Esther 3:6 - Exposition

He thought scorn to lay hands on Mordecai alone . If Haman had simply said to Ahasuerus, "There is one of your menials who persistently disobeys a royal edict, and at the same time insults me," Ahasuerus would, as a matter of course, have told him to put the menial to death. But the revengeful temper of the man was such that this seemed to him insufficient. Mordecai had insulted him as a Jew, and the Jews should pay the penalty. Mordecai should be punished not only in person, but in his kindred, if he had any, and in his nation. The nation itself was contumacious and troublesome ( Esther 3:8 ); it would be well to get rid of it. And it would be a grand thing to wipe out an insult offered by an individual in the blood of a whole people. Haman therefore sought to destroy all the Jews that were throughout the whole kingdom of Ahasuerus . Massacres on a large scale—not unknown in the West, witness St. Bartholomew's—are of frequent occurrence in the East, where human life is not held in much regard, and the caprices of absolute monarchs determine the course of history. There had been a general massacre of the Magi upon the accession of Darius Hystaspis, the father of Xerxes (Herod; 3.79), and one of Scythians about a century before ( ibid. 1.106). These were examples which might occur to Haman. A later one is the Roman massacre of Mithridates in b.c. 88.