Expositor's Bible: Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther Part 20

Mordecai's discovery of the conspirators who would have a.s.sa.s.sinated Ahasuerus gives him a claim on the king's generosity, and so prepares the way, not only for his escape from the clutches of Haman, but also for his triumph over his enemy. And this is brought about--as we should say--"by accident." If Xerxes had not had a sleepless night just at the right time, if the part of his state records selected for reading to him in his wakefulness had not been just that which told the story of Mordecai's great service, the occasion for the turn in the tide of the fortune of the Jews would not have arisen. But all was so fitted together as to lead step by step on to the victorious conclusion. No Jew could have penned such a story as this without having intended his co-religionists to recognise the unseen presence of an over-ruling Providence throughout the whole course of events.

[260] Esther iv. 14.

[261] _Ibid._

But the gravest charge has yet to be considered. It is urged against the Book of Esther that the moral tone of it is unworthy of Scripture.

It is dedicated to nothing higher than the exaltation of the Jews.

Other books of the Bible reveal G.o.d as the Supreme, and the Jews as His servants, often His unworthy and unfaithful servants. This book sets the Jews in the first place; and Providence, even if tacitly recognised, is quite subservient to their welfare. Israel does not here appear as living for the glory of G.o.d, but all history works for the glory of Israel. In accordance with the spirit of the story, everything that opposes the Jews is condemned, everything that favours them is honoured. Worst of all, this practical deification of Israel permits a tone of heartless cruelty. The doctrine of separatism is monstrously exaggerated. The Jews are seen to be surrounded by their "enemies." Haman, the chief of them, is not only punished as he richly deserves to be punished, but he is made the recipient of unrestrained scorn and rage, and his sons are impaled on their father's huge stake.

The Jews defend themselves from threatened ma.s.sacre by a legalised slaughter of their "enemies." We cannot imagine a scene more foreign to the patience and gentleness inculcated by our Lord. Yet we must remember that the quarrel did not begin with the Jews; or if we must see the origin of it in the pride of a Jew, we must recollect that his offence was slight and only the act of one man. As far as the narrative shows, the Jews were engaged in their peaceable occupations when they were threatened with extinction by a violent outburst of the mad _Judenhetze_ that has pursued this unhappy people through all the centuries of history. In the first instance, their act of vengeance was a measure of self-defence. If they fell upon their enemies with fierce anger, it was after an order of extermination had driven them to bay. If they indulged in a wholesale bloodshed, not even sparing women or children, exactly the same doom had been hanging over their own heads, and their own wives and children had been included in its ferocious sentence. This fact does not excuse the savagery of the action of the Jews; but it amply accounts for their conduct. They were wild with terror, and they defended their homes with the fury of madmen. Their action did not go beyond the prayer of the Psalmist who wrote, in trim metrical order, concerning the hated Babylon--

"Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones Against the rock."[262]

[262] Psalm cx.x.xvii. 9.

It is more difficult to account for the responsible part taken by Mordecai and Esther in begging permission for this awful ma.s.sacre. The last pages of the Book of Esther reek with blood. A whole empire is converted into shambles for human slaughter. We turn with loathing from this gigantic horror, glad to take refuge in the hope that the author has dipped his brush in darker colours than the real events would warrant. Nevertheless such a ma.s.sacre as this is unhappily not at all beyond the known facts of history on other occasions--not in its extent; the means by which it is here carried out are doubtless exceptional. Xerxes himself was so heartless and so capricious that any act of folly or wickedness could be credited of him.

After all that can be said for it, clearly this Book of Esther cannot claim the veneration that we attach to the more choice utterances of Old Testament literature. It never lifts us with the inspiration of prophecy; it never commands the reverence which we feel in studying the historical books. Yet we must not therefore a.s.sume that it has not its use. It ill.u.s.trates an important phase in the development of Jewish life and thought. It also introduces us to characters and incidents that reveal human nature in very various lights. To contemplate such a revelation should not be without profit. After the Bible, what book should we regard as, on the whole, most serviceable for our enlightenment and nurture? Since next to the knowledge of G.o.d the knowledge of man is most important, might we not a.s.sign this second place of honour to the works of Shakespeare rather than to any theological treatise? And if so may we not be grateful that something after the order of a Shakespearian revelation of man is contained even in one book of the Bible?

It may be best to treat a book of this character in a different manner from the weighty historical work that precedes it, and, instead of expounding its chapters seriatim, to gather up its lessons in a series of brief character studies.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

_AHASUERUS AND VASHTI._

ESTHER i.

The character of Ahasuerus ill.u.s.trates the Nemesis of absolutism, by showing how unlimited power is crushed and dissolved beneath the weight of its own immensity. The very vastness of his domains overwhelms the despot. While he thinks himself free to disport according to his will, he is in reality the slave of his own machinery of government. He is so entirely dependent for information on subordinates, who can deceive him to suit their own private ends, that he often becomes a mere puppet of the political wire-pullers. In the fury of his pa.s.sion he issues his terrible mandates, with the confidence of a master whose slightest whim is a law to the nations, and yet that very pa.s.sion has been cleverly worked up by some of his servants, who are laughing in their sleeves at the simplicity of their dupe, even while they are fawning on him with obsequious flattery. In the story of Esther Ahasuerus is turned about hither and thither by his courtiers, according as one or another is clever enough to obtain a temporary hearing. In the opening scene he is the victim of a harem plot which deprives him of his favourite consort. Subsequently Haman poisons his mind with calumnies about a loyal, industrious section of his subjects. He is only undeceived by another movement in the harem.

Even the jealously guarded women of the royal household know more of the actual state of affairs in the outside world than the bewildered monarch. The king is so high above his realm that he cannot see what is going on in it; and all that he can learn about it pa.s.ses through such a variety of intermediary agents that it is coloured and distorted in the process.

But this is not all. The man who is exalted to the pedestal of a G.o.d is made dizzy by his own alt.i.tude. Absolutism drove the Roman Emperor Caligula mad; it punished the Xerxes of Herodotus with childishness.

The silly monarch who would decorate a tree with the jewellery of a prince in reward for its fruitfulness, and flog and chain the h.e.l.lespont as a punishment for its tempestuousness, is not fit to be let out of the nursery. Such conduct as his discovers an inept.i.tude that is next door to idiocy. When the same man appears on the pages of Scripture under the name of Ahasuerus, his weakness is despicable. The most keen-sighted ruler of millions is liable to be misinformed; the strongest administrator of a gigantic empire is compelled to move with difficulty in the midst of the elaborate organisation of his government. But Ahasuerus is neither keen-sighted nor strong. He is a victim of the last court intrigue, a believer in the idlest gossip; and he is worse, for even on the suppositions presented to him he behaves with folly and senseless fury. His conduct to Vashti is first insulting and then ungrateful; for fidelity to her worthless husband would prompt her to decline to risk herself among a crew of drunken revellers. His consent to the diabolical proposal of his grand vizier for a ma.s.sacre, without an atom of proof that the victims are guilty, exhibits a hopeless state of mental feebleness. His equal readiness to transfer the mandate of wholesale murder to persons described indefinitely as the "enemies" of these people shows how completely he is twisted about by the latest breeze. As the palace plots develop we see this great king in all his pride and majesty tossed to and fro like a shuttle-c.o.c.k. And yet he can sting. It is a dangerous game for the players, and the object of it is to get the deadly venom of the royal rage to light on the head of the opposite party. We could not have a more certain proof of the vanity of "ambition that o'erleaps itself" than this conversion of immeasurable power into helpless weakness on the part of the Persian sovereign.

We naturally start with this glaring exhibition of the irony of fate in our study of Ahasuerus, because it is the most p.r.o.nounced factor in his character and career. There are other elements of the picture, however, which are not, like this, confined to the abnormal experience of solitary rulers. Next to the revenge of absolutism on its possessor, the more vulgar effects of extravagant luxury and self-indulgence are to be seen in the degraded Persian court life.

