You know what I love about ancient history? It was all one big blood bath! Take Haman for example. What you have never heard of Haman? Let me enlighten you. Haman, otherwise known as the Evil Haman was a descendant of Agag, funny name, but you deal with what life gives you. Agag was the King of Amalekites, (see despite his unfortunate name he became a king). The Amalekites were the descendants of the Almalek and if you want to know who that is, look it up yourself because I’m getting lost in all the links I have to go through to tell this story. However I wouldn’t waste your time looking that up because the Amalekites, (spoiler alert) were wiped out by King Saul and David as directed by God. Back in 15BC when all this was taking place when God said jump well you had just better jump mister. Obviously they were not all killed because we still had the problem of the Evil one who now served Artaxerxes II the King of Persia. Looking at Artaxesrxes name I can only assume it was his grandfather who you can blame for the creation of taxes. But that is just a hunch.
Pay attention because now we are back on track and getting back to the point of all this. Sometimes I have to feel bad for you readers because at this point in the tale you have no idea what this post is really about. Have a little faith and keep reading, it will all become clear.
Haman didn’t like the Jews, probably because Dave and Saul killed off most of his ancestors. I’m willing to bet that Haman didn’t take into account that his ancestors probably tried to kill off the Jews, again an assumption. I’m not clicking on yet another link to unwind the entire tale. So Haman plotted to kill all the Jews in Persia. He tried to convince the King of Persia, (Artaxes) to start off by killing Mordecai. Haman decided on Mordecai for two reasons, first he drew ‘lots’ and the name he pulled was Mordecai. Mordecai refused to postulate himself before the King making him a seemingly easier target to convince the King to have Mordecai killed. But as we soon learn, Haman the Evil had yet another little known title which is ‘Haman the Stupid’
Earlier, Mordecai uncovered a plot to assassinate King Artaxes and because of Mordecai’s vigilance the plot was foiled and Mordecai’s service to the king was noted in the King’s royal ledger.
Is anyone out there still reading? I hope so it is about to get interesting. Mordecai was a super nice guy. He was so nice that when his cousin Esther became an orphan Mordecai adopted her and raised her as his own daughter. Years later Artaxes had one of his wives exiled and took another. This new wife was Esther! Yes a Jew, yes the same Jew that Mordecai raised as his own daughter.
Mordy learned of the plot to assassinate the Jews of Persia and talked to Queen Esther. Queen Esther armed the Jews of Persian cities to fight against Haman’s armies and the Jews, as usual were winning the battle. At this point King Artaxes rescinded the order to kill the Jews of the empire. Mordecai quickly became respected member of the court and Haman ended up being executed in the gallows that were built for the execution of Mordecai.
In memory the Jews celebrate the narrow escape and celebrate the feast of ‘Lots’ because of the Lots that Haman drew when deciding which of the Elder Jews of the empire to assassinate first.
The Hebrew word for ‘lots’ is Purim and March 7th was Purim so a late happy Purim to you all.
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