The Decree

After these things, King Xerxes lifted one man above all the officials who served him. His name was Haman the Agagite, son of Hammedatha, and the king set his seat higher than every other noble in the court. Rank flowed down from him now, and with it a command that reached every man stationed at the king’s gate.

The order was simple. All the royal servants at the gate were to bow low and pay homage to Haman, for so the king had directed concerning him. Day after day the men bent themselves before him as he passed. It was the expected thing, the ordinary courtesy of a court arranged by decree.

But one man at the gate did not bend.

Mordecai kept his place while the others lowered themselves. He would not bow, and he would not pay homage. The servants around him noticed, as men always notice the one who stands when everyone else is kneeling. They spoke to him about it, not once but day after day, asking why he disregarded the king’s command. He would not listen to them. At last he told them the reason: he was a Jew. That much he let them know, and having heard it, they wanted to see whether his stand would hold, whether that single fact would be allowed to excuse him. So they reported the matter to Haman.

Haman had walked past the gate without noticing. Now he looked, and he saw for himself that Mordecai neither bowed nor paid him homage. And he was filled with rage.

Yet it seemed a small thing to Haman to strike at Mordecai alone. The servants had told him the people to whom Mordecai belonged, and once Haman knew that Mordecai was a Jew, his anger reached past the one man to the whole of his nation. He set his mind to destroy all the Jews throughout the entire kingdom of Xerxes, every one of Mordecai’s people scattered across the provinces.

In the first month, the month of Nisan, in the twelfth year of King Xerxes, the pur — that is, the lot — was cast in Haman’s presence to choose a day and a month. It fell on the twelfth month, the month of Adar. Nearly a year away, marked out by the lot, waiting.

Then Haman went to the king. He did not speak Mordecai’s name, nor did he name the people he meant. He spoke of them only as a certain people. “There is a certain people,” he said, “dispersed and scattered among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom whose laws are different from everyone else’s and who do not obey the king’s laws; so it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them.” He offered the king a reason to be rid of them, and he offered silver as well — ten thousand talents to be paid into the royal treasury by the hands of those who would carry out the work.

The king took his signet ring from his hand and gave it to Haman, son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the enemy of the Jews. “Keep the money,” the king told him, “and do with the people as you please.”

So the royal scribes were summoned on the thirteenth day of the first month. Everything Haman commanded was written down — to the king’s satraps, to the governors of each province, to the officials of every people, each province in its own script and each people in their own language. It was written in the name of King Xerxes and sealed with the king’s signet ring.

The letters carried a single order. On one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month of Adar, all the Jews were to be destroyed, killed, and annihilated — young and old, women and children — and their possessions were to be plundered. Copies of the text were to be issued as law in every province and published to all the peoples, so that they would be ready for that day.

The couriers went out, driven by the king’s command, and the decree was issued in the citadel of Susa. Inside the palace the king and Haman sat down to drink.

But the city of Susa was thrown into confusion. The word had gone out into the streets, and the people who heard it did not understand it. They stood bewildered in the place where the order had first been sealed, while beyond the walls the couriers rode toward every province, carrying the day of destruction into every language of the kingdom.