Very likely the writer of our Book of Esther introduces these matters with the primary object of enhancing the significance of his main theme by making us feel how great a danger the Jews were in, and how magnificent a triumph was won for them by the heroic Jewess of the harem. But the scene that he thus brings before us throws light on the situation all round. Xerxes' idea of unbridled power is that it admits of unlimited pleasure. Our author's picture of the splendid palace, with its richly coloured awnings stretched across from marble pillars to silver rods over the tesselated pavement, where the most exalted guests recline in the shade on gold and silver seats, while they feast hugely and drink heavily day after day, shows us how the provinces were being drained to enrich the court, and how the royal treasury was being lavished on idle festivity. That was bad enough, but its effects were worse. The law was licence. "The drinking was according to the law," and this law was that there should be no limit to it, everybody taking just as much wine as he pleased. Naturally such a rule ostentatiously paraded before a dissolute company led to a scene of downright b.e.s.t.i.a.l debauchery. According to Herodotus, the Persians were addicted to drunkenness, and the incident described in the first chapter of Esther is quite in accordance with the Greek historian's account of the followers of Xerxes.

The worst effect of this vice of drunkenness is its degrading influence on the conduct and character of men. It robs its victims of self-respect and manliness, and sends them to wallow in the mire with swinish obscenity. What they would not dream of stooping to in their sober moments, they revel in with shameless ostentation when their brains are clouded with intoxicating drink. Husbands, who are gentle and considerate at other times, are then transformed into brutes, who can take pleasure in trampling on their wives. It is no excuse to plead that the drunkard is a madman unaccountable for his actions; he is accountable for having put himself in his degraded condition. If he is temporarily insane, he has poisoned his own intellect by swallowing a noxious drug with his eyes open. He is responsible for that action, and therefore he must be held to be responsible for its consequences.

If he had given due consideration to his conduct, he might have foreseen whither it was tending. The man who has been foolish enough to launch his boat on the rapids cannot divert its course when he is startled by the thunder of the falls he is approaching; but he should have thought of that before leaving the safety of the sh.o.r.e.

The immediate consequence of the disgusting degradation of drunkenness, in the case of Ahasuerus, is that the monarch grossly insults his queen. A moment's consideration would have suggested the danger as well as the scandal of his behaviour. But in his heedless folly the debauchee hurls himself over the precipice, from the height of his royal dignity down to the very pit of ignominy, and then he is only enraged that Vashti refuses to be dragged down with him. It is a revolting scene, and one to show how the awful vice of drunkenness levels all distinctions; here it outrages the most sacred rules of Oriental etiquette. The seclusion of the harem is to be violated for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the dissolute king's boon companions.

In the story of Esther poor Vashti's fall is only introduced in order to make way for her Hebrew rival. But after ages have naturally sided with the wronged queen. Was it true modesty that prompted her daring refusal, or the lawful pride of womanhood? If so, all women should honour Vashti as the vindicator of their dues. Whatever "woman's rights" may be maintained in the field of politics, the very existence of the home, the basis of society itself, depends on those more profound and inalienable rights that touch the character of pure womanliness. The first of a woman's rights is the right to her own person. But this right is ignored in Oriental civilisation. The sweet English word "home" is unknown in the court of such a king as Ahasuerus. To think of it in this connection is as incongruous as to imagine a daisy springing up through the boards of a dancing saloon.

The unhappy Vashti had never known this choicest of words; but she may have had a due conception of a woman's true dignity, as far as the perverted ideas of the East permitted. And yet even here a painful suspicion obtrudes itself on our notice. Vashti had been feasting with the women of the harem when she received the brutal mandate from her lord. Had she too lost her balance of judgment under the bewitching influence of the wine-cup? Was she rendered reckless by the excitement of her festivities? Was her refusal the result of the fact.i.tious courage that springs from an unwholesome excitement or an equally effective mental stupor? Since one of the commonest results of intoxication is a quarrelsomeness of temper, it must be admitted that Vashti's flat refusal to obey may have some connection with her previous festivities. In that case, of course, something must be detracted from her glory as the martyr of womanliness. A horrible picture is this--a drunken king quarrelling with his drunken queen; these two people, set in the highest places in their vast realm, descending from the very pinnacle of greatness to grovel in debased intemperance! It would not be fair to the poor, wronged queen to a.s.sert so much without any clear evidence in support of the darker view of her conduct. Still it must be admitted that it is difficult for any of the members of a dissolute society to keep their garments clean. Unhappily it is only too frequently the case that, even in a Christian land, womanhood is degraded by becoming the victim of intemperance. No sight on earth is more sickening. A woman may be loaded with insults, and yet she may keep her soul white as the soul of St. Agnes. It is not an outrage on her dignity, offered by the drunken king to his queen, that really marks her degradation. To all fair judgments, that only degrades the brute who offers it; but the white lily is bruised and trampled in the dust when she who wears it herself consents to fling it away.

