Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Then Queen Esther answered, “If I have found favor with you, Your Majesty, and if it pleases you, grant me my life—this is my petition. And spare my people—this is my request. For I and my people have been sold to be destroyed, killed and annihilated. If we had merely been sold as male and female slaves, I would have kept quiet, because no such distress would justify disturbing the king.”
King Xerxes asked Queen Esther, “Who is he? Where is he—the man who has dared to do such a thing?”
Esther said, “An adversary and enemy! This vile Haman!”
Then Haman was terrified before the king and queen. The king got up in a rage, left his wine and went out into the palace garden. But Haman, realizing that the king had already decided his fate, stayed behind to beg Queen Esther for his life.
Just as the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet hall, Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was reclining.
The king exclaimed, “Will he even molest the queen while she is with me in the house?”
As soon as the word left the king’s mouth, they covered Haman’s face.

• Esther 7:3-8

Haman’s anger was directed toward Mordecai, but he expanded that anger to be a hatred of the Jews.  It is not that Haman was the first antisemite.  The Egyptians enslaved them.  The Edomites made them go around their territory when they wandered in the wilderness.  The Moabites wanted them cursed by Balaam.  And the Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians all wanted them destroyed.

I have heartburn with the term antisemite, in that many who hated the Jews were Semites themselves, descendants of Shem.  There is probably a third of all people on earth that descended from Shem.  But hating the Jews is called antisemitic.

But this idea of Haman to kill all the Jews and put Mordecai on a pole outside his house was a grand idea, evil, but grand scale.

But then, when Esther is bold in speaking to the king, something that even the queen was not allowed to do openly, Haman runs to plead forgiveness to the very queen he had wanted to kill.

Xerxes had trusted the wrong man.  He would turn Haman’s job over to Mordecai, and Haman would be empaled on the pole that had been meant for Mordecai.  Brutal justice, but justice.

We again are facing antisemitism.  While a terrorist group, Hamas, attacked Israel, killing people and taking hostages, the Israel counterattack that has been designed to reduce civilian casualties has raised an outcry of antisemitism around the world.  Very confusing government reactions even provide money to the terrorists to keep the area unstable for more generations.

As one Israeli officer quoted Golda Meir.  The trouble with Hamas will continue until the Palestinians love their children more than they hate us.  Not in quotes, as I may be paraphrasing what I heard.

But due to the courage of Esther, the destruction of the Jews was thwarted.

If we could only see others as fellow human beings.  We each are made in the image of God.  There is great potential, but only if we love Jesus, will we be able love one another in the way necessary to have lasting peace.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory