King Achashverosh (Ahasuerus), his great feasts, and how Queen Vashti is removed.
Full summary
Achashverosh rules over 127 provinces, from Hodu (India) to Kush (Ethiopia), from his throne in Shushan (Susa), the capital. In his third year as king he makes a feast for his ministers and servants, the army of Paras and Madai (Persia and Media) and the governors of the provinces, and for 180 days he shows off the wealth and splendor of his kingdom.
(The commentaries say he ascended to power via his wife Vashti having been the granddaughter of Nevuchadnetzar, the previous King of Bavel who oversaw the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
This feast, some say, was also to commemorate the seventy years that had passed since the destruction, and the assumption that the prophecy that Jews would return to their homeland was false. In actuality, their calculation was wrong, and through the series of events that ensued, the Jews did return to Israel, and via the offspring of Esther, but that is another story).
When those days end, he makes a second feast, of seven days, in the garden court of the palace, for all the people in Shushan, great and small. The megillah describes the hangings of white and blue, the couches of gold and silver on a floor of marble, the wine served in golden vessels, each one different from the other, and the king's order that no one be forced to drink. Queen Vashti makes her own feast for the women in the palace.
On the seventh day, when the king is merry with wine, he orders his seven chamberlains to bring Queen Vashti before him wearing the royal crown, to show her beauty to the peoples and the ministers. Vashti refuses to come. The king is furious, and he asks his wise advisers, the seven ministers of Paras and Madai, what the law says should be done to her.
Memuchan answers that Vashti has wronged not only the king but all the ministers and all the peoples: when the women of the kingdom hear of it, they will look down on their own husbands. (The Gemara identifies Memuchan with Haman.) He advises a royal decree, written into the laws of Paras and Madai so that it can never be changed, that Vashti never again come before the king, and that her royal position be given to another woman who is better than she. The king does as Memuchan says. He sends letters to every province, to each in its own script and to each people in its own language, declaring that every man should rule in his own home.
The queen's place beside the king is now empty. Hashem's name does not appear anywhere in the megillah, but this is where the story of how the Jewish people are saved begins.
Esther becomes queen in place of Vashti, and Mordechai saves the king's life.
Full summary
When King Achashverosh's anger has calmed, he thinks again about Vashti and what was decreed against her. His young attendants suggest a plan. Officials in every province will bring beautiful young women to Shushan HaBirah (Shushan the capital), where Hegai, the king's chamberlain, will look after them. The young woman who pleases the king will become queen instead of Vashti. The king likes the idea and does it.
The megillah now introduces Mordechai. He is a Jew living in Shushan, of Shevet Binyamin (the tribe of Benjamin), whose family was taken into exile from Yerushalayim (Jerusalem) together with Yechonyah (Jeconiah), king of Yehudah, by Nevuchadnetzar (Nebuchadnezzar), king of Bavel (Babylon). (Pasuk 5 is one of the four pesukim that the tzibbur says aloud before the Baal Koreh, a custom in many communities.) Mordechai has raised his cousin Hadassah, also called Esther, because she has no father or mother. She is beautiful, and when her parents died Mordechai brought her up as his own daughter (The Gemara (Megillah 13a-13b) says Esther was his wife).
Esther is taken to the palace with the other young women. Hegai likes her and treats her with kindness. He quickly gives her the beauty preparations and her portions of food, along with seven chosen maids, and moves her to the best rooms. Esther does not reveal to anyone which people or family she comes from, because Mordechai told her not to. Every day Mordechai walks in front of the courtyard of the women's house to learn how she is.
Each young woman goes through twelve months of preparation. For half a year she is treated with myrrh oil, and for another half year with perfumes and creams. Then she goes to the king in the evening and returns in the morning to a second house, under Shaashgaz, and she does not come to the king again unless he asks for her by name. When Esther's turn comes, she asks for nothing beyond what Hegai advises, and everyone who sees her likes her. She is taken to the king in Tevet, the tenth month, seven years into his reign. Achashverosh loves her more than all the other women, crowns her and makes her queen instead of Vashti. He makes a great feast in her honor, grants a release from taxes to the provinces, and gives gifts.
Mordechai sits at the king's gate. Esther still keeps her people a secret and obeys him as she did when he raised her. Two of the king's chamberlains who guard the entrance, Bigtan and Teresh, become angry and plot to kill King Achashverosh. Mordechai learns of the plot and tells Queen Esther, and she reports it to the king, saying that it comes from Mordechai. The report is checked and found true, and both men are hanged. It is all written in the book of the king's records, in his presence, so that what Mordechai did is on record. This would prove to be an important detail of this Megillah.
Haman rises to power, Mordechai refuses to bow to him, and Haman obtains a decree to destroy all the Jews.
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After these events, King Achashverosh promotes Haman ben Hamedata the Agagi and seats him above all the other ministers. (The commentators explain that Haman descends from Agag, king of Amalek - the arch enemy of Israel.) The king orders all his servants at the king's gate to bow down to Haman. Mordechai does not bow. The servants ask him day after day why he disobeys the king's order, and he does not listen to them. They report it to Haman to see whether Mordechai's reason will be accepted, because Mordechai has told them that he is a Jew.
Haman sees that Mordechai does not bow to him and is filled with fury. Killing Mordechai alone seems too small to him. Since he has been told who Mordechai's people are, he decides to wipe out every Jew throughout the kingdom of Achashverosh.
In Nisan, the first month, twelve years into the king's reign, a pur (lot) is cast before Haman to choose the day and the month. The lot falls on the twelfth month, Adar. Haman then speaks to the king. He tells him that there is one nation, spread out and kept apart among the peoples in every province, who live by laws unlike anyone else's and who do not keep the king's laws, and that it does not benefit the king to let them be. He asks for a written order to destroy them, and offers to pay ten thousand kikar (talents) of silver into the royal treasury. The king takes off his signet ring and gives it to Haman, whom the megillah calls the enemy of the Jews. He tells Haman to keep the silver and to do with the people as he sees fit.
The king's scribes are summoned on the thirteenth of Nisan. They write out Haman's orders for every governor, official and leader of a people, in each province's script and each people's language, as the order of King Achashverosh, stamped with his ring. Runners carry the letters to every province. The order is to kill every Jew, old people and young, women and little children, all on one day, the thirteenth of Adar, the twelfth month, and to take everything they own. A copy of the decree is made law in every province so that the peoples will be ready for that day.
The runners hurry off with the king's order, and the law is also given in Shushan HaBirah (Shushan the capital). The king and Haman sit down to drink, while the city of Shushan is thrown into confusion.
Mordechai and the Jews mourn, Mordechai sends Esther to plead with the king, and Esther asks all the Jews of Shushan to fast for three days.
Full summary
When Mordechai learns what has been done, he tears his clothes, puts on sackcloth and ashes, and walks through the middle of the city, crying out in a loud and bitter voice. He comes as far as the king's gate, because no one may enter the gate dressed in sackcloth. In every province that the king's decree reaches the Jews mourn, fast, weep and wail, and many of them lie on sackcloth and ashes.
Esther's maids and chamberlains tell her, and she is very distressed. She sends clothing for Mordechai to wear instead of his sackcloth, but he will not accept it. Esther then calls Hatach, one of the king's chamberlains assigned to her, and sends him to Mordechai to find out what is happening and why.
Hatach finds Mordechai in the open square before the king's gate. Mordechai tells him everything that has happened, including the exact amount of silver Haman promised to pay into the king's treasury to destroy the Jews. He gives Hatach a copy of the written decree to show Esther, and asks that she be told to go in to the king and beg him to have mercy on her people.
Esther sends Hatach back with her answer. The whole kingdom knows that anyone, man or woman, who enters the king's inner court without being summoned is put to death, unless the king holds out his gold scepter to spare him. And she has not been called to the king for thirty days.
Mordechai answers her firmly. She should not think that because she lives in the king's palace she will escape when all the other Jews do not. If she stays silent at this time, relief and rescue will come to the Jews from somewhere else, but she and her father's family will be lost. He adds that perhaps it was exactly for a time like this that she became queen.
Esther tells Mordechai to gather all the Jews in Shushan and have them fast for her, not eating or drinking for three days, night and day. She and her maids will fast in the same way. Then she will go in to the king, although no law permits it, and if she is to die, she will die. Mordechai goes and does everything Esther has told him. (The Gemara says that these days of fasting fell over Pesach.)
Esther goes to the king uninvited and invites him and Haman to a feast, and Haman builds a gallows for Mordechai.
Full summary
On the third day Esther puts on her royal clothing and stands in the palace's inner courtyard, opposite the king's chamber. The king is sitting on his royal throne. When he sees her there, she finds favor in his eyes, and he holds out the gold scepter in his hand. Esther comes close and touches the top of the scepter. Each time that Esther requests an audience with the king, his response is "whatever you ask for, up to half the Kingdom" (The kingdom stretched from Hodu to Kush, India to Ethiopia, and the commentaries note that halfway between them is Jerusalem.) This language implies that Achashverosh was willing to give his beloved Queen Esther everything up until, but not including Jerusalem.
The king asks Queen Esther what she wants and tells her that he will give her anything, up to half of the kingdom. Esther asks only that the king and Haman come that day to a feast she has prepared for the king. The king has Haman brought quickly, and they come to Esther's feast. While they are drinking wine, the king asks her again what her request is. Esther answers that if she has found favor with the king, she asks that the king and Haman come again the next day to a second feast, and then she will tell the king what she wants.
Haman leaves the feast happy and in high spirits. Then he sees Mordechai at the king's gate, and Mordechai neither stands up nor shows any fear of him, and Haman is filled with rage. He holds himself back and goes home. He gathers his wife Zeresh and his friends and boasts to them of his riches, his many sons, and how the king has raised him above all the ministers and servants of the king. He adds that Queen Esther invited no one except him to come with the king to her feast, and that he is invited again tomorrow. Yet all of this means nothing to him as long as Mordechai the Jew sits there at the king's gate.
Zeresh and his friends advise him to have a gallows built, fifty amot (cubits) high, and to ask the king in the morning to have Mordechai hanged on it. Then he can go to the feast with the king in good spirits. Haman likes the advice and has the gallows made.
The king cannot sleep, learns that Mordechai saved his life, and Haman is ordered to honor Mordechai.
Full summary
That night the king cannot sleep. He asks for the book of records, the chronicles of the kingdom, to be read to him. The reading reaches the account of how Mordechai reported Bigtana and Teresh, the two chamberlains who guarded the entrance and planned to kill King Achashverosh. The king asks what honor or reward was given to Mordechai for this, and his attendants tell him that nothing was done for him.
The king asks who is in the courtyard. At that moment Haman is arriving in the palace's outer courtyard, intending to request that Mordechai be hanged on the gallows he has prepared. The attendants tell the king that Haman is there, and the king tells them to bring him in.
The king asks Haman how a man should be treated if the king wishes to honor him. Haman thinks to himself that there is no one the king would want to honor more than himself. So he answers that the man should be dressed in royal clothing that the king himself has worn and set on a horse the king has ridden, with a royal crown on its head. One of the king's highest-ranking nobles should dress him and lead the horse through the city square, calling out ahead of him that this is how the king rewards a man he wishes to honor.
The king tells Haman to hurry, take the clothing and the horse as he described, and do every part of it for Mordechai the Jew at the king's gate, leaving nothing out. Haman takes the clothing and the horse, dresses Mordechai, leads him through the city square, and calls out before him exactly as he himself proposed.
