Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Esther chapter 7 verses 1 through 10:
1So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 2On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, ‘What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.’ 3Then Queen Esther answered, ‘If I have won your favour, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me—that is my petition—and the lives of my people—that is my request. 4For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king.’* 5Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, ‘Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?’ 6Esther said, ‘A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!’ Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen. 7The king rose from the feast in wrath and went into the palace garden, but Haman stayed to beg his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that the king had determined to destroy him. 8When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman had thrown himself on the couch where Esther was reclining; and the king said, ‘Will he even assault the queen in my presence, in my own house?’ As the words left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. 9Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, ‘Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.’ And the king said, ‘Hang him on that.’ 10So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.
Finally now, the denouement.
Esther speaks. And the King, once enthralled with Haman, now has him hanged on the very gallows Haman himself had built to hang another.
And thus the measure Haman had given becomes the measure he now gets.
Lawfully speaking, it’s unclear from the text for what exactly Haman is condemned. All the actions he had carried out against Mordecai and the Jews were done with the King’s permission. So it is not for this that he should be executed; for to do such a thing also implicates the King. As for the King’s assault accusation against Haman, the Scripture is left to interpretation. We can see what the King thought he saw on the couch; or we can see it as Haman begging the Queen for pardon. Or, perhaps, we could see both.
In either case, it’s the King’s call; he sees villainy, though his ability to rightly discern the circumstances around him have already been significantly called into question by prior events in the royal house.
The plot settles; but there is still much left unknown and unresolved. There is salvation; that is sure. And there is justice; but we can’t say for sure the justice is divine.
We never can.
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