Esther drama is not about a final showdown between Amalek and tribe of Benjamin

 

 

by

 

Damien F. Mackey

 

 

Haman, formerly an apostate King of Judah, was not out to annihilate

the entire Jewish race. He was bent upon destroying only those

like his Yahwistic foe, Mordecai, who were working towards

the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem.

 

  

The standard view goes something like this:

 

Hundreds of years later, Saul nearly fulfills the command by killing all Amalekite men, women, and children. But he spares their king, who keeps his people barely alive by having a child. Many more generations later, one of his descendants, the villain Haman, goes on to develop a plot to kill all the Jews living in exile under a Persian ruler. The lesson, when read literally, is clear: Saul’s failure to kill every Amalekite posed an existential threat to the Jewish people.

 

We have just read that King Saul of Israel, defying the terrible herem (חֵרֶם cherem) command of the Lord to wipe out the Amalekite people lock, stock and barrel, had spared their King Agag, with the result that a descendants of his, “the villain Haman”, living in Persia at a much later time, conspires to wipe out the  entire Jewish race.

 

What seemingly makes this exciting take on the Book of Esther the more plausible is that the man who will oppose, and finally defeat, Haman and his minions, Mordecai, was actually of the same tribe as King Saul, a Benjaminite, sharing the same ancestor, Kish (Esther 2:5-7; cf. I Samuel 9:1-2):

 

Now there was in the citadel of Susa a Jew of the tribe of Benjamin, named Mordecai son of Jair, the son of Shimei, the son of Kish, who had been carried into exile from Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, among those taken captive with Jehoiachin king of Judah. Mordecai had a cousin named Hadassah, whom he had brought up because she had neither father nor mother. This young woman, who was also known as Esther, had a lovely figure and was beautiful. Mordecai had taken her as his own daughter when her father and mother died.

 

And so we have the perfect cosmic scenario, today so heavily employed by the Zionists: The ancient enmity between Amalek and the tribe of Benjamin, unresolved in the day of King Saul, will now be fully resolved when the Benjaminite Jew, Mordecai, overcomes that terrible last vestige of the Amalekites, Haman.

 

Sorry to spoil a good story.

This is not entirely how it happened.

 

Turning to Jewish legends – not always reliable, but in this case crucial – Haman was actually, shock, horror, ‘a Jew, one known to Mordecai’ (Ginsburg).

 

But which contemporary Jew?

 

Esther 3:1 is the key to the whole thing, but the names need to be properly interpreted:

 

After these things did King Ahasuerus promote Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes that were with him.

 

Vagueness concerning the true ethnicity of Haman has led to his being called variously an Agagite; an Amalekite: a Bougaean; and a Macedonian.

Macedonian is totally irrelevant, and Bougaean cannot be explained.

Boogeyman would be better because that is what Haman has become for the Jews.

 

The Jews customarily Boo Haman at the Feast of Purim.

 

Firstly, there is no such race specifically as Agag (Agagite).

And, secondly, the MT Greek word for Amalekite (Amalikitis Aμαληκίτης) appears to have been confused here with the Greek word for Captive (aichmálo̱tos αἰχμάλωτος).

 

Haman “the Captive” was not an Amalekite, or Agagite.

He was the Jewish king, “Jeconiah … the Captive” (I Chronicles 3:17), the (grand-)son of Queen Hamutal (Hammutal), given in Esther 3:1 as Hammedatha.

 

This is the key to the historicity of the Book of Esther.

 

Haman, formerly an apostate King of Judah, was not out to annihilate the entire Jewish race. He was bent upon destroying only those like his Yahwistic foe, Mordecai, who were working towards the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem.