Esther 9:11-19
They Did Not Lay a Hand on the Plunder
11On that day the number of those killed in the citadel of Susa was reported to the king,
12who said to Queen Esther, “In the citadel of Susa the Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men, including Haman’s ten sons. What have they done in the rest of the royal provinces? Now what is your petition? It will be given to you. And what further do you request? It will be fulfilled.”
13Esther replied, “If it pleases the king, may the Jews in Susa also have tomorrow to carry out today’s edict, and may the bodies of Haman’s ten sons be hanged on the gallows.”
14So the king commanded that this be done. An edict was issued in Susa, and they hanged the ten sons of Haman.
15On the fourteenth day of the month of Adar, the Jews in Susa came together again and put to death three hundred men there, but they did not lay a hand on the plunder.
16The rest of the Jews in the royal provinces also assembled to defend themselves and rid themselves of their enemies. They killed 75,000 who hated them, but they did not lay a hand on the plunder.
17This was done on the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, and on the fourteenth day they rested, making it a day of feasting and joy.
18The Jews in Susa, however, had assembled on the thirteenth and the fourteenth days of the month. So they rested on the fifteenth day, making it a day of feasting and joy.
19This is why the rural Jews, who live in the villages, observe the fourteenth day of the month of Adar as a day of joy and feasting. It is a holiday for sending gifts to one another.
Berean Standard Bible
The count from the citadel is brought to the king, and then he answers.
In the citadel of Susa the Jews have killed and destroyed five hundred men, including Haman's ten sons. What have they done in the rest of the royal provinces?
He is curious. There is no horror in the question and no relief either, and having asked it he moves straight on to offering Esther whatever she would like next.
Esther asks for two things, and we should read them plainly rather than defend them. She asks that the Jews in Susa be given tomorrow as well, to carry out today's edict. And she asks that the bodies of Haman's ten sons be hanged.
The book records the request and says nothing about it. It does not tell us she was right, and it does not tell us she was wrong. This is the same woman who fasted three days and walked into a room that could have killed her, and here she is asking for a second day, and Esther leaves both of those facts standing without helping us reconcile them.
So the fourteenth comes and three hundred more die in Susa. Out in the provinces the number is seventy-five thousand. There is no way to make that small.
And then, for the third time in one chapter, this.
but they did not lay a hand on the plunder
Three times. The permission was written into the decree in chapter eight, in plain language, and every time the book reports a day of fighting it also reports that nobody touched the property. Whatever else was happening, they were not getting rich.
The last part of the passage is about a calendar. The provinces fought on the thirteenth and rested on the fourteenth. Susa fought on the thirteenth and the fourteenth and rested on the fifteenth. So the villages keep one day and the city keeps another, and the book stops to explain why, because somebody reading it would have noticed the difference and wondered.
How We Know
The book stops the story to sort out an inconvenience in its own calendar.
Esther 9:17 has the provinces fighting on the thirteenth and resting on the fourteenth. Esther 9:18 has Susa fighting on the thirteenth and fourteenth and resting on the fifteenth.
Esther 9:19 then explains that this is why the Jews in the villages keep the fourteenth, which addresses a discrepancy rather than avoiding one.
Two dates are harder to carry than one, and the book carries both and stops to account for the difference. That is a modest pointer toward a custom already kept in two forms, and not a demonstration of one.
Questions
1 When the king hears the number killed in Susa, what does he ask?
AnswerWhat they have done in the rest of the provinces, and then what else Esther would like. He is interested rather than troubled, and he has made that same open offer to her more than once already.
2 What does Esther ask for, and what does the book say about her asking?
AnswerA second day for the Jews in Susa, and the bodies of Haman's sons hanged. The book records it and offers no verdict. We are not told she was right and we are not told she was wrong.
3 Three times in one chapter we are told nobody touched the plunder. Why keep saying it?
AnswerBecause it was allowed and they kept not doing it. The decree gave them the right to take everything. Repeating the refusal is the book telling us which part of that day it wants remembered.
4 The city and the villages ended up keeping different days. What traditions in this house started because of something that actually happened?
AnswerMost families have one, and the odd details are usually the true ones. The book explains its two dates rather than tidying them into one, which is what people do when the practice came first and the explanation came after.
What This Means for Us
This passage is hard, and pretending otherwise would not help anybody. A second day of killing was requested by the woman we have been admiring for eight chapters, and the book neither excuses her nor condemns her.
Scripture does that more often than we are comfortable with. It records what people did, including people it is broadly on the side of, and leaves the weighing to us. A book that only ever showed us tidy heroes would be easier to read and much harder to believe.
So let this one sit uneasily. The writer had every chance to smooth it over and did not, and that should count for something when you weigh the rest of it.
Prayer
Father, there are pages we do not know what to do with, and this is one of them. Give us the honesty to sit with what troubles us instead of explaining it away. Thank you that your word tells the truth about people, including the ones it loves. Amen.