Haman Was Fattened for Slaughter, Not for His Own Good

The sow ate all day.

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She ate while the filly hauled and the donkey carried, and when those two came in at evening there was a measured feed waiting, a fixed amount, counted out. The sow had no measure. Her trough was simply full again.

"What is the fool doing?" the filly said to her mother. "We do his work and he counts out our barley. She does nothing and he gives her everything."

"Wait," the donkey said. "You will live to see her go down. What he puts into her is not for her good."

On the first of the month, when the feast day came, they took the fattened sow out to the slaughter and cut her throat.

Afterward they set barley in front of the filly and she blew on it and would not touch it. Her mother said, "It was not the eating that did it, daughter. It was the standing around."

The Seat Above the Princes

In Shushan, in the palace, a man was being fed without measure.

Ahasuerus promoted Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, lifted him up, and set his chair above every prince in the empire. Above the ones who had bled for the crown. Above the ones with land and lineage. The wicked perish like the fat of rams, and the fat of a ram is not the animal's good fortune.

It looked like the top of the world. It was a trough.

What His Eyes Did to Him

He rode out through the king's gate and the whole courtyard went down on its face except one man.

Mordecai stood. That was the entire offense. He did not shout, he did not spit, he stood there while everyone around him flattened himself into the dust, and Haman looked at him, and the looking put a rage in him that never came out again.

Looking is how that kind of man goes down. The sons of the great looked at the daughters of men and took whatever they wanted. Ham looked into his father's tent at what he should have covered. Esau looked and saw that the women of Canaan disgusted his father. Balak looked at what Israel had done to the Amorites and sent for a man to curse them. Balaam looked and saw that heaven meant to bless Israel, and rode on anyway. Every one of them was ruined by an eyeful.

The upright look too, and it carries them up. Abraham lifted his eyes and there were three men standing at his tent. Abraham looked up on the mountain and there was a ram caught by its horns. Jacob looked and there was a well in a field. Moses looked and there was a bush burning and not burning up. Phinehas looked, and stood up, and stopped a plague with his own hands.

Haman looked at a man who would not bend, and it took him down to Gehenna (the realm of judgment after death).

He Told the King That God Was Asleep

"There is a certain people," he said, "scattered and spread through the peoples in every province of your kingdom. Their laws are different from everyone's. They do not keep the king's laws. It is not worth the king's while to tolerate them."

There is. Yeshno. One turn of the vowels away from yashen, he is asleep. That was the sentence hidden under the sentence, and it was not about the people. Their God is asleep on the job.

It was heard. "There is no sleep in front of Me. The guardian of Israel does not slumber and does not sleep. You say I sleep? By your life, I will wake up against that man and take him out of the world."

He Complained About the Holidays

Haman was not finished. He warmed to it.

"Their teeth are big," he said. "They eat, they drink, and they call it delight in the Sabbath, delight in the festival. They bleed the assets of the world. One day in every seven, gone. One day in every thirty for the new moon. Passover in Nisan. Shavuot in Sivan. In Tishrei the new year, and the great fast, and then a whole week living in booths."

"That is what their Torah commands them," the king said.

"If they kept their days and ours as well, fine. They hold yours in contempt. They do not keep the calends. They do not keep the Saturnalia."

That was the sentence that finished him. "You are running down their festivals," God said. "I will bring you down in front of them, and they will add one more festival on top of the ones you just counted, and it will be about your fall."

Purim is the answer to that complaint. A fool's mouth is his own ruin.

Michael Answered From Above

Every word Haman spoke in the throne room downstairs was being answered upstairs, sentence for sentence, by Michael.

"Master of the universe," Michael said. "Your children are being denounced down there. Not for idols. Not for licentiousness. Not for bloodshed. They are being denounced for keeping Your laws."

"I have not abandoned them and I will not." Guilty or innocent made no difference to the answer. The world cannot stand without Israel in it.

The Silver and the Gallows Weighed the Same

Haman put ten thousand talents of silver on the table for the permission he wanted. A man can offer all the wealth of his house and still be laughed out of the room, and the king did not even take the money. He pulled the ring off his own finger. "The silver is yours, and the people are yours, do what you like with them."

Hakesef, the silver. Count the letters: five, twenty, sixty, eighty. A hundred and sixty-five.

Haetz, the gallows. Five, seventy, ninety. A hundred and sixty-five.

The bribe and the beam came out to the same number. Before the year was out Haman had a gallows fifty cubits high standing in his own courtyard, and he had built it for another man.