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Mordecai Heard Three Verses and Knew the Rescue Was Coming

Persians in Shushan had begun telling Jews the date. Mordecai stopped three children walking home from school and asked what they had learned.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Date Was Public
  2. What the Children Had Learned That Day
  3. Haman Came Around the Corner
  4. The Part Mordecai Did Not Say Out Loud
  5. Naked and Bare
Mordecai Heard Three Verses and Knew the Rescue Was Coming Click for full size

The Date Was Public

A Jew who went out for bread in Shushan got caught by the throat before he reached the stall. The Persian holding him said it almost pleasantly. "Never mind. Tomorrow will soon be here, and then I shall kill you and take your money away from you." The letters had gone to every province with the king's seal pressed into them, and the letters named the day.

Some Jews tried to sell themselves as slaves, on the theory that a man protects his property. Nobody bought. No one wanted to feed a body that was already scheduled.

Mordecai came out of the palace that afternoon into that street. Haman and his friends had just finished telling him what the king had granted them, and they had enjoyed the telling. He walked past the shuttered stalls in sackcloth. Three children came toward him with their tablets, on their way home from the house of their teacher.

What the Children Had Learned That Day

He stopped the first one and asked what verse he had studied.

The boy recited it the way children recite, flat and pleased to be asked. "Be not afraid of sudden fear, nor of the desolation of the wicked when it comes."

Mordecai asked the second.

"Take counsel together, and it shall come to nothing. Speak the word, and it shall not stand, for God is with us."

He asked the third. This one had been given the long verse and got through it carefully, watching Mordecai's face for the mistake. "Even to old age I am He, and even to grey hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear. I will carry, and I will deliver."

Mordecai began to laugh in the street.

Haman Came Around the Corner

Haman had followed him out of the palace and found the man he had spent a year trying to break standing in front of three schoolchildren with his sackcloth still on, laughing out loud.

He demanded to know what was funny.

Mordecai told him. "I rejoice at the good news the schoolchildren have brought me."

Haman made them say the verses again. He listened to a boy tell him that a plan spoken aloud would not stand, and he understood the arithmetic perfectly, and the blood went out of his face. Then he said it. "In truth, they shall be the first to feel the weight of my hand."

He would begin with the children. He walked back into the palace to arrange it.

The Part Mordecai Did Not Say Out Loud

The laughing stopped before he got home.

What frightened Mordecai was never Haman. It was the accounting behind Haman. Years earlier the king had thrown his banquets, the long ones, the ones the whole empire talked about, and eighteen thousand five hundred Jews had gone. They ate at those tables. They drank. They got drunk, and then they did worse than drink. Haman had counseled the king to hold those feasts, and he had counseled it for exactly that reason, and every Jew who sat down had walked into it smiling.

So the decree was not only a wicked man's malice. It was also a bill. Mordecai had spent days in sackcloth at the palace gate doing the sum, and the sum came out against his own people, and no verse a child recited on the road from school changed a single figure in it.

Naked and Bare

The same books that told him not to fear sudden terror told him something worse about the last time.

In Egypt, when the groaning finally rose, God looked at the slaves and knew. What He knew, in the reading Mordecai had been raised on, was that they had nothing. No good deeds banked, no merit on the ledger, nothing at all to justify a rescue. Ezekiel put it as a body: the hair had come in, the breasts had come in, the girl was of age, and she was naked and bare. Moses and Aaron were already standing ready to bring her out. She had not earned them.

That was the whole comfort, and Mordecai took it. The third child had handed him the sentence without knowing what he was handing over. Not a promise that deliverance had been earned. Only a promise that the carrying had not stopped.

Behind him the children walked on toward their mothers, arguing about something else. Inside the palace, Haman was already measuring wood.

EstherPurimMordecaiDivine JusticeProphecy
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From the tradition

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The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Legends of the Jews 12:152Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

These aren't just any verses; they're hints of salvation, whispers of hope amidst looming disaster.

What does Mordecai do? He erupts in joy, right there in front of his nemesis, Haman! Pure bewilderment mixed with fury. "I rejoice at the good tidings announced to me by the school children," Mordecai declares.

Haman, already a powder keg, absolutely explodes. "In sooth, they shall be the first to feel the weight of my hand!" he bellows, according to Ginzberg’s retelling in Legends of the Jews. He's so consumed by rage that he wants to punish innocent children.

Here’s the really heavy part, the somber undertone to all this. Mordecai wasn't just worried about Haman’s immediate threat. He understood something deeper. He realized in Legends of the Jews, that the Jewish people themselves had, in a way, brought this danger upon themselves.

How? Through their actions at the king's banquets. Ahasuerus, remember, threw these massive feasts, and a staggering eighteen thousand five hundred Jews participated. As we find in Legends of the Jews, they ate, they drank, they got intoxicated, and, tragically, they committed immoralities. Haman, that sly fox, had even foreseen this. He had actually encouraged Ahasuerus to throw those banquets, knowing the potential for the Jews to stray from their path.

The idea that our own actions, our own choices, can contribute to our misfortunes. This isn't just about a historical event; it's a timeless lesson about responsibility, about the consequences of our behavior, and about the importance of staying true to our values, even when surrounded by temptation.

So, what do we take away from this little snippet of the Esther story? Perhaps it's a reminder to listen to the whispers of hope, even in the darkest times. But maybe, even more importantly, it's a call to examine our own actions and ensure that we're not inadvertently contributing to the very problems we're trying to overcome.

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Shemot Rabbah 1:35Shemot Rabbah

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · CC-BY

In fact, they wrestled with it in their interpretations of the book of Exodus, specifically (Exodus 2:25): "God saw the children of Israel, and God knew."

What did God see? What did God know?

The Shemot Rabbah, a classical compilation of rabbinic commentary on Exodus, explores this very question. It starts by linking this verse to another, (Exodus 3:7), where God says, "I have seen the affliction of My people… as I know its pains." So, on one level, God saw their suffering and knew their pain. Simple enough. But the rabbis weren't content with the simple answer. They dug deeper. They asked: Did the Israelites deserve to be redeemed? Did they have enough good deeds, enough mitzvot (commandments), to warrant divine intervention?

The Shemot Rabbah offers a startling answer. It suggests that God saw something else entirely: that the Israelites were, essentially, spiritually bankrupt. They lacked the merit, the zechut, to be saved.

To illustrate this, the text turns to the prophet Ezekiel (16:7), who uses powerful imagery to describe Israel's early development: "I rendered you as numerous as the plants of the field [and you increased and grew, and you came to great beauty: Breasts developed and your hair grew, but you were naked and bare]."

Now, pay close attention to the order. Ezekiel says, "breasts developed" before "your hair grew." This seems backward. The rabbis point out that, usually, the appearance of pubic hair precedes the development of breasts as a sign of puberty. So, what's going on here?

The Shemot Rabbah interprets the "breasts" as a metaphor for Moses and Aaron. The Hebrew word used, nakhonu (breasts developed), is related to nekhonim, meaning "prepared." So, the verse is hinting that Moses and Aaron were already prepared to redeem the Israelites. As it says in (Song of Songs 4:5), "Your two breasts are like two fawns." This phrase, the Rabbis say, refers to Moses and Aaron.

"And your hair grew," they continue, represents the arrival of the time for redemption.

But here's the kicker: "But you were naked and bare." This, the Shemot Rabbah tells us, means the Israelites were bereft of good deeds.

So, going back to (Exodus 2:25), "God saw" that they didn't have the merit to be redeemed.

Why would God redeem a people who didn't deserve it? What does it say about the nature of redemption itself? Does it mean that divine grace is unconditional? That even when we are at our lowest, most undeserving, help can still come?

Perhaps the Shemot Rabbah is suggesting that redemption isn't always about earning our way out. Sometimes, it's about God's unwavering commitment to us, even when we’re spiritually "naked and bare." It’s a reminder that hope can arise even in the direst of circumstances, even when, by all accounts, we don’t deserve it. And maybe, just maybe, that’s the most profound kind of redemption there is.

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