Charles Ellicott Commentary Esther 3

Haman ... the Agagite. —Nothing appears to be known about Haman except from this book. His name, as well as that of his father and his sons, is Persian. It is therefore difficult to understand the meaning of the name Agagite.

This name has generally been assumed to imply descent from Agag, king of the Amalekites, with whom the name Agag may have been dynastic (Numbers 24:7; 1 Samuel 15:8). Thus, Josephus (Ant. xi. 6.5) and the Chaldee Targum call him an Amalekite.

But apart from the difficulty of his name being Persian, it is hard to see how, after the wholesale destruction of Amalek recorded in 1 Samuel 15:0, any members of the royal family could have remained, maintaining a distinct tribal name for so many centuries. In one of the Greek Apocryphal additions to Esther , Haman is called a Macedonian.

Bowed not. —Perhaps, rather, did not prostrate himself, for this was the ordinary Eastern practice (see Herodotus iii. 86, vii. 7, 34, 136, viii. 118). The objection on Mordecai’s part was evidently mainly on religious grounds, as giving to a man Divine honours (Josephus, in the place cited), for it elicits from him the fact that he was a Jew (Esther 3:4), to whom such an act of obeisance would be abhorrent. Whether Mordecai also rebelled against the ignominious character of the obeisance, we cannot say.

Whether Mordecai’s matters would stand. —This should be understood as his words: whether his statement that he belonged to a nation that could only pay such reverence to God would prove true.

In the first month ... the twelfth year. —In the March or April of 474 B.C.

Nisan. —The later name of the month, known in the Pentateuch as Abib. In this month the Passover had been first instituted, when God smote the Egyptians with a terrible visitation, the death of the first-born, and commanded the destroying angel spare the houses with the blood-besprinkled door-posts. It was in the same month that the Passover received its final fulfilment, when Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, when no mere earthly Egypt was defeated, but principalities and powers of evil.

Pur. —This is evidently a Persian word for “lot,” for both here and in Esther 9:24 the usual Hebrew word is added. It is doubtless connected with the Latin pars, portio and the English part. The people who cast Pur were seeking for a lucky day, as indicated by the lots, for the purpose at hand. A lot was cast for each day of the month, and for each month in the year, and in some way or other one day and one month were indicated as the most favourable. The notion of lucky and unlucky days seems to have been prevalent in the East in early times, and indeed has, to a certain extent, found credence in the West.

The twelfth month. —The lucky month is thus indicated, but not the day. The Septuagint adds a clause saying that it was on the fourteenth day, doubtless an interpolation on the strength of Esther 3:13.

Adar. —The lunar month ending at the new moon in March. It was the twelfth month, so that nearly a year would intervene between the throwing of the lot and the carrying out of the scheme. Thus in God’s providence ample time was allowed for redressing matters.

A certain people scattered abroad ... —A certain part of the nation had returned with Zerubbabel, but (Ezra 2:64) these only amounted to 42,360, so that the great majority of the nation had preferred to stay comfortably where they were in the various districts of the Persian Empire.

Neither keep they ... —The charge of disloyalty has been a favourite weapon in the hands of persecutors. Haman was not the first who had brought this charge against the Jews (Ezra 4:16). Our Lord’s accusers were those who knew no king but Caesar. The early Christians found to their cost how deadly was the accusation of disloyalty to the Empire.