The action of Ahasuerus on receipt of his queen's refusal reveals another trait in his weak character. Jealous eyes--always watching the favourite of the harem--discover an opportunity for a gleeful triumph.

The advisers of the king are cunning enough to set the action of Vashti in the light of a public example. If a woman in so exalted a position is permitted to disobey her husband with impunity, other wives will appeal to her case and break out of bounds. It is a mean plea, the plea of weakness on the part of the speaker, Memucan, the last of the seven princes. Is this man only finding an excuse for the king? or may it be supposed that his thoughts are travelling away to a shrew in his own home? The strange thing is that the king is not content wreaking his vengeance on the proud Vashti. He is persuaded to utilise the occasion of her act of insubordination in order to issue a decree commanding the subjection of all wives to their husbands. The queen's conduct is treated as an instance of a growing spirit of independence on the part of the women of Persia, which must be crushed forthwith. One would think that the women were slaves, and that the princes were acting like the Romans when they issued repressive measures from dread of a "Servile War."

If such a law as this had ever been pa.s.sed, we might well understand the complaint of those who say it is unjust that the function of legislation should be monopolised by one s.e.x. Even in the West, where women are comparatively free and are supposed to be treated on an equality with men, wrong is often done because the laws which concern them more especially are all made by men. In the East, where they are regarded as property, like their husbands' camels and oxen, cruel injustice is inevitable. But this injustice cannot go unpunished. It must react on its perpetrators, blunting their finer feelings, lowering their better nature, robbing them of those sacred confidences of husband and wife which never spring up on the territory of the slave-driver.

But we have only to consider the domestic edict of Ahasuerus to see its frothy vanity. When it was issued it must have struck everybody who had the faintest sense of humour as simply ridiculous. It is not by the rough instrumentality of the law that difficult questions of the relations between the s.e.xes can be adjusted. The law can see that a formal contract is not violated with impunity. The law can protect the individual parties to the contract from the most brutal forms of cruelty--though even this is very difficult between husband and wife.

But the law cannot secure real justice in the home. This must be left to the working of principles of righteousness and to the mutual considerateness of those who are concerned. Where these elements are wanting, no legislation on matrimony can restore the peace of a shattered home.

The order of Ahasuerus, however, was too indefinite to have very serious results. The tyrannical husband would not have waited for any such excuse as it might afford him for exacting obedience from his oppressed household drudge. The strong-minded woman would mock at the king's order, and have her own way as before who could hinder her?

Certainly not her husband. The yoke of years of meek submission was not to be broken in a day by a royal proclamation. But wherever the true idea of marriage was realised--and we must have sufficient faith in human nature to be a.s.sured that this was sometimes the case even in the realm of Xerxes--the husband and wife who knew themselves to be one, united by the closest ties of love and sympathy and mutual confidence, would laugh in their happiness and perhaps spare a thought of pity for the poor, silly king who was advertising his domestic troubles to the world, and thereby exhibiting his shallow notions of wedded life--blind, absolutely blind, to the sweet secret that was heaven to them.

We may be sure that the singular edict remained a dead letter. But the king would be master in his own palace. So Vashti fell. We hear no more of her but we can guess too well what her most probable fate must have been.[263] The gates of death are never difficult to find in an Oriental palace; there are always jealous rivals eager to triumph over the fall of a royal favourite. Still Ahasuerus had been really fond of the queen who paid so dearly for her one act of independence.

Repenting of his drunken rage, the king let his thoughts revert to his former favourite, a most dangerous thing for those who had hastened her removal. The easiest escape for them was to play on his coa.r.s.e nature by introducing to his notice a bevy of girls from whom he might select a new favourite. This was by no means a dignified proceeding for Esther, the maiden to whom the first prize in the exhibition of beauty was awarded by the royal fancier. But it gave her the place of power from which to help her people in their hour of desperate need.

And here we come to some redeeming features in the character of the king. He is not lacking in generosity; and he owns to a certain sense of justice. In the crowd of royal cares and pleasures, he has forgotten how an obscure Jew saved his life by revealing one of the many plots that make the pleasures of a despot as hollow a mockery as the feast of Damocles. On the chance discovery of his negligence, Ahasuerus hastens to atone for it with ostentatious generosity. Again, no sooner does he find that he has been duped by Haman into an act of cruel injustice than he tries to counteract the mischief by an equally savage measure of retaliation. A strange way of administering justice!

Yet it must be admitted that in this the capricious, blundering king means honestly. The bitter irony of it all is that so awful a power of life and death should be lodged in the hands of one who is so totally incapacitated for a wise use of it.

[263] On the supposition that the writer is not here recording historical facts in the life of Amestris, the real queen of Xerxes, who we know was not murdered.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

_HAMAN._

ESTHER iii. 1-6; v. 9-14; vii. 5-10.

Haman is the Judas of Israel. Not that his conduct or his place in history would bring him into comparison with the traitor apostle, for he was an open foe and a foreigner. But he is treated by popular Judaism as the Arch-Enemy, just as Judas is treated by popular Christianity. Like Judas, he has a.s.signed to him a solitary pre-eminence in wickedness, which is almost inhuman. As in the case of Judas, there is thought to be no call for charity or mercy in judging Haman. He shares with Judas the curse of Cain. Boundless execration is heaped on his head. Horror and hatred have almost transformed him into Satan. He is called The "Agagite," an obscure t.i.tle which is best explained as a later Jewish nickname derived from a reference to the king of Amalek who was hewn in pieces before the Lord. In the Septuagint he is surnamed "The Macedonian," because when that version was made the enemies of Israel were the representatives of the empire of Alexander and his successors. During the dramatic reading of the Book of Esther in a Jewish synagogue at the Feast of Purim, the congregation may be found taking the part of a chorus and exclaiming at every mention of the name of Haman, "May his name be blotted out,"

"Let the name of the unG.o.dly perish," while boys with mallets will pound stones and bits of wood on which the odious name is written.

This frantic extravagance would be unaccountable but for the fact that the people whose "badge is sufferance" has summed up under the name of the Persian official the malignity of their enemies in all ages. Very often this name has served to veil a dangerous reference to some contemporary foe, or to heighten the rage felt against an exceptionally odious person by its acc.u.mulation of traditional hatred, just as in England on the fifth of November the "Guy" may represent some unpopular person of the day.

When we turn from this unamiable indulgence of spiteful pa.s.sion to the story that lies behind it, we have enough that is odious without the conception of a sheer monster of wickedness, a very demon. Such a being would stand outside the range of human motives, and we could contemplate him with unconcern and detachment of mind, just as we contemplate the destructive forces of nature. There is a common temptation to clear ourselves of all semblance to the guilt of very bad people by making it out to be inhuman. It is more humiliating to discover that they act from quite human motives--nay, that those very motives may be detected, though with other bearings, even in our own conduct. For see what were the influences that stirred in the heart of Haman. He manifests by his behaviour the intimate connection between vanity and cruelty.

The first trait in his character to reveal itself is vanity, a most inordinate vanity. Haman is introduced at the moment when he has been exalted to the highest position under the king of Persia; he has just been made grand vizier. The tremendous honour turns his brain. In the consciousness of it he swells out with vanity. As a necessary consequence he is bitterly chagrined when a porter does not do homage to him as to the king. His elation is equally extravagant when he discovers that he is to be the only subject invited to meet Ahasuerus at Esther's banquet. When the king inquires how exceptional honour is to be shown to some one whose name is not yet revealed, this infatuated man jumps to the conclusion that it can be for n.o.body but himself. In all his behaviour we see that he is just possessed by an absorbing spirit of vanity.

Then at the first check he suffers an annoyance proportionate to the boundlessness of his previous elation. He cannot endure the sight of indifference or independence in the meanest subject. The slender fault of Mordecai is magnified into a capital offence. This again is so huge that it must be laid to the charge of the whole race to which the offender belongs. The rage which it excites in Haman is so violent that it will be satisfied with nothing short of a wholesale ma.s.sacre of men, women, and children. "Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth"--when it is fanned by the breath of vanity. The cruelty of the vain man is as limitless as his vanity.

