The Pulpit Commentary — Esther — Section 81

Very quickly the too plainly-marked impress of the Eastern aristocrat's effeminacy, n_nd excessiv~ luxuriousness, and unrec~ing pride of heart disJ?el the faintest s11gges- t10n thnt their apparent ease and happmess have any of the higher elements in them. We recognise in the men types of self-indulgence, even if it should prove nothing worse. - The other picture shows a city in miniature, in broken, disconnected soctions, interiors and exteriors together. The eye that is sweeping it turns it into a moving panorama. Whatever it is that is seen, an oppressive, ominous stillness seems to brood over it. An unnatural stoppage of ordinary business is apparent. The market, the bazaars, the exchange, the heathen temple, the Jews' meeting-place, and in foct every place where men do congregate, seems in a certain manner stricken with consternation. The faces and the gestures of the people agree therewith. These, at all events, betoken anything but peace and content and happiness. They give the impression of a "perplexity" rapidly inducing stupor, and a stupor ominous of paralysis itself. One malignant thought of Haman was answerable for all this. He had of late been obeying with completest self-surrender his worse genius; that was about the only self-surrender he practised or knew. His one malignant thought, the thought of "scorn," had rapidly ripened into determination, shaped into place and method, been clothed in the dress of consummate policy, and sealed with the signet of royal ring (ver. 10). That thought, so wrought up, was now sent forth, "hastened by the king's commandment," to a thousand cities and corners of the whole realm. Its publication made in Shushan the palace, and to the same hour "the king and Haman sat down to drink; but tht. city Shushan was perplexed." We have here- I. SOME UTTERLY CONCLUSIVE FACTS OF HUMAN LfrE. 1. A leading instance of the glaring disproportions of human fortune and circumstance. In closest juxtaposition are found, on the one hand, two men, sated with ease and all they can ask. On the other, a city, a whole city, throbbing with all the most various life, but-condensed into this brief description-" perplexed." These are, as matter of fact, the two experi- ences of human life found in the same place, on the same day, at the same hour; and they are the result of what we should be generally content to call_ human fortune. Is it such contrarieties as these, that can subsist side by side ; and is it not the irresistible conclusion that either human life is the sport of the arbitrary and the mockery of the malign ; or that human fortune is but an earthly phrase for a Pro- vidence, at present most inscrutable, but with which all is to be trustfully left, for that it will ere long give account and require account? Once satisfied of this, a heathen poet has taught us the words, Permitte c<Etera Deo. 2. A leading instance of the disproportion of human rights and powers. One might almost be tempted to call it a violent instance of an intolerable anomaly. But in various ways, in more subdued form, by removes far more numerous, and the contrasts accordingly far less striking, we can see this violent case to be but a plain case of what permeates the structure of human society. Yet ponder the facts here. There are thousands upon thousand11 whose life, humanly speaking, is not in their own hands ; and there are two in whose hands those lives are I This disproportion must dwarf every other. Compared with it, that of possession, of education, of brain,of opportunity, of genius, of position and birth must seem small matters. For life holds all the rest. Like a vessel, for the time it contains all. The aggregate of humanity is the history to a tremendous extent of an aggregate of vicariousness. The tangle human fingers cannot undo. Out of the labyrinth human wisdom cannot guide itself. One hand alone holds the thread, one eye alone commands the bird's-eye position and view. But in all we must remember these two conclusions: first, that the vicariousness counts sometimes for unmeasured help, and advantage, and love: secondly, that it were better far to be of the "perplexed city" and the jeopardised Jews than to be either of those two men "who sat down to drink" after what they had done. Who would buy their position to pay the price of their responsibility? Who would accept all their possessions at the risk of using them as they did? II. SOME UTTERLY CONDEMNING FACTS OF HUMAN NATURE. 1. A leading instance of the attitude in which II bad conscience will suffer u man to place himself ; the exact opposite of that for which conscience wus given, the exuct opposite of thut which 11 good conscienC'e would tolerate. The very function of conscience may be impaired, may be a while ruined, See its glory departed now. Haman now is a leading insttince 11:S'l'llD:l\. G  82 THE BOOK OF ESTHER. [CH, III, 7-16,