“You are in for trouble,…if you think what you do in the dark can’t be seen” (Isa 29:15, CEV).
Haman is a very different man as he slouches his way home after his humiliating experience, leading Mordecai in honor through the city streets. Mortified by Mordecai! “Haman hurried to his house, mourning and with his head covered” (Est 6:12). His wife and friends are waiting for the update. It isn’t good. Now they tell him, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish descent, you will not prevail against him but will surely fall before him” (v 13). While they’re still talking, someone is at the door. I can’t help but think of the line, “…send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee” ( John Donne). Who’s there? The king’s eunuchs, who “hastened to bring Haman to the banquet which Esther had prepared” (v 14). I’m sure Haman didn’t have much of an appetite, especially when the king asked his queen what was really on her heart. Her answer comes like a lightning bolt. “If I have found favor in your sight, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request” (7:3). You can only imagine the stunned silence as she quietly adds, “For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated” (v 4). Then she adds that, if they were just going to be sold as slaves, the king wouldn’t have heard from her, but this is a bit much. I’ll say! Can you hear the outrage behind the king’s response? “WHO IS HE?” (v 5). “And Esther said, ‘The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman!’” (v 6). The king, we read, “arose in his wrath from the banquet of wine and went into the palace garden” (v 7), to count to ten, or whatever one does in such situations. Haman falls at the queen’s feet to plead for his life. But it is too late for that. Way too late.