Esther 8: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

After Haman's death, King Ahasuerus gives Esther Haman's property and gives Mordecai the signet ring taken from Haman. Esther begs the king to undo Haman's written order against the Jews, and the king tells her and Mordecai to write whatever they choose in his name, since a sealed royal order cannot be canceled. Mordecai's letters go out to all 127 provinces, giving the Jews in every city the right to gather and defend their lives on the day Haman had set, the thirteenth of Adar. Mordecai leaves the palace in royal clothing, and the Jews celebrate, while many people of the land become Jews out of fear of them.

Claim by Claim

1. 8:1
   • On that day King Ahasuerus gave the house of Haman to Queen Esther.
   • Haman was the enemy of the Jews.
   • Mordecai came before the king.
   • Esther had told the king what Mordecai was to her.
2. 8:2
   • The king took off his signet ring.
   • The king had taken that ring back from Haman.
   • The king gave the ring to Mordecai.
   • Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman.
3. 8:3
   • Esther spoke again before the king.
   • Esther fell down at the king's feet.
   • Esther wept.
   • Esther pleaded with the king to put away the evil of Haman the Agagite.
   • Esther pleaded with the king to put away the plan Haman had devised against the Jews.
4. 8:4
   • The king held out the golden sceptre toward Esther.
   • Esther arose.
   • Esther stood before the king.
5. 8:5
   • Esther said, if it pleases the king.
   • Esther said, if she had found favor before him.
   • Esther said, if the matter seems right before the king.
   • Esther said, if she is pleasing in his eyes.
   • Esther asked that an order be written to reverse the letters.
   • The letters were the plan of Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite.
   • Haman wrote those letters to destroy the Jews.
   • The Jews to be destroyed were in all the king's provinces.
6. 8:6
   • Esther asked how she could bear to see the evil that would come upon her people.
   • Esther asked how she could bear to see the destruction of her kindred.
7. 8:7
   • King Ahasuerus spoke to Queen Esther and to Mordecai the Jew.
   • The king said he had given the house of Haman to Esther.
   • The king said they had hanged Haman on the gallows.
   • The king said Haman was hanged because he laid his hand on the Jews.
8. 8:8
   • The king told them to write concerning the Jews as they thought good.
   • They were to write in the king's name.
   • They were to seal it with the king's ring.
   • A writing written in the king's name and sealed with the king's ring cannot be reversed.
9. 8:9
   • The king's scribes were called at that time.
   • It was the third month, the month Sivan.
   • It was the twenty-third day of that month.
   • It was written according to all that Mordecai commanded.
   • The writing was addressed to the Jews.
   • The writing was addressed to the satraps, the governors, and the rulers of the provinces.
   • The provinces ran from India to Cush.
   • There were 127 provinces.
   • Each province was written to in its own script.
   • Each people was written to in its own language.
   • The Jews were written to in their own script and language.
10. 8:10
    • He wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus.
    • He sealed it with the king's ring.
    • He sent letters by couriers mounted on horses.
    • The couriers rode swift steeds used in the king's service.
    • The steeds were bred from the royal mares.
    • The terms for the animals ridden are obscure, and the King James renders them as mules, camels, and young dromedaries.
11. 8:11
    • The king granted the Jews in every city the right to assemble.
    • The king granted them the right to stand for their life.
    • The king granted them the right to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish all the armed force of any people or province that would assault them.
    • It is ambiguous whether the little ones and women belong to the assaulting force being destroyed or are themselves among those to be destroyed.
    • The king granted them the right to take the spoil of them as plunder.
12. 8:12
    • This was to happen on one day in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus.
    • That day was the thirteenth of the twelfth month.
    • The twelfth month is the month Adar.
13. 8:13
    • A copy of the writing was to be given as a law in every province.
    • The copy was published openly to all the peoples.
    • The purpose was that the Jews should be ready for that day.
    • The purpose was that the Jews should avenge themselves on their enemies.
14. 8:14
    • The couriers riding the swift royal steeds went out.
    • The couriers were hurried and pressed on by the king's command.
    • The decree was given in Shushan the palace.
15. 8:15
    • Mordecai went out from the presence of the king.
    • Mordecai wore royal apparel of blue and white.
    • Mordecai wore a great crown of gold.
    • Mordecai wore a robe of fine linen and purple.
    • The city of Shushan shouted and rejoiced.
16. 8:16
    • The Jews had light.
    • The Jews had gladness.
    • The Jews had joy.
    • The Jews had honor.
17. 8:17
    • In every province and every city where the king's command and decree came, the Jews had joy and gladness.
    • The Jews had feasting and a good day.
    • Many of the peoples of the land became Jews.
    • They became Jews because the fear of the Jews had fallen upon them.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

8:1

"The house of Haman" means his whole estate, land, buildings, household goods and servants. Under Persian practice the property of a man executed for treason was forfeited to the crown, so the king had it to give away. Earlier in the book Mordecai is Esther's older cousin, who had raised her after her parents died; the King James "what he was unto her" simply means how the two were related.

