Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:
7In the month of the first (it [was] the month of Nisan) in the year of the twelfth to the king Xerxes, he caused to fall Pur (it [was] the lot) to the face of Haman from day to day and from month to month. The twelfth (it [was] the month of Adar). 8And Haman said to the king Xerxes, “There [is] a particular people scattered and dispersed among the peoples in the all of the provinces of your kingdom and their laws differing from all of people and the laws of the king not doing and the king, [it is] not being smooth to allow them. 9If upon the king good, let it be written to destroy them and ten thousand talents of silver I will weigh upon hands of ones doing the work, to bring upon the treasuries of the king.” 10And the king took his ring from upon his hand and he gave it to Haman son of Hamadatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews, 11and the king said to Haman, “The silver [is] given to you and the people to do with it according to good in your eyes.” 12And the scribes of the king were called in the month of the first in the thirteenth day in it, and it was written according to all which Haman commanded (intensely) to the officials of the king and to the governors who [were] upon province and province and the princes of people and people, province and province according to its writing and people and people according to its language in the name of the king Xerxes, written and sealed in the ring of the king. 13And the writings [were] sent in the hand of the runners to the all of the provinces of the king to exterminate, to murder, and to destroy the all of the Jews from young and (even) to old, little children and women in one day in thirteenth to the month of the twelfth, it [being] the month of Adar and to plunder [their possessions]. 14The copy of the document was set a law in all of province and province, being published to the all of the peoples to be ready ones to the day of that. 15Runners went out hastened in the word of the king and the law was given in Shushan the citadel and the king and Haman sat to drink and the city of Shushan was perplexed.
So, what happens when men without God attain to positions of leadership? You get government without God. Haman is a man without God, and he is the prime minister. Xerxes is a man without God and he’s the king over it all. And what does that get you? Lies, murder, and stealing.
And why is that? Because they are of their father, the devil, and the lusts of their father they will do. He is a liar and the father of lies. He was a murderer from the beginning. His people are thieves and robbers. And what do you get when they control the government? Lies, murder, and stealing.
I feel like this study of the book of Esther has profoundly opened my eyes to see this world for what it really is—a world without God. And chapter 3 really showcases what comes with a government without God. Up until about the early 1960’s the government of America was comprised of people who at least respected the Bible and acknowledged God. This country was founded to begin with by men who at least acknowledged God. Even our very first official national document, the Declaration of Independence, begins by declaring “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights…” “Endowed by their Creator.”
As late as the 1950’s, even the Supreme Court was still acknowledging that our Constitution and this nation’s laws were based on the Bible. When I was growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s “everyone” went to church. I remember even at school, we all had an awareness of God. We may still have done a lot of “bad” things, but at least we knew they were bad. We’d tell each other things like, “Anyone who commits suicide goes straight to hell!” That may not have been true, but it reflected the very underlying assumption of our culture—that there is a heaven and a hell. What our forefathers founded was very deliberately a nation with God. And what did it get us? 200 years of unprecedented prosperity.
America has certainly had its own share of lies, murder, and stealing, but that only reinforces what the book of Esther is showing us. Even in a basically “good” government, you will still always have bad men, so that even the best of human governments can only be a strange mixture of respect for God and downright evil.
But what Esther is showing us is government totally without God, government without any restraint or sense of morality. Somewhere back there in the 60’s and 70’s, we determined to be a nation without God and it is no surprise at all to find ourselves now 50 years later with a government of shocking corruption. Is it any surprise that one of the first things our government without God did was to legalize abortion? And since then literally millions of helpless babies have been cruelly murdered. Is it any surprise that we became a nation of school shootings?
This passage of Scripture—Esther chapter 3—exposes human government for what it really is. The politicians in America and their lap dogs, the liberal media, feed us an endless stream of lies, claim they want to do us good, then huddle together and sell out to big corporations and lobbyists who make them multi-millionaires on salaries that can only comprise a fraction of their accumulated wealth.
At first glance, someone may assert that Haman and Xerxes are extreme examples of wicked men in government. But are they? Really? Or does it appear “extreme” only because the real truth is clearly exposed? It was interesting reading “the old guys” and their commentaries from the 1600’s through the late 1800’s. Although they acknowledged that human history has been marred by massacres in many places, yet they were horrified that anything so evil as this plot of Haman could ever have been concocted. Then there was the Holocaust. For those of us on this side of WW II, we have no trouble believing that a government could cruelly murder six million of its own people. Actually, the twentieth century was, if anything, the century of mass murders. In the Soviet Union, under Lenin and Stalin, once again the government murdered literally millions of their own citizens.
