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N E B R A S K A S T A T E C A P I T O L The People and Power of the Palace · Reason, Treason, and Capital Crimes · Esther 7:1-­‐10 TO: NEBRASKA STATE SENATORS FROM: REV. PERRY M. GAUTHIER In 1972, crooner Ricky Nelson had a hit song “Garden Party.” This oldie came to mind as I thought about this week’s passage. This chapter’s scene is set in a palace drinking party in the hall adjacent to a royal garden. The royal eunuchs rushed Haman, our story’s evil villain, to that palace party with his closest friend Xerxes. Do you recall the tune to these lyrics from “Garden Party”: “I went to a garden party to reminisce with my old friends A chance to share old memories and play our songs again When I got to the garden party, they all knew my name No one recognized me, I didn't look the same CHORUS But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well. You see, ya can't please everyone, so ya got to please yourself.”a Vice chancellor Haman would have loved to hum the last line of “Garden Party”—“ya got to please yourself.” He has had a horrible Sunday, and it was about to get much worse at Esther’s palace party. Self-­‐pleasing was a lesson he had learned very well as Persia’s numero uno narcissist and top politically power-­‐hungry egomaniac. He corrupted the political power God had granted him. He became devilish, devising a deceitful death project against the Jews. He was about to learn a different lesson well, a lesson with which God would send him from this life into eternity. The Lord of lords, the Lord of all providence, Who ordained Haman’s length of days and end of life, would use His civil servant, Xerxes, to affect that very end. DATE: April 22, 2015 (Week 15) INTRODUCTION
This week we will observe the fifth feast in the Book of Esther to learn lessons about reason and treason and what Karen Jobes calls in her brilliant Bible commentaryb “Who Gets to Live and Who Does Not.” In the ten verses of Esther seven both Queen Esther and Prince Haman pled before Xerxes for their very lives. Queen Esther told of her 1. ROYAL REASONS TO RISK HER LIFE
Esther 7:1 “Now the king and Haman came to drink wine with Esther the queen.”c Let us recall and review that the reason for
this Sunday night feast was so lovely Esther
could tell powerful Xerxes why she risked her
very life in civil disobedience on the Saturday
afternoon prior, just thirty hours ago. In his
throne room she said, “Please come to a Saturday
night banquet.” Then, at the Saturday night
banquet, he promised again to give her “up to
half his kingdom” in answering her request.
Having secured his public promise a second
time, she said, “Come to a Sunday night banquet,
and I will tell you the two things I want.” So the
purpose of this banquet was so that Esther
could tell the king, with Haman present and
listening, the thing she wanted more than half
of Xerxes’ empire. The king’s sleep was taken
away by the One whom George Washington
called Providence, so that Esther’s older
cousin, Mordecai, could get a 5-year overdue
promotion. Providence had also swung His
political pendulum of demotion, striking
down hateful Haman.
All in the Capitol Community are Welcome to be a Part of Regular Bible Study and Fellowship SENATORS’ WEDNESDAY STUDY: 7:00-­‐8:15 AM, ROOM 1 422 CAPITOL MINISTRIES, NEBRASKA WWW.CAPMIN.ORG STAFF WEDNESDAY STUDY: 12 NOON, ROOM 1000 OR 1118 PHONE: 402-­‐327-­‐0011 REV. PERRY M. GAUTHIER, V.D.M. ALL STUDIES AVAILABLE AT WWW.NECAPMIN.ORG E-­‐MAIL: [email protected] C A P I T O L M I N I S T R I E S
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N E B R A S K A S T A T E C A P I T O L The People and Power of the Palace · Reason, Treason, and Capital Crimes · Esther 7:1-­‐10 The rest of the passage consists of two
rounds of royal Q&A where the king asked
the queen two questions. In each round of
Q&A, her two answers revealed counts of
capital treason—kingdom crimes with which
the Persian potentate was obliged to deal. The King and Queen engaged in
2. ROYAL ROUND ONE OF Q & A:
Q: YOUR DESIRE, & REQUEST?
A: MY LIFE, & OUR LIVES!
Esther 7:2-­‐3 “And the king said to Esther on the second day also as they drank their wine at the banquet, ‘What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half of the kingdom it shall be done.’ 3Then Queen Esther replied, ‘If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me as my petition, and my people as my request;’” ! The king had now publicly obliged himself
a third time to do whatever Esther requested.
What might his party favor be? Haman hoped
it would be something that would boost his
battered ego since he has had a horrible,
terrible, no-good day. Little did he know, he
was only privy to this regal conversation so
that according to Mosaic Biblical justice and
jurisprudence, he might be accused of his
civil crime in the presence of his accuser—
the now endangered Jewish Queen.
Xerxes’s first two questions were “what is your
petition and what is your request?” Her first two
answers were “save my life and my people’s lives.”
Six of nine occurrences of Esther’s royal title
(Queen) occur in this one chapter. During
this regal conversation, she held almighty
Xerxes in the palm of her hand. The king
who lurched from feast to feast, making most
of his decisions “under the influence,” was
now most sobered. He must have looked in
stunned silence while this exquisite woman,
whom he loved quite deeply, reported of her
impending death. The politico Haman silently
listened in; he did the math and thought, “A
death threat to the queen? The height of treason!” Queen Esther revealed 3. A REASON OF TREASON #1
Esther 7:4 “For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed and to be annihilated. Now if we had only been sold as slaves, men and women, I would have remained silent, for the trouble would not be commensurate with the annoyance to the king.” Esther now exposed treasonous Haman’s
plot to slaughter the Jews and his politically
dirty pool in fooling the king into agreeing to
it. Written proof is best, so Esther read from
her copy of the freshly minted law Mordecai
gave her in 4:8. Penned just four days earlier
the ink was barely dry. The inspired author of
Esther recorded her reading, from that legal
parchment word for word the exact verbiage
of destruction we saw in 3:9. She also shows
that Haman used a homophone to deceive
King Xerxes. Synonyms mean the same thing
like senator, lawmaker, and legislator.
HOMOPHONES SOUND THE
SAME WAY BUT ARE SPELLED
DIFFERENTLY, LIKE:
WEEK/WEAK, AYE/EYE, AND
SEN. HAAR/SEN. HARR.
C A P I T O L M I N I S T R I E S ® N E B R A S K A S T A T E C A P I T O L The People and Power of the Palace · Reason, Treason, and Capital Crimes · Esther 7:1-­‐10 ! Legislative wording matters greatly. Senator
Chambers has shown excellence and renown
for decades of killing—killing bills that lack
essential language or bills that contain illsuited language. His killing is good because the
things he is killing are bad. The absence of
words can indicate political chicanery; the
presence of an intentionally vague word can
be damaging. When hateful Haman verbally
presented his proposal to the king, he used
the homophone ‘ahvad (‫)עבדּ‬, which meant to
subject (OR enslave). In the actual law,
Haman wrote the homophone ʾahvad (‫)אבדּ‬,
which sounds identical, meaning destroy!
Putting the House under call, Patrick
O’Donnell, the Clerk of the Legislature
would not serve the Senate well to audibly ask
over the house microphone, “Senator ‘Haarr’
to please return to the chamber.” He must clarify
as to whether he means Senator Burke Harr
or Senator Ken Haar. Unless they are not
used clearly, homophones are not helpful.
legally obedient, and pay more taxes. Xerxes
signed off on the edict without asking Haman
to yield to clarifying questions or show him a
draft of the final legislation in writing.
Esther, with pounding heart, having pled for
her very life, held the written edict in her
trembling hand and exposed the formidable
Haman’s doubly-wicked, doubly-treasonous
plot. Haman wrote what he did not speak to
the king. Haman wrote the word ʾahvad
(‫)אבדּ‬, thereby legalizing the murderous
destruction of millions of the empire’s Jews.
But Esther shows the king, believing the best
about him, that Haman had tricked him into
agreeing to mass human trafficking—selling
the Jews as slaves to an enemy kingdom. To
sell the Jews into slavery implies that they are
being wrested away from the sovereignty of
the king and given over to the sovereignty of
another power. This is a treasonous
offense. If this is what Haman had proposed,
then he is a traitor to the king.d
! Queen Esther framed Haman with the very
‘SENATOR “HAARR”, PLEASE
RETURN TO THE CHAMBER,’
WOULD BE UNHELPFUL, AND
AT BEST, CONFUSING.
So it was with hateful Haman and his
homophones of deceit. Haman did not serve
the king well, and did not intend to do so.
! Haman made the king think he was doing
nothing more than causing a small segment
of his vast kingdom to be more submissive,
word he used to deceive Xerxes. This allowed
the king to not be seen as a coconspirator to
that law written to affect the slaughter of the
Jews, even though he had allowed that law to
be signed with his signet ring. Xerxes never
would have knowingly agreed to such an edict
in light of two particular Jews: his darling,
beautiful Queen Esther, and the faithful
Jewish Mordecai. The deceitful slaughter of
Jews was treasonous and a capital crime
against “king and country,” as was this crime
of the deceitful selling of souls into slavery.
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N E B R A S K A S T A T E C A P I T O L The People and Power of the Palace · Reason, Treason, and Capital Crimes · Esther 7:1-­‐10 The King and Queen engaged in
4. ROYAL ROUND TWO OF Q & A:
Q: WHO IS HE, & WHERE IS HE?
A: HAMAN, & HE IS RIGHT HERE!
Esther 7:5-­‐6 “Then King Xerxes asked Queen Esther, ‘Who is he, and where is he, who would presume to do thus?’ 6Esther said, ‘A foe and an enemy is this wicked Haman!’ Then Haman became terrified before the king and queen.” Xerxes was righteously angry at the capital
crimes thus far exposed. In red-face fury he
literally sputtered and stuttered in the Hebrew
text. “Who would presume” is literally “who would
fill his heart” which is our equivalent of “who
would have the nerve” to do this? The king
demanded to know whose human heart was
so fill with evil. This civic leader was more
than ready to proceed with justice but needed
to know the location of the evil one.
!! Divine justice inevitably and inextricably means
the destruction of evil. The author of Esther
shows that evil is personal. It is not some ethereal
substance “out there;” evil does not exist apart
from beings who are evil. In this case, that evil
came in the person of Haman. Mercy on Haman
would have been inconsistent with God’s
covenant.e {emphasis mine}
Let me be clear, ethically and theologically:
evil does not exist apart from beings who are
evil (demons or humans). Consistently then:
Romans 13:4 “[Civil government] is a minister of God to [citizens] for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.
That renowned civic verse (Romans 13:4)
reminds governmental servants that they have
been ordained as God’s delegated ministers
of vengeance—even with the sword’s lethal
force against (not evil things) but evil people.
WEALTH, WHISKEY, WINE,
POLITICAL PARCHMENTS,
POWER, AND PISTOLS
CANNOT BE EVIL; EVIL CAN
ONLY EXIST WITHIN LIVING
BEINGS WHO PRACTICE EVIL.
Evil Haman showed 5. A REASON OF TREASON #2
Esther 7:7-­‐8 a “The king arose in his anger from drinking wine and went into the palace garden; but Haman stayed to beg for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that harm had been determined against him by the king. 8Now when the king returned from the palace garden into the place where they were drinking wine, Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was.” Esther had revealed the “who done it,”
having accused Haman to his face according
to the Biblical principlesf surrounding capital
crimes. The king rose in rage. Outraged at the
outlandishness of Haman’s murderous evil,
he rushed into the adjacent garden so that he
might think clearly about this difficult
decision of punishing his closest friend for
treasonous capital crimes.
C A P I T O L M I N I S T R I E S ® N E B R A S K A S T A T E C A P I T O L The People and Power of the Palace · Reason, Treason, and Capital Crimes · Esther 7:1-­‐10 The Nebraska Constitution,g in Article I
section 14 (Treason), does not list penalties but
insists, like the US Constitution,h that
convictions shall not be made except on the
basis of two or three witnesses. The US
Constitution lists various penalties including
death, fines and imprisonment.
! In Persia, two counts of treason were
required to levy the death penalty against any
such seditious traitor. In this enormously
suspenseful scene, the king, who had been
engorged with fury stomping out of the
palace hall fuming, returned at the worst
possible time. Haman would have been fully
aware of palace protocol and the rules of the
king’s harem. It was unlawful even in the
presence of the king to come within seven
steps of the queen. Just as he reentered the
room, Haman was not thirty feet away from
the queen, but he was falling on her and her
royal couch. This is the very Haman who had
the king’s ring and wanted his royal robes, his
crowned coronation horse (a porta-Throne),
and his very own coronation parade.
Haman—the man who would be king.
In the ancient world there were many ways to
stage a coup d’état and announce an imperial
takeover. Besides taking the royal cloak, a
common method was taking physical or
sexual control of the king’s woman. Biblically,
this strategy was used against the patriarch
Abraham, King Saul, King David, and King
Solomon. In 1 Kings 2:22, Solomon said of
his half-brother—sneaky Adonijah—who
wanted to marry a royal concubine, “He might
as well ask for the kingdom!” Solomon then
executed him for that final treasonous act!
