Esther 8 Study Notes

8:9 Seventy-eight percent of the words in vv. 9-14 are the same as 3:12-15. Since the Jewish people were speaking Aramaic, as were many in the Persian Empire, the counter-edict that was written in their own script must have been written in Hebrew.

8:10 The edicts were sealed with the royal signet ring, once worn by Haman in order to destroy the Jews, but now worn by Mordecai to save the Jews.

8:11-12 Just as Haman’s edict decreed the destruction of the Jews on the thirteenth of Adar (3:12), the Jews now had the legal right to defend themselves that same day.

8:13-14 These verses are a repeat of 3:14-15, showing that this decree reversed the previous one.

8:15-17 Mordecai had once torn his clothes and gone around in “sackcloth and ashes” (4:1); now he wore the royal purple and white. Once the city of Susa was “in confusion” (3:15); now the people shouted and rejoiced. The Jews had once “fasted, wept, and lamented, and . . . lay in sackcloth and ashes” (4:3); now they celebrated with gladness, joy, and honor. While the Jews had once been in fear of the ethnic groups among whom they lived, now some of the ethnic groups were in fear of the Jews. The phrase professed themselves to be Jews is a single word in Hebrew (Hb mityahadim). Found only here in the OT, it is a reflexive verb derived from the proper noun Jew (Hb yehudi). Some understand the verb to mean “to become a Jew”—to convert to Judaism; this interpretation is supported by the Greek text (LXX). However, it is more likely that the term means that the people identified themselves with the Jewish people; this meaning may be supported by the Latin Vulgate.