The Pole Haman Built

On the third day Esther finished praying, and took off her mourning clothes, and put on her royal robes. And she walked through the palace with two maids — leaning on one, while the other carried her train — until she came to the doorway of the inner court, where nobody was allowed to come unasked. Her face was cheerful, the way a much-loved person’s face is. Her heart was in her throat. The king was sitting on his throne in all his splendor, gold and jewels from head to foot, and he looked up at her with his face blazing — and Esther’s courage went out of her like water, and she fainted and fell against her maid. And God turned the king’s spirit gentle. He came down off his throne in alarm and caught her up in his arms and held her until she came round, and said, “What is it, Esther? I am your husband. Take courage — you are not going to die. That law is for other people. Come here.” And he held out the golden staff and laid it against her neck, and said, ‘Tell me what you want. Up to half my kingdom, and it is yours.’ And Esther — who could have blurted the whole thing out right there, and did not — said, “If it please the king, let the king and Haman come today to a banquet I have made.” So they came. And over the wine the king asked again: what is it you want? And Esther said: come again tomorrow, you and Haman, and tomorrow I will tell you.

Haman went home that evening delighted with himself. He called in his wife and his friends and went through the whole list — his money, his promotions, how the king had made him first man in the kingdom, and now this: the queen has invited nobody to her banquet but me, and I am asked again tomorrow. And then he said, “And none of it is worth anything to me, as long as I have to look at Mordecai the Jew sitting in that gateway.” And his wife Zeresh said, “Then have a pole set up, seventy-five feet high. In the morning ask the king to have Mordecai hanged on it — and then go off to your banquet and enjoy yourself.” Haman thought this was an excellent idea, and had the thing built that night, in his own garden, tall enough to be seen over the rooftops.

And that same night, the king could not sleep. It is such a small thing. One man lies awake. And because he cannot sleep he sends for the most boring book in the palace — the daily record of everything that happens in the kingdom — and has it read out loud to him in the dark. And the reader comes, out of years and years of pages, to a short entry about a man named Mordecai who once reported a plot and saved the king’s life. And the king said, “What honor was given to Mordecai for that?” And his servants said: nothing at all. And just then there were footsteps in the outer court. It was Haman, arriving early to ask permission to hang Mordecai. And the king said, ‘Who is out there? Bring him in.’ And before Haman could open his mouth, the king asked him a question: “What should be done for the man the king wants to honor?” And Haman thought to himself: who would the king want to honor except me? So he made it good: “Let them bring out a royal robe that the king himself has worn, and the horse the king himself rides. And let one of the king’s greatest nobles dress the man in it and set him on the horse and lead him through the main street of the city, calling out ahead of him: This is what is done for the man the king wants to honor!” And the king said, “Excellent. Hurry — take the robe and the horse, and do exactly that for Mordecai the Jew, who sits at the king’s gate. And do not leave out a single thing you have just said.” So Haman spent that morning leading the horse of the man he had built a pole for, up and down the main street of Susa, shouting, ‘This is what is done for the man the king wants to honor!’ And then Mordecai went back to his gateway, and Haman went home with his head covered up. And his wife and his friends took one look at him and said, “If Mordecai is one of the Jews, and you have begun to fall in front of him — you will not get up again. You will fall and go on falling, because the living God is with him.” And while they were still saying it, the king’s servants arrived to hurry him off to Esther’s second banquet.

So the king and Haman came in to drink with the queen. And the king asked her a third time: what is it you want, Queen Esther? Up to half of my kingdom. And Esther said, “If I have found favor with the king — then let my own life be given me. That is what I ask. And my people — that is what I ask for. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed and killed and wiped out.” And the king, who had signed it himself and never asked who they were, said, “Who is he? Where is the man who dared to think of such a thing?” And Esther said, “The enemy is this wicked man — Haman!” And Haman went white with terror in front of the king and the queen. The king got up and walked out into the garden, because he could not trust himself, and Haman threw himself down in front of the couch where Esther lay, begging her for his life — and that is exactly how the king found him when he came back in. And one of the servants said, “And there is a pole standing in Haman’s own garden, seventy-five feet high, that he built for Mordecai — the man who spoke up and saved the king.” And the king said, “Hang him on it.” So Haman was hanged on the pole he had built for somebody else. And every single thing Haman set up came back round onto his own head.

But it was not over. The letters had already gone. And in Persia a law sealed with the king’s ring could not be cancelled, not even by the king himself. The order to kill every Jew in the empire on the thirteenth of Adar was still out there in a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, and no one could call it back. So Esther fell at the king’s feet and begged him with tears to undo the harm, and the king held out the golden staff and gave her his ring, and said: write whatever you like in my name, and seal it with this — because what is sealed with the king’s ring cannot be undone. So a second law went out, by fast couriers on the king’s own horses, to every province in its own language: on that same day, the Jews are allowed to gather together and defend themselves and their wives and their children against anybody who attacks them. And when the thirteenth of Adar came, they did. All over the empire the Jews stood together against the people who came to kill them, and they were not wiped out. It was a day of fighting and a great many people died — and not one of them took a thing off the dead. Not once, anywhere in the empire. They were not out for anybody’s money. They were staying alive. And on the next day they rested. And that is why, ever since, Jewish families have kept a feast every year in the month of Adar called Purim — which just means Lots, after the little stones Haman threw to pick the day he would destroy them. On Purim they read the whole story out from beginning to end, and eat, and give presents to each other and to poor people, because the month that was meant to be the end of them turned into the best one in the year. And Mordecai the Jew became second man in the whole Persian empire, and he used it looking after his people and speaking peace for them. And somewhere in all of it Mordecai must have remembered his dream: the little spring that turned into a great river, and the sun coming up, and the low lifted high. He never did find out how, at the time. Neither do most people.