Esther 3 Study Notes

3:10-11 Haman’s request was granted by Ahasuerus, who gave him his signet ring, used by the king to put his official wax seal on a state document. With that ring, Haman had the power to carry out his planned extermination. Ahasuerus’s almost casual endorsement was chilling in its consequences. King Ahasuerus never even bothered to ask the identity of the ethnic group that Haman planned to destroy. The money . . . given to you may indicate that the king refused Haman’s offer of “375 tons of silver” (v. 9).

3:12-15 The instructions were clear: all young and old, women and children were to be destroyed, killed, and annihilated (v. 13). The terrible decree was to be executed eleven months later, on the thirteenth day of Adar. Critics charge that such a decree that would be implemented almost a year later is ludicrous, since people would have had ample time to flee. But the Jews were dispossessed exiles whose lives depended on the king’s good pleasure. Had they picked up to flee, undoubtedly the genocide would have been triggered early, for their fleeing would have been seen as an attempt to evade the king’s decree.

The picture of Haman and the king drinking and congratulating themselves on their solution to the problem of the Jews contrasts with the disposition of the city. The impression is that the people in Susa were not in favor of the decree nor did they share Haman’s rabid anti-Semitism.