_HAMAN._
ESTHER iii. 1-6; v. 9-14; vii. 5-10.
Haman is the Judas of Israel. Not that his conduct or his place in
history would bring him into comparison with the traitor apostle, for
he was an open foe and a foreigner. But he is treated by popular
Judaism as the Arch-Enemy, just as Judas is treated by popular
Christianity. Like Judas, he has assigned to him a solitary
pre-eminence in wickedness, which is almost inhuman. As in the case of
Judas, there is thought to be no call for charity or mercy in judging
Haman. He shares with Judas the curse of Cain. Boundless execration is
heaped on his head. Horror and hatred have almost transformed him into
Satan. He is called The "Agagite," an obscure title which is best
explained as a later Jewish nickname derived from a reference to the
king of Amalek who was hewn in pieces before the Lord. In the
Septuagint he is surnamed "The Macedonian," because when that version
was made the enemies of Israel were the representatives of the empire
of Alexander and his successors. During the dramatic reading of the
Book of Esther in a Jewish synagogue at the Feast of Purim, the
congregation may be found taking the part of a chorus and exclaiming
at every mention of the name of Haman, "May his name be blotted out,"
"Let the name of the ungodly perish," while boys with mallets will
pound stones and bits of wood on which the odious name is written.
This frantic extravagance would be unaccountable but for the fact that
the people whose "badge is sufferance" has summed up under the name of
the Persian official the malignity of their enemies in all ages. Very
often this name has served to veil a dangerous reference to some
contemporary foe, or to heighten the rage felt against an
exceptionally odious person by its accumulation of traditional hatred,
just as in England on the fifth of November the "Guy" may represent
some unpopular person of the day.
When we turn from this unamiable indulgence of spiteful passion to the
story that lies behind it, we have enough that is odious without the
conception of a sheer monster of wickedness, a very demon. Such a
being would stand outside the range of human motives, and we could
contemplate him with unconcern and detachment of mind, just as we
contemplate the destructive forces of nature. There is a common
temptation to clear ourselves of all semblance to the guilt of very
bad people by making it out to be inhuman. It is more humiliating to
discover that they act from quite human motives--nay, that those very
motives may be detected, though with other bearings, even in our own
conduct. For see what were the influences that stirred in the heart of
Haman. He manifests by his behaviour the intimate connection between
vanity and cruelty.
The first trait in his character to reveal itself is vanity, a most
inordinate vanity. Haman is introduced at the moment when he has been
exalted to the highest position under the king of Persia; he has just
been made grand vizier. The tremendous honour turns his brain. In the
consciousness of it he swells out with vanity. As a necessary
consequence he is bitterly chagrined when a porter does not do homage
to him as to the king. His elation is equally extravagant when he
discovers that he is to be the only subject invited to meet Ahasuerus
at Esther's banquet. When the king inquires how exceptional honour is
to be shown to some one whose name is not yet revealed, this
infatuated man jumps to the conclusion that it can be for nobody but
himself. In all his behaviour we see that he is just possessed by an
absorbing spirit of vanity.
Then at the first check he suffers an annoyance proportionate to the
boundlessness of his previous elation. He cannot endure the sight of
indifference or independence in the meanest subject. The slender fault
of Mordecai is magnified into a capital offence. This again is so huge
that it must be laid to the charge of the whole race to which the
offender belongs. The rage which it excites in Haman is so violent
that it will be satisfied with nothing short of a wholesale massacre
of men, women, and children. "Behold how great a matter a little fire
kindleth"--when it is fanned by the breath of vanity. The cruelty of
the vain man is as limitless as his vanity.
Thus the story of Haman illustrates the close juxtaposition of these
two vices, vanity and cruelty; it helps us to see by a series of lurid
pictures how fearfully provocative the one is of the other. As we
follow the incidents, we can discover the links of connection between
the cause and its dire effects.
In the first place, it is clear that vanity is a form of magnified
egotism. The vain man thinks supremely of himself, not so much in the
way of self-interest, but more especially for the sake of
self-glorification. When he looks out on the world, it is always
through the medium of his own vastly magnified shadow. Like the
Bröcken Ghost, this shadow becomes a haunting presence standing out
before him in huge proportions. He has no other standard of
measurement. Everything must be judged according as it is related to
himself. The good is what gives him pleasure; evil is what is noxious
to him. This self-centred attitude, with the distortion of vision that
it induces, has a double effect, as we may see in the case of Haman.
Egotism utilises the sufferings of others for its own ends. No doubt
cruelty is often a consequence of sheer callousness. The man who has
no perception of the pain he is causing or no sympathy with the
sufferers will trample them under foot on the least provocation. He
feels supremely indifferent to their agonies when they are writhing
beneath him, and therefore he will never consider it incumbent on him
to adjust his conduct with the least reference to the pain he gives.
That is an entirely irrelevant consideration. The least inconvenience
to himself outweighs the greatest distress of other people, for the
simple reason that that distress counts as nothing in his calculation
of motives. In Haman's case, however, we do not meet with this
attitude of simple indifference. The grand vizier is irritated, and he
vents his annoyance in a vast explosion of malignity that must take
account of the agony it produces, for in that agony its own thirst for
vengeance is to be slaked. But this only shows the predominant
selfishness to be all the greater. It is so great that it reverses the
engines that drive society along the line of mutual helpfulness, and
thwarts and frustrates any amount of human life and happiness for the
sole purpose of gratifying its own desires.
Then the selfishness of vanity promotes cruelty still further by
another of its effects. It destroys the sense of proportion. Self is
not only regarded as the centre of the universe; like the sun
surrounded by the planets, it is taken to be the greatest object, and
everything else is insignificant when compared to it. What is the
slaughter of a few thousand Jews to so great a man as Haman, grand
vizier of Persia? It is no more than the destruction of as many flies
in a forest fire that the settler has kindled to clear his ground. The
same self-magnification is visibly presented by the Egyptian
bas-reliefs, on which the victorious Pharaohs appear as tremendous
giants driving back hordes of enemies or dragging pigmy kings by their
heads. It is but a step from this condition to insanity, which is the
apotheosis of vanity. The chief characteristic of insanity is a
diseased enlargement of self. If he is elated the madman regards
himself as a person of supreme importance--as a prince, as a king,
even as God. If he is depressed he thinks that he is the victim of
exceptional malignity. In that case he is beset by watchers of evil
intent; the world is conspiring against him; everything that happens
is part of a plot to do him harm. Hence his suspiciousness; hence his
homicidal proclivities. He is not so mad in his inferences and
conclusions. These may be rational and just, on the ground of his
premisses. It is in the fixed ideas of these premisses that the root
of his insanity may be detected. His awful fate is a warning to all
who venture to indulge in the vice of excessive egotism.
In the second place, vanity leads to cruelty through the entire
dependence of the vain person on the good opinion of others; and this
we may see clearly in the career of Haman. Vanity is differentiated
from pride in one important particular--by its outward reference. The
proud man is satisfied with himself; but the vain man is always
looking outside himself with feverish eagerness to secure all the
honours that the world can bestow upon him. Thus Mordecai may have
been proud in his refusal to bow before the upstart premier: if so his
pride would not need to court admiration; it would be self-contained
and self-sufficient. But Haman was possessed by an insatiable thirst
for homage. If a single obscure individual refused him this honour, a
shadow rested on everything. He could not enjoy the queen's banquet
for the slight offered him by the Jew at the palace gate, so that he
exclaimed, "Yet all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see
Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate."[264] A selfish man in
this condition can have no rest if anything in the world outside him
fails to minister to his honour. While a proud man in an exalted
position scarcely deigns to notice the "dim common people," the vain
man betrays his vulgarity by caring supremely for popular adulation.
Therefore while the haughty person can afford to pass over a slight
with contempt, the vain creature who lives on the breath of applause
is mortally offended by it and roused to avenge the insult with
corresponding rage.
[264] Esther v. 13.
Selfishness and dependence on the external, these attributes of vanity
inevitably develop into cruelty wherever the aims of vanity are
opposed. And yet the vice that contains so much evil is rarely visited
with a becoming severity of condemnation. Usually it is smiled at as
a trivial frailty. In the case of Haman it threatened the
extermination of a nation, and the reaction from its menace issued in
a terrific slaughter of another section of society. History records
war after war that has been fought on the ground of vanity. In
military affairs this vice wears the name of glory; but its nature is
unaltered. For what is the meaning of a war that is waged for "la
gloire" but one that is designed in order to minister to the vanity of
the people who undertake it? A more fearful wickedness has never
blackened the pages of history. The very frivolity of the occasion
heightens the guilt of those who plunge nations into misery on such a
paltry pretext. It is vanity that urges a savage warrior to collect
skulls to adorn the walls of his hut with the ghastly trophies; it is
vanity that impels a restless conqueror to march to his own triumph
through a sea of blood; it is vanity that rouses a nation to fling
itself on its neighbour in order to exalt its fame by a great victory.
Ambition at its best is fired by the pride of power; but in its meaner
forms ambition is nothing but an uprising of vanity clamouring for
wider recognition. The famous invasion of Greece by Xerxes was
evidently little better than a huge exhibition of regal vanity. The
childish fatuity of the king could seek for no exalted ends. His
assemblage of swarms of men of all races in an ill-disciplined army
too big for practical warfare showed that the thirst for display
occupied the principal place in his mind, to the neglect of the more
sober aims of a really great conqueror. And if the vanity that lives
on the world's admiration is so fruitful in evil when it is allowed to
deploy on a large scale, its essential character will not be improved
by the limitation of its scope in humbler spheres of life. It is
always mean and cruel.
