Esther 3:7-1

Haman's scheme for the extermination of the Jews

7. In the first month, which is the month Nisan the Hebraised form of the Babylonian Nisannu. It is the later substitute for the older Israelite name for the first month of the year, viz. Abib (see on Esther 2:16), and corresponds to the latter part of March and beginning of April. The meaning of the word Nisan is uncertain. Some make it denote fruitfulness, others, beginning or origin.

Attention has been drawn to the tragic significance of thus plotting the destruction of the Jews in the month of their memorable deliverance from Egypt (Exodus 13:4).

they cast Pur, that is, the lot Pur is a word perhaps borrowed from the Persian pâre, a piece, fragment, and may be connected with the Latin pars, portio, or with Assyr. puru, or buru, a stone. But see further in Additional Note I, p. 67.

The custom of deciding by lot, by means of dice, or pieces of wood, or strips of paper or parchment, prevailed widely in the East, and was considered as a lawful means of committing the decision to Divine agency. Soothsayers and astrologers, who employed this among their methods of determining difficult questions, played an important part in Oriental society. The use of the lot among the Persians is mentioned by Herodotus (iii. 128) and by Xenophon (Cyrop. i. 6. 44, iv. 5. 55). For a parallel among the Jews see 1 Samuel 14:41 f. (cp. Proverbs 16:33). We may compare Acts 1:26.

from day to day, and from month to month In order to ensure the success of the scheme Haman seems to have gone through the process of testing each day of the successive months until the twelfth month and its thirteenth day (see Esther 3:13) were reached, and declared favourable.

to the twelfthmonth] It would appear that by an error not uncommon among the copyists of manuscripts, the writer's eye, owing to the repetition of the Hebrew for -month," passed over a clause, and that the original reading stood thus, and the lot fell upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month. This correction is supported by the LXX., though it reads -fourteenth" for thirteenth.

According to Jewish tradition (Megillah, 13 b) Haman tried month after month till he reached Adar. Moses died in that month. Hence Haman chose it, forgetting that in the same month Moses had also been born, and therefore from his (or rather, the Jewish) point of view it was likely to be as unfavourable to his purposes as any of the preceding. It should be added that the identity of the day of the month on which Moses was born with that on which he died is inferred by the Jewish commentator Rashi (Rabbi Solomon, son of Isaac, a.d. 1040 1105) from the words -I am an hundred and twenty years old this day," Deuteronomy 31:2, all that follows to the end of Deuteronomy 34:5 being assumed as included in the same day.

Adar the Babylonian ad(d) âru, the meaning, however, being doubtful. As the last month of the year, it was followed by Nisan, the first of the next.