Page 244 - Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew

223
CHAPTER 16 SPECIAL LETTERS IN THE BIBLE
CHAPTER 16 SPECIAL LETTERS IN THE BIBLE 223
the son of Hammedata, the enemy of the Jews, they slew; but they did not lay
their hands on the plunder” (Esther 9:10). The king then reassures Esther, the
queen: “And the king said to Esther the queen, The Jews have slain and destroyed

five hundred men in Shushan the capital, and also the ten sons of Haman … now

what is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee …” (Esther 9:12).
Esther’s answer starts the bizarre coincidence. What does she ask the king to

do? The answer is given in the next verse: “Then Esther said, If it please the king,

let it be granted to the Jews who are in Shushan to do tomorrow also according to
’
this day’s decree, and let Haman s ten sons be hanged upon the gallows. And the
king commanded it so to be done: and the decree was given at Shushan; and they
hanged Haman’s ten sons” (Esther 9:13–14).
The biblical narrator was very explicit to notify us that Esther knows that

Haman s sons were already dead. So what is the sense in asking the king, in reply,
’
to hang them on a tree?

Rashi (1040–1105), the most prominent Jewish interpreter of the Bible, is
’
aware of the difficulty, and he is very succinct in explaining the hanging of Haman s

sons: “those that were killed.” Other interpreters are mute about it, though the
Malbim (1809–79) explains that the objective of “hanging the dead” was to

intimidate the enemies of the Jews who had thought that the “Jews Annihilation
Decree” was still valid.
We may consider another perspective, also based upon well-established Jewish
tradition. We have alluded elsewhere (chapter 20) to the fact that in the book
of Esther, the name of the Divine is not mentioned. It is therefore traditionally

assumed that when the king’s name is explicitly mentioned—namely the king
“which reigned from India even unto Ethiopia, over an hundred and seven and
twenty provinces” (Esther 1:1), this implies that Ahasuerus is intended. Elsewhere,

when only the word “king” appears, reference is to the King of Kings (for exam-
ple, consider Esther Rabbah 3:10). Thus, the king’s decree to hang Haman s sons
’
(giving an impression of a second execution) is in fact a decree from the Divine.
Furthermore, Jewish scholars lay a rule regarding the appearance in biblical text of
the word “tomorrow” (a rule not relating explicitly to Esther): “There is tomorrow
now and there is tomorrow after some time” (Midrash Tanchuma , Parashat BA,
13). Thus, when Esther requests of the Divine to hang Haman’s sons “tomorrow”
(Esther 9:13), this can be in the future and not necessarily the next day.
Hanging of Haman’s sons may be interpreted, in the framework of the coin-

cidence that we expound here, as a decree from God (Esther 9:14, where only
“king” is referenced), and it may be sometime in the future, consistent with how
tomorrow is sometimes used in the Bible.
Who might these ten men, to be hanged on the tree some time in the future,
be—and why is this important?