Two other features in the character of Haman may be noticed. First, he
shows energy and determination. He bribes the king to obtain the royal
consent to his deadly design, bribes with an enormous present equal to
the revenue of a kingdom, though Ahasuerus permits him to recoup
himself by seizing the property of the proscribed nation. Then the
murderous mandate goes forth: it is translated into every language of
the subject peoples; it is carried to the remotest parts of the
kingdom by the posts, the excellent organisation of which, under the
Persian government has become famous. Thus far everything is on a
large scale, betokening a mind of resource and daring. But now turn to
the sequel. "And the king and Haman sat down to drink."[265] It is a
horrible picture--the king of Persia and his grand vizier at this
crisis deliberately abandoning themselves to their national vice. The
decree is out; it cannot be recalled--let it go and do its fell work.
As for its authors, they are drowning all thought of its effect on
public opinion in the wine-cup; they are boozing together in a
disgusting companionship of debauchery on the eve of a scene of
wholesale bloodshed. This is what the glory of the Great King has come
to. This is the anti-climax of his minister's vanity at the moment of
supreme success. After such an exhibition we need not be surprised at
the abject humiliation, the terror of cowardice, the frantic effort to
extort pity from a woman of the very race whose extermination he had
plotted, manifested by Haman in the hour of his exposure at Esther's
banquet. Beneath all his braggart energy he is a weak man. In most
cases self-indulgent, vain, and cruel people are essentially weak at
heart.
[265] Esther iii. 15.
Looking at the story of Haman from another point of view, we see how
well it illustrates the confounding of evil devices and the punishment
of their author in the drama of history. It is one of the most
striking instances of what is called "poetic justice," the justice
depicted by the poets, but not always seen in prosaic lives, the
justice that is itself a poem because it makes a harmony of events.
Haman is the typical example of the schemer who "falls into his own
pit," of the villain who is "hoisted on his own petard." Three times
the same process occurs, to impress its lesson with threefold
emphasis. We have it first in the most moderate form when Haman is
forced to assist in bestowing on Mordecai the honours he has been
coveting for himself, by leading the horse of the hated Jew in his
triumphant procession through the city. The same lesson is impressed
with tragic force when the grand vizier is condemned to be impaled on
the stake erected by him in readiness for the man whom he has been
compelled to honour. Lastly, the design of murdering the whole race to
which Mordecai belongs is frustrated by the slaughter of those who
sympathise with Haman's attitude towards Israel--the "Hamanites," as
they have been called. We rarely meet with such a complete reversal of
fate, such a climax of vengeance. In considering the course of events
here set forth we must distinguish between the old Jewish view of it
and the significance of the process itself.
The Jews were taught to look on all this with fierce, vindictive glee,
and to see in it the prophecy of the like fate that was treasured up
for their enemies in later times. This rage of the oppressed against
their oppressors, this almost fiendish delight in the complete
overthrow of the enemies of Israel, this total extinction of any
sentiment of pity even for the helpless and innocent sufferers who are
to share the fate of their guilty relatives--in a word, this utterly
un-Christlike spirit of revenge, must be odious in our eyes. We cannot
understand how good men could stand by with folded arms while they saw
women and children tossed into the seething cauldron of vengeance;
still less how they could themselves perpetrate the dreadful deed. But
then we cannot understand that tragedy of history, the oppression of
the Jews, and its deteriorating influence on its victims, nor the
hard, cruel spirit of blank indifference to the sufferings of others
that prevailed almost everywhere before Christ came to teach the world
pity.
When we turn to the events themselves, we must take another view of
the situation. Here was a rough and sweeping, but still a complete and
striking punishment of cruel wrong. The Jews expected this too
frequently on earth. We have learnt that it is more often reserved for
another world and a future state of existence. Yet sometimes we are
startled to see how apt it can be even in this present life. The cruel
man breeds foes by his very cruelty; he rouses his own executioners by
the rage that he provokes in them. It is the same with respect to many
other forms of evil. Thus vanity is punished by the humiliation it
receives from those people who are irritated at its pretensions; it is
the last failing that the world will readily forgive, partly perhaps
because it offends the similar failing in other people. Then we see
meanness chastised by the odium it excites, lying by the distrust it
provokes, cowardice by the attacks it invites, coldness of heart by a
corresponding indifference on the side of other people. The result is
not always so neatly effected nor so visibly demonstrated as in the
case of Haman; but the tendency is always present, because there is a
Power that makes for righteousness presiding over society and inherent
in the very constitution of nature.