Haman’s Great Hatred
After that first feast, Haman left the royal palace, much elated, as indeed to all appearances he might be. Never had his position among these foreigners seemed so assured, his elevation so high. The honor that day accorded him had been most unusual. Not only had he been permitted to behold the carefully secluded queen; but he, he alone, had dined with her and with the king in privacy.
Yet even as Haman passed out from the palace he encountered Mordecai; and, as before, the Jew did him no reverence. It was like a sudden chill to Haman’s confidence, this shadowy opponent, grim and silent, scorning him in the very moment of his triumph. He went home to his friends and his wife; he boasted to them of all his wealth and power, of this last great favor the queen had done him; yet he suddenly ended all his vaporizing with that grim outcry which has become the traditional echo of wounded vanity, “Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.”
His ready flatterers advised him to prepare an enormous gallows and to petition the king for leave to hang Mordecai thereon in all men’s sight.
Comments