8:2

A signet ring carried the king's personal seal. Pressed into wet clay or wax on a document, it made the document legally the king's own word. Handing the ring over transferred that authority; Haman had held it, and Mordecai now takes his place as the king's chief minister.

8:3

"Agagite" is the label the book always attaches to Haman. Agag was a king of the Amalekites, a people remembered in Israel's older writings as its bitterest early enemy, so the title marks Haman as an ancestral enemy of the Jews rather than naming a place he came from.

8:4

Earlier in the book Esther explains the rule behind this gesture: anyone who came to the Persian king without being summoned could be put to death, unless the king extended his golden scepter toward them. Holding it out is the sign that she is accepted and may speak.

8:5

The "letters" are royal decrees, written orders sent out by courier to the provincial governments and read aloud publicly. Haman's decree, issued earlier in the book, ordered the killing of all Jews in the empire on a fixed day.

8:6

"Kindred" is an old word for your relatives, the family you belong to.

8:7

The King James "gallows" translates a Hebrew word meaning simply a tree, pole or wooden stake, and the execution described may have been hanging or impaling on such a pole; the text does not make the method clear. Earlier the pole is said to be fifty cubits, about seventy-five feet, high, tall enough to be seen across the city.

8:8

The point being made is a peculiarity of Persian law as the book presents it: a sealed royal decree could not be withdrawn, even by the king who issued it. So Esther's request in verse 5 to "cancel" Haman's letters cannot be granted directly. What the king offers instead is a second, equally unrepealable decree written to work against the first.

8:9

Sivan is the third month of the Jewish calendar, falling in May or June. Haman's decree had gone out on the thirteenth day of the first month, so about two months and ten days have passed. The "lieutenants" of the King James are satraps, the governors of the empire's largest administrative regions, each of which contained smaller provinces under their own governors and local officials. "Ethiopia" here translates Cush, the region along the Nile south of Egypt, in what is now Sudan and southern Egypt, not the modern country of Ethiopia. "From India to Cush" is a stock phrase for the full east-to-west span of the Persian empire. Each province receiving the order "in its own writing" reflects real Persian administrative practice: decrees were translated into the local languages and scripts of a very mixed empire.

8:10

"Posts" are couriers of the Persian royal relay service, which kept fresh mounts and riders stationed along the highways so a message could travel continuously. The list of animals in the King James ("mules, camels, and young dromedaries") reflects a genuinely obscure phrase in the Hebrew. The words are rare and their meaning uncertain; most modern translators take the phrase to describe fast horses from the royal studs rather than a string of different animals, but the older reading is not impossible.

8:11

"To stand for their life" means to defend themselves, to make a stand for their own survival. The grammar of the rest of the verse is genuinely ambiguous in Hebrew, and translators divide over it. "All the power of the people and province that would assault them, both little ones and women" can be read as permission to kill any attacking force together with the women and children of those attackers (which would mirror, word for word, the terms of Haman's own decree earlier in the book) or as describing the attacking force as one that would come against the Jews' own women and children. The text as it stands supports either reading. "To take the spoil of them for a prey" means to seize the goods of those they fought as plunder, the normal right of a victor in ancient warfare.

8:12

Adar is the twelfth and last month of the Jewish calendar, falling in February or March. The date was the one Haman's decree had already fixed, so both orders come into force on the same day, about nine months after this second decree is written, giving everyone long notice.

8:13

"Avenge themselves" translates a Hebrew verb covering both revenge and the exacting of legal redress; it can carry the sense of getting justice as well as getting even.

8:14

"Shushan the palace" is the fortified citadel of Susa, a walled royal quarter raised above the ordinary city, containing the palace and government offices. The book distinguishes it throughout from the lower city of Susa where most of the population lived.

8:15

Blue and white were the colors of the Persian royal house, and clothing in them was a mark of the king's favor, not a personal taste. Purple cloth was dyed with a costly extract from sea snails and was worn only by the very rich or by officials of high rank; fine linen was likewise a luxury fabric. The "great crown of gold" is not a king's diadem but a large ornamental gold headpiece of the kind a chief minister could wear.

8:16

"Light" here is a common Hebrew figure for relief, safety and wellbeing after a dark time, the opposite of the mourning and dread described earlier in the book, rather than physical light.

8:17

"A good day" translates a Hebrew phrase (yom tov) used for a festival or public holiday; it is still the ordinary Jewish term for a feast day. "Became Jews" renders a Hebrew verb that occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible, and its exact force is disputed. It may mean that these people formally converted and joined the Jewish community, or only that they publicly identified themselves as Jews, or aligned themselves with the Jews, without any change of religion. The following clause (that the fear of the Jews had fallen on them) gives the motive as dread of what was coming, but does not settle how far the change went.