: Mordecia, the most despised, for a day appearing as higher than Haman. Here’s where the tide really turns. Haman is blind to his true status. His desperate need for acclaim keeps him from seeing the permanence of his position in world superpower Persia. Mordecai is on a one-day pony ride and tomorrow will have nothing again. But Haman, tormented by his own demon, can’t see reality. He can’t let this go, so he sobs out his story to his wife and his advisors. From each he hears what had already been ricocheting through his brain: the death sentence. Already, Mordecai’s little flash of a party had thrown Haman into an inner tailspin of despair, but now the people closest to Haman say, “Because Haman is a Jew and you’ve treated him badly, you’re toast!”

This statement should cause the Jews, and the rest of us, to tremble rather than celebrate. Who really said Haman would die because Mordecai was a Jew? These proud Persians who owned the world including the lowly Jews? Would Persians have seen their captives as somehow magically charmed? Would Haman’s wife and advisors really have said that? Or is a nationalistic writer simply saying “Nobody messes with the Jews and gets away with it!” Or… is it God Himself inspiring the faithful recording of a perfect parable? I vote for the parable.

Haman owes the king nothing, he thinks, even though everything he has is from the king. In a parallel, the Jews very lives depended on the One they didn’t name, didn’t seek, and didn’t thank. Haman passes a tipping point and from that time on there is much bad news. The Jews, many years later, displayed the same arrogance under Rome, despising their invaders, trampling their own poor, yet negotiating for all the power and status they could get. They, too, pass a tipping point.

Where was Mordecai in the time of Herod’s great restoration of the Jewish temple? Jesus pointed him out: Mordecai was, and is, where he has always been… in “the least of these.” There are always people to despise, people to make us feel better about our lot in life. The Jews were treating their least the same way Haman had treated his. Which is the same way we treat ours. That’s why this story is not only prophetic for the Jews, but for all of us who feel we deserve something more, and that we can get it through the abuse of someone less powerful. And the Jews traveled the rest of Haman’s road: After a time of arrogance and crafty negotiation, their nation was totally demolished, “not one stone left upon another.”

But the Jewish similarity to Haman was actually recorded way back in Esther. Not satisfied with the right to defend themselves they sought, and were granted, the same heartless crime against the Persians. Why? Because all the Persians had committed a massacre against them? No. Because one man, Haman, had threatened their existence just as one man, Mordecai, had threatened Haman’s political life. The parallels are too tight to miss.

Though nearly exterminated, there are still Jews today, and they have been rebuilding their nation for the past 60 years. Have they learned anything about pride going before destruction? Have they learned that no one can afford to despise another? Have they learned that all people are capable of bloodthirsty aggression? That all people condemn aggression in others and justify it in themselves? If they have learned these things, so clearly taught in the enigmatic Book of Esther, then they still have a vital lesson to teach many, many Christians. They have a lesson to teach many, many Arabs. They have a lesson for all the people of the world.