So are Haman and Xerxes really extreme examples or do we have before us a stark warning of the real truth of human government, government without God?
See what we have. Haman approaches Xerxes with three clear goals: lying, murder, and stealing. Notice his art: “There is a certain people.” He deliberately does not identify who he’s talking about, lest perhaps Xerxes might have any affection for the Jewish people. He says, “They do not obey the king’s laws.” In fact, in every nation in history, the most faithful citizens have been the believers. A Roman centurion was once ordered to execute any of his soldiers who called themselves Christians. His reply was, “But they’re my best soldiers!” It is reported that in a Russian town, the Christians decided to build themselves a church even though it was not allowed. When the local governor was told to stop them, his reply was, “They are our finest citizens. If building a church means I’ll have more like them, then let them be.”
It is true that Mordecai didn’t obey the king’s law to bow to Haman, but Mordecai is also the man who exposed Bigthana and Teresh and saved the king’s life. That fact itself contradicts Haman’s claim that “it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.” Haman never even intimates the real reason for all of this is his hatred for one man, Mordecai. He hides his true agenda behind the illusion that he’s sincerely concerned about the king’s best interest.
And what does he recommend? Murder and stealing. He proposes an order to “destroy, kill, and annihilate all the Jews—young and old, women and little children…and to plunder their goods.”
And how does the king respond? Notice he doesn’t make even the slightest inquiry. He doesn’t ask, exactly which group of people is this? He doesn’t ask in what ways they “don’t obey the king’s laws.” He does not do even the bare minimum that any ruler would be expected to do when someone is proposing to massacre an entire people group of his own subjects. When he wanted to depose Vashti, he sought the advice of his seven counselors. Not here. He just hands Haman his ring and says, “Do whatever you wish.”
No doubt, Haman’s offer of ten thousand talents of silver appealed to the king’s greedy heart. Granted he tells Haman to keep his money, but Haman is talking his language. Ten thousand talents of silver is a fantastic sum of money. There’s probably no way today to determine absolutely how much that was worth, but it is somewhere in the 100’s of millions or even billions of dollars. Just like the American government today, that’s the numbers they all like to talk about. The real truth is the more billions of dollars are floating around, the easier it is to siphon off millions into their own pockets.
Haman’s wicked decree is issued, an entire people group is targeted for an undeserved massacre, and what do Haman and Xerxes do? They “sit down to drink.” There you have it. These two men’s only real goal in government is their own personal pleasure and gain. The real truth is they couldn’t care less about the people they govern. “The people” are only of value for the wealth and taxes Xerxes can embezzle from them. And while the citadel of Susa is “bewildered,” Haman and Xerxes laugh and party.
For those with the eyes to see, this is government without God.
What’s probably most horrifying to me is to see that this is my government. No wonder our Congress never does anything to actually help us. While they vote themselves the most extravagant salary/benefits package probably in the history of mankind, they do nothing to address the problems that actually face our people. And why not? Because they don’t care. They aren’t there to do us good. They’re there to do themselves good. They lie to us, raise our taxes, and you can bet it’s only a matter of time, and those of us who call their hand on it will pay the price. One way or another, they’ll order our execution, then “sit down to drink.”
The passage before us is very, very ugly and very, very scary, but I’m actually encouraged to see the truth. In a sense, it is a relief to stop trying to believe my government cares about me, that senators and congressmen really should be working for the people’s best interest. It is a strange sort of relief to simply face the fact that ours is today a government without God. They are of their father the devil and the lusts of their father they will do. It is more than ever true that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Believers more than ever ought to be putting on “the armor of God.” We should, more than ever, be praying for our nation, praying for revival, praying that godly people would find their way into government, but we should not be surprised to find out our government without God is corrupt and evil.
Would to God that somehow in His great power, His Spirit could sweep across our country so dramatically that we could actually once again be “one nation under God.” “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” For the sake of our children and grandchildren, God help us to be all we should be, to pray all we should, but if no such revival comes, let us remind ourselves this world is not our home. We are servants of the Most High God. Although Jesus is the rightful king over all the earth, for now Satan is “the prince of the power of the air.” Let us not be surprised at the evil that surrounds us, but rather, with eyes wide open, may we, like Jesus, love and do good and be found faithful to show our world the God they cannot see.
