The Pulpit Commentary — Esther — Section 159

It need not for one moment indicate any wish that one life more should be s11crificed than should be necessary for the safety of the Jews. Now when the sum-total of the slain are added, amounting to 75,800,first, the number, large as it seems, probably does not reach the number of the Jews who were to have been exterminated• aecondl,y, it is certain there was no comparison between the numbers relatively~ for in the case of the Jews the slaughter was to have been of all, while 75,800 were but a small proportion of the entire population not Jews; and tliirdly, there not only is no evidence of there having been 8:ny indiscriminate slaughter on the pa!1 of the Jews, but presumably none were slam except such as rose up to slay. Thie self-defence, therefore, on the part of the Jews probably left more living men than would have been left under the circumstances if the Jews had suffered their own lives to be unresistingly taken. Ill. THAT THE LEAST POSSIBLE GAIN OUTSIDE OF THE ONE GAIN OF LIFE, THE SUPREME OBJECT SOUGHT, DE TAKEN BY THE ACT OF SELF-DEFENCE. In the decree granted by King Ahasuerus special provision was spontaneously made that the Jews should appropriate the spoil on their successful resistance of the enemy. Never- theless, when the time came they refused to do so. And evidently much significance attached to this conduct. It is repeated as many as three times in this chapter. On every occasion on which a victory on their part is announced, this is added - that instead of laying hands on the prey, they emphatically refrained from doing so. This differences self-defence, and the taking of life in self-defence, very greatly from other occasions in which life is taken. • IV. THAT REVENGE BE THE LEAST POSSIBLE ELEMENT IN IT. In cases of sudden need of self-defence there will be no room for the feeling of revenge. Self-defence, however, will by no means be requisite only in such cases. Where there is long delay it is impossible to predicate that none of the spirit of revenge may enter into the hearts of some out of the many ; but there is no need to suppose that now there was any in the hearts of the principals. Esther and Mordecai desired one thing- the safety of their people. They wished for "rest from their enemies." They probably felt that they were the ministers of righteous retribution. They desired that Haman's ten sons "hanged on the gallows" should still drive home on an impressed populace the sense and conviction of what a force righteous retribution was, and how much men ought " to stand in awe " because of it ; but there is no proof whatever that in all the relief to the bitterness of their soul revenge played any part. The lessons of this portion of the narrative are not needed for the pulpit on every Lord's day certainly, but it may be they are provided here, in the universality of the use of the Divine book, for some special and solemn crises.-B. Vere. 19, 22.-The eleme.nts of perfect joy. "A good day, and of sending portioni;, one to another: ... days of feasting and joy, and of sending portions one to another, and gifts to the poor." Twice then, among the other particulars of the people's glad celebration of their deliverance from a savage massacre, is this detail included, that they sent " portions one to another;" and once it is added that they sent " gifts to the poor." Thie was no ancient prescription of the law, so far as literal command is con- cerned. But the spirit of it is no doubt to be detected even there, especially in those passages which urge the principle of taking care that days of general joy should be felt in their warming influence by "the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow." In the same spirit we read in Nehemiah (eh. viii. 10), however, what comes verbally much nearer our present passage. A day of deep feeling and special cause of joy was to be observed as a day of feasting, and of sending " portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared." There can be no question that we have here a portion of the genuine history of the human heart. We . seem to hear some of the be_tter and simpler utterances of human nature. The JOY of the saved people of God 1s before UB. And whatever other marks it may have, it certainly bas those which make it a type of Christian joy on earth. In this light principally we may now regard it. We notice here- I. A GENERAL AND SIMULTANEOUS JOY. It was not in every respect equal. But in one respect it waa equal, in that wherever it spread it was the joy of life, of life rescued from the brink of destruotion. Joy need not be equal all round' a family, CR, IX. 1-32.] THE BOOK OF ESTHER. 1i;7