Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Lot and the Decree
Esther 3:7-15
7 In the first month, which is the month Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Ahasuerus, they cast Pur, that is, the lot, before Haman from day to day, and from month to month, and chose the twelfth month, which is the month Adar. · WEB
A date for genocide is chosen by casting lots, and the chapter ends with two men drinking while a city cannot understand what it has just read.
The method for setting the date is chance: they cast Pur, that is, the lot. The book pauses to gloss the foreign word, which is how it will explain the festival's name at the end Esther 9:26. A superstitious procedure selects the twelfth month — and the casting happens in the first, so the lot yields eleven months of delay that Haman did not intend and the Jews will need.
Haman's speech to the king is a study in how such things are sold. He never names the people. They are a certain people, described by three facts: scattered, differently governed, and — the accusation that matters — they don't keep the king's laws. Then the argument from the treasury: it is not for the king's profit.
And he offers to pay. Ten thousand talents of silver, an enormous sum, into the king's treasuries Esther 3:9.
The king's reply in verse 11 is the most damning sentence about him in the book. He gives away the silver and the people also, to do with them as it seems good to you — and he has still not asked who they are.
The decree in verse 13 is quoted in full and spares nothing: to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, and to take their goods. That last clause will matter at the end, when the Jews decline to do the same Esther 9:10.
Then verse 15, and the two halves of it are the whole moral of the chapter: the king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city of Susa was perplexed.
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