Xerxes and Esther executed 6. CAPITAL CRIMES IN CIVIL WRATH
Esther 7:8b-­‐10 “Then the king said, ‘Will he even assault the queen with me in the house?’ As the word went out of the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face. 9Then Harbonah, one of the eunuchs who were before the king said, ‘Behold indeed, the gallows standing at Haman’s house fifty cubits high, which Haman made for Mordecai who spoke good on behalf of the king!’ And the king said, ‘Hang him on it.’ 10So they hanged Haman on the gallows which he had prepared for Mordecai, and the king’s anger subsided.” King Xerxes, like wise King Solomon, saw
this for what it was. Haman, desperate,
delusional, and even demonically driven, sees
his end is sure. Accused before the world’s
most powerful king and queen, he lunged, in
the king’s words, to (literally) “conquer” the
queen. This third act of treason was high
treason. Haman’s face went white at Xerxes’
red-hot words. The bodyguards covered his
face with the black executioner’s hood.
Harbonah was one of the king’s seven key
eunuchs and probably had a Haman-bootshaped print on his forehead.
! Harbonah was quick to speak up against
that vile vizier who surely stepped on and
over anyone necessary in his feverish climb
up Persia’s political ladder. In yet another
touch of comic relief, this lowborn eunuch
tells the highborn king what to do. Xerxes—
ever eager to follow readymade advice!
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N E B R A S K A S T A T E C A P I T O L The People and Power of the Palace · Reason, Treason, and Capital Crimes · Esther 7:1-­‐10 Every word of Harbonah’s suggestion stung
as Haman was to be hung not only in his own
yard, but due to the ridiculous height of the
gallows, in front of all of Susa’s capital
citizenry. What an ironically elevated ending
to the wretched life of such an evil and highminded man.
“Haman comes to destruction, but [it] is
nevertheless a destruction he has built with his own
hands as surely as he built the gallows.” i
One of world history’s preeminent Christian
theologians, John Calvin, similarly said: j
“MAN FALLS ACCORDING AS
GOD’S PROVIDENCE
ORDAINS, BUT HE FALLS BY
HIS OWN FAULT.”
! God is grieved and angered at heinous,
sinful capital crime. Scripture teaches that He
has delegated that His wrath be appeased
through the human agency of civil
government. Sinful Saul, the disobedient king
of Israel, failed 500 years earlier to utterly
destroy the Amalakites and their evil King
Agag. His female descendant, Queen Esther,
has found the steel (alongside Xerxes) to
affect the death of Haman the evil Agagite.
Haman died, not by the whimsy of foolish
leaders, but by the wrath of God channeled
through civil servants who uncovered
Haman’s heinous, treasonous crimes of
premeditated genocide. Healthy humans, like
the God in whose image we are made, should
feel righteous indignation and grief at
murderous, treasonous crimes. The final
sentence of our chapter shows the king’s
righteous anger satisfied, and his anger
abated. And so it will be when civil servants
do the difficult task of mediating God’s wrath
and His revealed will on earth by punishing
those who do evil, using even the sword’s
lethal power.
A MOST DIFFICULT SEASON
Dear Senator: Please know that I am always
in prayer for you especially in this time. I am
also quite concerned and surprised at the
theological comments and confusion in the
Capitol. Please know that I am available
during the current difficult debate on the
great moral issues before this Legislature.
Always with your best interest in mind,
Rev. Perry M. Gauthier (cell/text: 402-770-6270)
a
http://www.lyricsdepot.com/ricky-nelson/garden-party.html
Karen H. Jobes--The NIV Application Commentary—Esther,
(Zondervan), © 1999.
c
All Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard
Updated version unless otherwise noted. I have substituted the NIV’s
(Greek) “Xerxes” for the NASU’s (Latinized Hebrew (from
Persian)) “Ahasuerus.”
d
Adele Berlin--Esther-The JPS Bible Commentary, (Jewish
Publication Society), © 2001, p 67.
e
Jobes, p 172.
f
The Bible not only cares about punishing capital crimes in capital
ways, it is concerned with justice in the judicial process. Of the 17
capital crimes with possible death penalties in the Law of Moses,
every one of them required the testimony of two or three witnesses.
Sixteen of them could have that maximum death penalty lessened by
the judges or victims. However, first degree murder could not.
g
http://law.justia.com/constitution/nebraska/c0101014000.html
h
The United States Constitution Article III, section 3 delineates
treason as a crime, including death as a possible punishment.
i
Jobes, p 174. I cannot help but recall Senator Mike Groene’s
appropriate comments in last week’s fervent floor debate over the
death penalty: “I did not murder people. These people chose to
murder.” The law of recompense, of the equal scales of justice, and
the world’s supreme legislative law (Lex Talionis) all align with
these comments. Also note God’s will commanded in Exodus 21:24“Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, hand for a hand, foot for a foot.”
j
Jobes, p 172.
b