Thus the story of Haman ill.u.s.trates the close juxtaposition of these two vices, vanity and cruelty; it helps us to see by a series of lurid pictures how fearfully provocative the one is of the other. As we follow the incidents, we can discover the links of connection between the cause and its dire effects.

In the first place, it is clear that vanity is a form of magnified egotism. The vain man thinks supremely of himself, not so much in the way of self-interest, but more especially for the sake of self-glorification. When he looks out on the world, it is always through the medium of his own vastly magnified shadow. Like the Brocken Ghost, this shadow becomes a haunting presence standing out before him in huge proportions. He has no other standard of measurement. Everything must be judged according as it is related to himself. The good is what gives him pleasure; evil is what is noxious to him. This self-centred att.i.tude, with the distortion of vision that it induces, has a double effect, as we may see in the case of Haman.

Egotism utilises the sufferings of others for its own ends. No doubt cruelty is often a consequence of sheer callousness. The man who has no perception of the pain he is causing or no sympathy with the sufferers will trample them under foot on the least provocation. He feels supremely indifferent to their agonies when they are writhing beneath him, and therefore he will never consider it inc.u.mbent on him to adjust his conduct with the least reference to the pain he gives.

That is an entirely irrelevant consideration. The least inconvenience to himself outweighs the greatest distress of other people, for the simple reason that that distress counts as nothing in his calculation of motives. In Haman's case, however, we do not meet with this att.i.tude of simple indifference. The grand vizier is irritated, and he vents his annoyance in a vast explosion of malignity that must take account of the agony it produces, for in that agony its own thirst for vengeance is to be slaked. But this only shows the predominant selfishness to be all the greater. It is so great that it reverses the engines that drive society along the line of mutual helpfulness, and thwarts and frustrates any amount of human life and happiness for the sole purpose of gratifying its own desires.

Then the selfishness of vanity promotes cruelty still further by another of its effects. It destroys the sense of proportion. Self is not only regarded as the centre of the universe; like the sun surrounded by the planets, it is taken to be the greatest object, and everything else is insignificant when compared to it. What is the slaughter of a few thousand Jews to so great a man as Haman, grand vizier of Persia? It is no more than the destruction of as many flies in a forest fire that the settler has kindled to clear his ground. The same self-magnification is visibly presented by the Egyptian bas-reliefs, on which the victorious Pharaohs appear as tremendous giants driving back hordes of enemies or dragging pigmy kings by their heads. It is but a step from this condition to insanity, which is the apotheosis of vanity. The chief characteristic of insanity is a diseased enlargement of self. If he is elated the madman regards himself as a person of supreme importance--as a prince, as a king, even as G.o.d. If he is depressed he thinks that he is the victim of exceptional malignity. In that case he is beset by watchers of evil intent; the world is conspiring against him; everything that happens is part of a plot to do him harm. Hence his suspiciousness; hence his homicidal proclivities. He is not so mad in his inferences and conclusions. These may be rational and just, on the ground of his premisses. It is in the fixed ideas of these premisses that the root of his insanity may be detected. His awful fate is a warning to all who venture to indulge in the vice of excessive egotism.

In the second place, vanity leads to cruelty through the entire dependence of the vain person on the good opinion of others; and this we may see clearly in the career of Haman. Vanity is differentiated from pride in one important particular--by its outward reference. The proud man is satisfied with himself; but the vain man is always looking outside himself with feverish eagerness to secure all the honours that the world can bestow upon him. Thus Mordecai may have been proud in his refusal to bow before the upstart premier: if so his pride would not need to court admiration; it would be self-contained and self-sufficient. But Haman was possessed by an insatiable thirst for homage. If a single obscure individual refused him this honour, a shadow rested on everything. He could not enjoy the queen's banquet for the slight offered him by the Jew at the palace gate, so that he exclaimed, "Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate."[264] A selfish man in this condition can have no rest if anything in the world outside him fails to minister to his honour. While a proud man in an exalted position scarcely deigns to notice the "dim common people," the vain man betrays his vulgarity by caring supremely for popular adulation.

Therefore while the haughty person can afford to pa.s.s over a slight with contempt, the vain creature who lives on the breath of applause is mortally offended by it and roused to avenge the insult with corresponding rage.

[264] Esther v. 13.