Esther 9:5, commentary and pictures

The verse belongs to the account of Haman's plot to destroy all the Jews, God's people, under Medo-Persian rule in the Persian kingdom during the reign of Ahasuerus, that is Xerxes, who reigned from 480 B.C. to 465 B.C. God frustrated that purpose to destroy the people through whom the promised Man Child would come, and brought about a deliverance in which the Jews overcame and defeated those who hated them. The enemies struck down were Amalekites scattered throughout the kingdom.

God saved the Jews from their enemies by overruling providence that turned the threat against them. He was working for His people and answering the faith of the believing ones through the efforts and prayers of Mordecai, Esther, and their people. On the sleepless night the king had the chronicles read and learned of Mordecai's faithfulness in saving his life, and Haman, supposing the king meant to honor him, was made the means of promoting Mordecai to great honor. A counter decree was then issued for the Jews to destroy their enemies on the appointed day, and wicked Haman was hung on the gallows he had erected to hang Mordecai. The danger posed by Haman's plan and the decree against the Jews was thus reversed.

The verse describes how on that day the Jews defeated and killed with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, all their enemies who hated them and did what they would unto them. The counter decree not only saved them from Haman's plan but brought the complete overthrow of their enemies. That overthrow preserved the godly line, the people through whom the promised Man Child would come. It was the triumphant vindication of God's people and the utter and absolute defeat of wicked Haman as the devil's agent.

The hatred toward the Jews continued the war the Lord swore would be between Himself and Amalek from generation to generation, including Haman, a descendant of Agag, and was left unresolved when Saul failed to utterly scatter Amalek. The striking down belongs to the deliverance recorded in the close of the book in the ninth chapter to explain the origin of the feast of Purim, named from Pur meaning lot, the casting of lots. It stands in a book where the name of God does not occur in English and is found in the original only five times in the form of an acrostic. The verse is not an account of the ram in Daniel's vision pushing west, and north, and south, since that interpretation would make the Jews the beasts and confuse their victory with the ram's prophetic conquest.

The smiting, slaughter, and destruction of all the enemies of the Jews and the doing of their will upon those that hated them occurs at the opening of the third day. The two days before it are two thousand years under Rome in its imperial, kingly, and papal form with great iron teeth tearing and smiting the people of God, beginning when the Jews made a league with the Romans and Grecian rule ceased in 158 B.C. and ending in 1842. The third day beginning in 1843 is a thousand years when the torn and smitten people are healed, bound up, revived, and raised up to live in His sight and live and reign with Christ a thousand years. The history of the world is thus divided as two thousand years under the patriarchs, two thousand years under Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece, and two thousand years under pagan, papal, and kingly Rome. Their victory illustrates that God will deliver His people when they are threatened with death for refusing to obey human demands about worship, including a future demand to keep the Sabbath according to human command. The account illustrates that united prayer can turn aside danger and that great joy may follow great trouble.