Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Opposite Happened
Esther 9:1-10
1 Now in the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of the month, when the king’s commandment and his decree came near to be put in execution, on the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to conquer them, (but it turned out that the opposite happened, that the Jews conquered those who hated them), · WEB
The day the enemies had chosen by lot arrives and inverts, and the chapter's first mention of plunder is a refusal.
The date is the one Haman's lot selected Esther 3:7, and verse 1 states the inversion in a parenthesis: on the day the enemies of the Jews hoped to conquer them, it turned out that the opposite happened. The book gives the reversal as a fact of the day rather than as an interpretation of it.
Verses 2 and 3 give two reasons nobody could withstand them, and both are about atmosphere rather than force. The fear of them had fallen on all the people, and the officials helped the Jews because the fear of Mordecai had fallen on them. The empire's administrators change sides on the strength of who now holds the ring.
Verse 4 states the trajectory plainly: the man Mordecai grew greater and greater — the exact opposite of Haman's inventory that availed him nothing Esther 5:13.
The fighting is reported in the book's flat register. Five hundred men in the citadel, and Haman's ten sons named one by one — the book spends a verse and a half listing them, which gives the deaths a weight a number alone would not carry.
And then verse 10, and its last clause is the one moral judgment the narrative makes: but they didn't lay their hand on the plunder.
The first decree had explicitly licensed taking Jewish goods Esther 3:13, and the second had permitted the same in return Esther 8:11. The permission was there and it was not used. The book will repeat this refusal twice more within six verses Esther 9:15 Esther 9:16, and the repetition is the point at which the story reaches back centuries — because Saul's failure against Agag's people was precisely that he spared the best of the sheep and the cattle 1 Samuel 15:9.
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