So the king and Haman went to Queen Esther’s banquet, and as they were drinking wine on the second day, the king again asked, “Queen Esther, what is your petition? It will be given you. What is your request? Even up to half the kingdom, it will be granted.”
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. Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs attending the king, said, “A pole reaching to a height of fifty cubits stands by Haman’s house. He had it set up for Mordecai, who spoke up to help the king.”
The king said, “Impale him on it!” So they impaled Haman on the pole he had set up for Mordecai. Then the king’s fury subsided. - Esther 7:1-10
Mordecai recorded these events, and he sent letters to all the Jews throughout the provinces of King Xerxes, near and far, to have them celebrate annually the fourteenth and fifteenth days of the month of Adar as the time when the Jews got relief from their enemies, and as the month when their sorrow was turned into joy and their mourning into a day of celebration. He wrote them to observe the days as days of feasting and joy and giving presents of food to one another and gifts to the poor. - Esther 9:20-22
When you show that the relationship with the one can be extended to the many. There are many recorded instances in the Bible when the people of God are under the authority of the ungodly and the unrighteous, who really don't care about them or definitely put them in a significantly lower category where they can disposed of at a whim. But we also see that God sometimes places a person or two in the group near the authority to develop a different type of relationship--not as a member of "that" group but as someone whose hard work and dedication allows them to be trusted. God can use this status as a "someone" rather than the status as a "one of them" to effect his rescue and accomplish his purposes. He did that here, where the King saw "Esther" as his wife and "Mordecai" as his advisor and servant rather than as a "foreigner" or "Jew". When Esther revealed to him that Haman's plan to kill the Jews recast Haman's plan into something which threatened his wife and advisor, he was angry and it transformed his whole attitude towards God's people.
I think that we sometimes avoid contact with the "enemy" because we fear it will compromise us and our values and beliefs, or make us give away our strength uselessly, or enable them in their wicked ways. But the people in the Bible, from Joseph to Daniel and Mordecai chose to their best for people, even the people who qualify as "enemies" and by changing their thinking on a personal level they also changed their thinking about bigger issues. I'm glad God didn't do that with me: "For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!" (Romans 5:10)
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