Mordechai returns to the king's gate, and Haman hurries home in mourning, with his head covered. He tells his wife Zeresh and his friends all that has happened. His advisers and Zeresh tell him that if Mordechai, before whom he has begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, he will not overcome him, and his downfall is certain. As they are talking, the king's chamberlains arrive and rush Haman to the feast that Esther has prepared.
At Esther's second feast she reveals Haman's plan to the king, and Haman is hanged on his own gallows.
Full summary
The king and Haman come to drink with Queen Esther. On this second day, while they are drinking wine, the king asks Esther once more what her request is and promises to grant it, up to half of the kingdom (see longer discussion of this topic in perek 5). Esther answers that if she has found favor with the king, she asks for her own life, and for the life of her people. She and her people have been sold to be destroyed, killed and wiped out. If they had only been sold as slaves, she would have kept silent, since that trouble would not have been worth disturbing the king.
King Achashverosh asks who this person is and where he is, who has dared to do such a thing. Esther answers that the enemy and foe is this wicked Haman. Haman is struck with terror.
The king gets up from the wine in a rage and goes out into the palace garden. Haman stays behind and begs Queen Esther to spare his life, because he sees that the king has decided to punish him. When the king comes back from the garden to the room of the feast, he sees that Haman has fallen onto the couch where Esther is sitting. The king asks whether Haman would even force himself on the queen while the king is in the house. As soon as the king says this, Haman's face is covered.
Charvona, one of the chamberlains standing before the king, tells him that there is a gallows fifty amot (cubits) high standing at Haman's house, which Haman made for Mordechai, the man who spoke up for the king's good. (Charvona is remembered for good in Shoshanat Yaakov, which is sung after the megillah reading.) The king orders that Haman be hanged on it. They hang Haman on the very gallows he built for Mordechai, and the king's fury subsides.
Leining tip: Pasuk with echacha uchal v'ra'isi is said in eicha troupe.
For u'mordechai yatza, kehilah first says pasuk then the koreh. Next pasuk layehudim is also said same way.
Mordechai is raised to Haman's place, and a second decree allows the Jews to defend themselves.
Full summary
That same day King Achashverosh gives Queen Esther everything that belonged to Haman, the enemy of the Jews. Esther tells the king how Mordechai is related to her, and Mordechai comes before the king. The king takes off his signet ring, which he took back from Haman, and gives it to Mordechai, and Esther puts Mordechai in charge of Haman's house.
But Haman's decree is still in force. Esther speaks to the king again. She falls at his feet, weeps, and begs him to undo the evil plan that Haman the Agagi devised against the Jews. The king holds out the gold scepter to her, and she rises and stands before him. She asks that letters be written to cancel the letters Haman sent to destroy the Jews in all the king's provinces, for she cannot bear to see the disaster that would come upon her people and the destruction of her family.
The king answers that he has already given Haman's house to Esther and hanged Haman for raising his hand against the Jews. Now Esther and Mordechai may write whatever they see fit for the Jews, issue it as the king's own order and stamp it with his signet ring. An order issued that way can never be withdrawn, so Haman's decree stands, and a new one must answer it.
The king's scribes are summoned on the twenty-third of Sivan, the third month. They write out Mordechai's orders for the Jews and for the governors and officials of all 127 provinces, from Hodu (India) to Kush (Ethiopia), each in its own script and language, the Jews included. The letters go out as the king's order, stamped with his ring, carried by riders on the king's fastest horses. The new decree gives the Jews in every city the right to gather and defend their lives, and to destroy any armed force, from any people or province, that attacks them, along with its children and women, and to take its property. It takes effect on the same single day, the thirteenth of Adar. A copy is made law in every province, so that the Jews will be ready on that day to take revenge on their enemies.
Mordechai goes out from the king dressed in royal clothing of blue and white, with a large gold crown and a cloak of white linen and purple wool. All of Shushan celebrates. The Jews have light and happiness, joy and honor. (Pesukim 15 and 16 are among the pesukim the tzibbur says aloud before the Baal Koreh, and pasuk 16, "La-Yehudim hayetah orah ve-simchah ve-sasson vikar," is said in Havdalah on Motzaei Shabbat.) In every province and city that the king's word reaches there is joy and celebration for the Jews, with feasting and a day of festivity, and many people from the nations of the land become Jews, because fear of the Jews has fallen on them.
On the thirteenth of Adar the Jews defeat their enemies, and Mordechai and Esther establish the days of Purim for every generation.
Full summary
The thirteenth of Adar, the twelfth month, arrives, the day set by the king's decree, when the Jews' enemies expected to overpower them. Instead everything is turned around, and the Jews overpower those who hate them. The Jews gather in their cities in every province to strike those who seek to harm them, and no one can stand against them. The officials and governors of the provinces support the Jews, because Mordechai has become great in the king's palace and they fear him.
The Jews strike all their enemies with the sword. In Shushan HaBirah (Shushan the capital) alone they kill five hundred men, and they kill the ten sons of Haman ben Hamedata, the enemy of the Jews. (The names of the ten sons are leined in one breath, as the Gemara teaches.) The Jews do not touch the spoils from war with their enemies. When the king hears the number killed in Shushan, he asks Esther what more she wants. She asks that the Jews of Shushan be allowed to act again the next day as they did that day, and that the ten sons of Haman be hanged on the gallows. It is done. On the fourteenth of Adar the Jews of Shushan kill another three hundred men, and again they take no plunder.
The Jews in the other provinces also gather to defend their lives. They kill seventy-five thousand of those who hate them, without touching the plunder, and they get rest from their enemies. This happens on the thirteenth of Adar, and on the fourteenth they rest and celebrate with feasting. The Jews of Shushan fought on the thirteenth and the fourteenth and rest on the fifteenth. This is why Jews in unwalled towns celebrate on the fourteenth of Adar, with feasting, a holiday and the sending of portions of food to one another. (In cities walled since the days of Yehoshua (Joshua), such as Yerushalayim (Jerusalem), Purim is kept on the fifteenth, Shushan Purim.)
Mordechai writes down these events and sends letters to the Jews in all the provinces, near and far. Every year they are to celebrate the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar, the days the Jews were relieved of their enemies, in the month when sorrow became gladness and mourning became a holiday. The days are for festive meals and celebration, mishloach manot (sending portions of food to friends) and matanot la'evyonim (giving to the poor). The Jews accept what they have already begun to do and what Mordechai has written to them. (Together with the reading of the megillah, which the Gemara learns from pasuk 28, these are the four mitzvot of Purim.)
The days are called Purim after the pur, the lot Haman cast when he plotted to destroy the Jews. The king turned Haman's evil plan back on Haman himself. The Jews take on themselves, their descendants and all who join them to keep these two days every year, in every generation, family, province and city, and never to let them fade.
Then Queen Esther, the daughter of Avichayil, joins Mordechai in a second letter about Purim, written with all their authority to make it binding, and sent in peace and truth to the Jews of all 127 provinces. Esther's word fixes the laws of Purim, together with the fasts and prayers the Jews have taken upon themselves, and it is written in the book.
Mordechai's greatness, and how he uses it for his people.
Full summary
King Achashverosh places a tax on the land and on the islands of the sea. His acts of power, and the full story of how the king raised Mordechai to greatness, are recorded in the royal histories of Madai and Paras (Media and Persia).
Mordechai the Jew is next in rank after King Achashverosh. He is great among the Jews and loved by most of his brothers. He seeks the good of his people and speaks for the peace and welfare of all their descendants. (Pasuk 3 is among the pesukim the tzibbur says aloud before the Baal Koreh.)