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Mordecai Senses the Portent at the Harem Gate

Four men received portents. Jacob and Moses missed theirs. David and Mordecai felt theirs. Mordecai paces the harem courtyard, waiting for the blow.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Criers Read the Decree in Shushan
  2. Is It Possible
  3. The Mouths That Stayed Shut
  4. Two Men Who Missed Theirs
  5. He Kept Walking
Mordecai Senses the Portent at the Harem Gate Click for full size

The Criers Read the Decree in Shushan

The decree went out in the plainest language the empire owned. The young woman who pleases the king will reign in place of Vashti. Officers rode into the provinces to collect them, and the girls of Shushan were taken up into the house of the women for twelve months of oil of myrrh and spices before any of them would be looked at once.

Esther went with them.

Shushan had a Jewish man in it, and his name was Mordecai. Whenever Israel has been in a corner the record does this: it names the trouble, and then in the next breath, before anyone has had time to ask, it names the person. Israel stood dismayed in front of the Philistine, and the next line is David, son of an Efrati out of Bethlehem. Vashti's place stood empty, and the next line is Mordecai.

Is It Possible

He started walking the length of the courtyard in front of the house of the women, every day, with no errand there that anyone could have named for him.

What he had was a question and it was a bad one. Is it possible that this righteous one is going to marry an uncircumcised man? He carried it up the wall and back down again, and it would not hold, because the question made her into a private disaster, one girl swallowed by a palace, one household's grief, and the ledger of the exile is not kept in units that small.

Rather, he said. He said it out loud, on the third or fourth pass, and the sentence came back out of him the other way round. A great thing is coming on Israel, and she is the one they are going to be rescued by.

Then he kept walking, since a sentence like that is not a comfort. It is an assignment, and he could not see one line of it past the wall in front of his face.

The Mouths That Stayed Shut

He came by the habit honestly. Exiled from Jerusalem with the deportation that went out with Yekhonya king of Judah, carried off by Nebuchadnezzar, and for four generations his people had spoken that name the way a man speaks the name of someone who can still hear him, because Nebuchadnezzar was alive and reigning and no subject can afford a curse. In Jeremiah the name comes up constantly and nothing is ever added to it.

It was only now, in Persia, generations on, with the destroyer under the ground, that the words came loose. Nebuchadnezzar, may his bones be crushed. Nobody reading the name aloud could have added that while the man sat on a throne in Babylon, and what changed in between was not anyone's opinion of him. It was his funeral.

So Mordecai walked under a living king with his mouth shut, which was the family trade.

Two Men Who Missed Theirs

Signs get handed to more people than notice them.

Jacob was told in so many words, I will protect you wherever you go, and then stood at the ford with Esau coming toward him and was frightened, because he had spent twenty years under Laban's roof and could not be sure the promise still covered a man who had lived there that long. Moses was told to set it in the ears of Joshua, which is about as clear a notice as anyone is given that Joshua and not Moses would bring Israel over the river, and he pleaded anyway to be allowed to cross and see the good land.

David caught his. He was standing in front of Saul making the case that a shepherd could fight a Philistine, and he heard his own words come out: your servant has killed both the lion and the bear. Then he stopped on them. Am I so much that I could kill those animals? Rather, something is coming on Israel, and they are going to be rescued by me.

Mordecai's sentence had the same shape and made the same turn, in a courtyard in Shushan, with dust on his sandals.

He Kept Walking

Twelve months is a long watch. The guards on the gate of the house of the women learned his face and stopped asking what he wanted, so he came in the morning and went at dusk, and the wall never told him anything at all.

Esther was taken in to the king and the crown went on her head, and none of it stopped the walking, since the thing he was waiting for had not happened yet and he still could not have put a name to it.

When it came, nobody had to explain it to him. He tore his clothes in the street, put on sackcloth and ashes, went out into the middle of the city crying with a loud and bitter cry, and stopped in front of the king's gate, which he had been walking past for a year.

MordecaiEstherDavidMosesJacobPortentExilePurim
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

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.

Esther Rabbah 6:6Esther Rabbah

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

It is written: “And set it in the ears of Joshua” (Exodus 17:14), this is one of four righteous people to whom a portent was given; two sensed it and two did not sense it. A portent was given to Moses, but he did not sense it. A portent was given to Jacob, but he did not sense it. A portent was given to David and Mordekhai, and they sensed it. Jacob – the Holy One blessed be He said to him: “I will protect you wherever you go” (Genesis 28:15), and he was frightened. A person to whom the Holy One blessed be He made a promise was frightened, as it is written: “He was frightened” (Genesis 32:8)? Rather, he said: Perhaps when I was in the house of Laban the impure, I became sullied with impurity.Moses – “and set it in the ears of Joshua,” indicating that Joshua will lead Israel into the land. And it is written: “I pleaded with the Lord [… please let me cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan]” (Deuteronomy 3:23-25).However, David and Mordekhai were given a portent and they sensed it. David said: “Your servant has smitten both the lion and the bear” (I Samuel 17:36). David said: Am I so important that I was able to smite these wild beasts? Rather, he said: Perhaps an event is destined to befall Israel, and they are destined to be rescued by me. Mordekhai – “Mordekhai would walk before the courtyard of the harem” (Esther 2:11). He said: Is it possible that this righteous one [Esther] will mary an uncircumcised man? Rather, a great event is destined to befall Israel and they are destined to be rescued by her.

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Esther Rabbah 6:4Esther Rabbah

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

Esther Rabbah pauses over the verse that introduces Mordecai's lineage: "Who had been exiled from Jerusalem with the exile that was exiled with Yekhonya king of Judah, whom Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylonia exiled" (Esther 2:6). This places Mordecai among the deportees carried off in the exile of Yekhonya (Jehoiachin), tying the Purim story back to the destruction that scattered Judah.

The midrash preserves a striking liturgical habit of the sages. Rabbi Berekhya, Rabbi Yirmeya, and Rabbi Hiyya in the name of Rabbi Yosei reported that when Rabbi Yonatan and the Rabbis would reach the words "whom Nebuchadnezzar exiled," they would interject the curse: "Nebuchadnezzar, may his bones be crushed." The Babylonian king who razed the Temple and drove the people from their land earned this spontaneous denunciation whenever his name was read aloud in this verse.

This raises an obvious difficulty. The book of Jeremiah mentions Nebuchadnezzar constantly, yet the sages did not append the curse there. Why reserve it for the Megillah? The answer turns on timing and propriety. Throughout Jeremiah, Nebuchadnezzar was still alive and reigning, and the rabbis would not pronounce such a curse against a living, ruling sovereign. By the time of the events recorded in Esther, set generations later under Persian rule, Nebuchadnezzar was long dead. Only then, with the tyrant safely in his grave, did the sages feel free to crush his bones with their words.

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Esther Rabbah 5:4Esther Rabbah

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

“The young woman who will please the king will reign in place of Vashti. The proposal pleased the king and he did so” (Esther 2:4).“The young woman who will please the king” – who is fitting for this thing? 15Fit to raise the woman who would be chosen as queen. Mordekhai – “there was a Jewish man in the Shushan citadel, and his name was Mordekhai” (Esther 2:5).16This is the immediately following verse. This and the subsequent passages are all cases where the midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) addresses the juxtaposition of two verses. It asks about the first verse: who is fitting for this thing? It then finds the answer in the next verse.Similarly, “God saw the children of Israel and God knew” (Exodus 2:25). Who is fitting for this matter? Moses – “And Moses was herding” (Exodus 3:1).Similarly, “Samuel said to the men of Israel: Go, each man to his city” (I Samuel 8:22). Who is fitting for this thing [to be appointed king]? Saul, as it is stated: “There was a man of Benjamin, and his name was Kish…[and he had a son and his name was Saul…]” (I Samuel 9:1–2).Similarly, “Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, and they were dismayed and were greatly afraid.” (I Samuel 17:11). Who is fitting for this thing [fighting Goliath]? David – “David was the son of that Efrati [from Bethlehem]” (I Samuel 17:12).Rabbi Yehoshua bar Aviram said two things. It is written: “He [Yavin king of Canaan] oppressed the children of Israel strongly [beḥozka] for twenty years” (Judges 4:3). What is beḥozka? Rabbi Yitzḥak said: With cursing and blaspheming. That is what is written: “Your words have been harsh against Me” (Malachi 3:13). Who is fitting for this thing? Deborah, as it is written: “Deborah was a prophetess, wife of Lapidot” (Judges 4:4). Rabbi Yehoshua bar Aviram said another: “The people, the princes of Gilad, said one to another: Who is the man who will begin to wage war against the children of Amon? He will be the head of all the inhabitants of Gilad” (Judges 10:18). Who is fitting for this thing? Yiftaḥ – “Yiftaḥ the Giladite was a mighty warrior” (Judges 11:1).

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