Esther 3 Footnotes

3:2 Mordecai’s obedience to the civil authorities had a limit. It stopped at the point where his loyalty to the civil authorities violated the biblical mandate. As a Jewish man, if Mordecai bowed down to Haman, he would have violated the covenant obligation of obedience to God above all other allegiances (Ex 20:3).

3:6 Haman’s intention to eradicate all the Jews in Ahasuerus’s kingdom revealed a horrible prejudice that is inexcusable. It is never permissible to persecute a person because of religion, race, or ethnicity. Every person is created in the image of God, regardless of these differences (Gn 1:26-27). All deserve equal treatment and respect.

3:11 Some critics doubt that the king would approve the eradication of an entire race of people within his kingdom. However, there is historical evidence from this period of just such acts. Herodotus records an event some time before Darius became king, in which a group known as magi became so reviled by Persians that the Persians killed all of them they could find. Then the Persians instituted an annual festival known as Magophonia or “Killing of the Magi,” during which no Magus was to show himself in public for the entire day (Her 3:79).

3:13 Critics doubt that the king would have issued an order of this magnitude that wouldn’t be carried out for eleven months. However, in 193 BC Antiochus III issued a decree for a similar action that had a four-month delay.