The Pulpit Commentary — Esther — Section 158

they knock in vain at our very doors ; they plead in vain with our reason, our sel:f- interest, our conscience. But with overwhelming effect come at times national providences. These speak sometimes as with the voice of thunder, and they n.re seen sometimes with the vividness of the lightning's flash by hundreds of thousands nt one and the same moment. The great subject suggested by our present history, then, demands the attention of statesmen, of legislators, of all public men in their degree, and may obtain many a valuable cross light from the subject already con- sidered of patriotism.-B. Ver. 16.-The law of natwnal self-preservation. This passage, with two some- what similar passages preceding it, may read at first like the narration of sanguinary cruelty, and the indefensible havoc of human life. Our strongest sympathies were but very lately with the Jews, for whom fearful destruction was devised without the slightest shadow of justifiable provocation. We rejoiced with them when the cloud that overhung burst, and they seemed to be delivered from their former terrible outlook. But already we begin perhaps to repent, and to feel that neither our sympathy nor our gratulation were well merited. Though the destruction that threatened the Jews, and with such aggravating circumstances, is averted, it is little (even though it be true that they were not the side originally in fault), if all that is gained is, that the hands that shed blood are changed from the one side to the other. If no slaughter is spared, if for pity's sake human life be not saved, if those who were the unjustly doomed become in the hour of their own mercy the first to doom others, even though they may do so with tenfold provocation and with some rough sort of justice, we may be inclined to feel for a moment that there was after all not so very much to choose between the two. A little closer study of the context, however, will su.flice to show that such is not a fair description of the case. The subject suggests rather the statement of the law of self-preservation, not of the individual, but of the nation. Again, therefore, we have a question of great interest offering itself on the scale of national magnitude. This circumstance will facilitate the consideration of it under conditions in some respects more favourable. When treated as a question affecting the individual, it has often been entangled by casuistry ; but when considered in the unusual proportions here presenting themselves, its broader, bolder outlines will perhaps come out to view more plainly. The right of taking life for the sake of self-preservation, or in self-defence, may be sufficiently sketched out of the material of the present narrative. If that right is to be fairly allowed for, and at the same time limited as exactly as may be, it may be said to postulate the following conditions:- !. THAT THE OCCASION BE ONE 01!' UNDOUBTED NECESSITY. Jn the present instance the whole number of the Jews scattered throughout the 127 provinces now subject to Ahasuerus had been threatened with extermination. There could be no doubt of their imminent danger, and of their helplessness. When Esther (eh. viii. 5) supplicated the king "to reverse the letters devised by Haman . . . which he wrote to destroy the Jews in all the king's provinces," the king met the difficulty of his former irreversible decree and irreversible letters by giving authority to the threatened Jews "to gather themselves together, and to stand for their life, to destroy ... all the power of the people o.nd province that would assault them'' (eh. viii. 11). He cannot reverse his own former decree literally, but by a fiction he does so very really, very effectually. Esther and Mordecai would at that time have been gladly content to have simply removed from their Qwn race the decree that doomed them, but from the time that this way of putting the matter was revealed by the king, and the whole responsibility of saving themselves was thrown so far on their own efforts, the occasion became one of undoubted necessity. It was not war, it was not ~urder, it was not gratuitous massacre-it was a case of self-defence. II. THAT THERE BE THE LEAST SACRIFICE OF Lll!'E TIIAT WOULD ATTAIN THE NEEDFUL END. It is remarkable that the exact number should be so carefully given of the two slaughters in Shushan (vers. 6, 15), and of the aggregate of that (ver. 16) which took effect through the "king's provinces." That Esther asked for another day'~ opportunity of taking the lives of the enemies of her people in Shushan (vers. 13- 16) may safely be understood to be owing to epecial necessities not given in detail.  I 66 THE BOOK OF ESTHER. LcH. 1x, 1-82.