Or, Haman Hangs Himself
Scripture: Esther 7:1-10
Date: October 12, 2025
Speaker: Sean Higgins
When it rains it pours, but the proud have a hard time realizing when they are all wet.
A quick recap. We’re probably in the late afternoon of the day that started in chapter 6. It just so happened that Ahasuerus had some insomnia, and it just so happened that he had the book of remembrances read to him, and it just so happened that he realized Mordecai the Jew had not been honored for stopping the assassination attempt five years earlier. At the same time Haman’s inner circle had convinced him—and it didn’t take much—to execute Mordecai. Haman spent the night getting the gallows up.
When Haman arrived early at the palace to ask the king to rubber stamp his execution of Mordecai, the king asked first about an idea for honoring a guy, and Haman had no doubt that he was that guy. Haman had ideas! Then Haman got to put his ideas into play personally: Haman led Mordecai around town on the king’s horse while wearing the king’s robes. Haman had just gotten home to sit down for a nice cup of self-pity when the king’s servants arrived and hustled Haman off to the second dinner.
Esther 7 is downhill with no brakes.
Of the three characters on stage here, Ahasuerus is the only one who’s doing just fine. We know that nothing so far that day has gone Haman’s way; is he feeling like at least this part has to be better? Esther is probably feeling better than the previous day, having no doubt heard about her cousin’s day, but there’s no guarantee that the king will appreciate her request. He’s implicated in her accusation. She does not know how it’s going to play out, and she’s got to be in the room with that guy again.
During after dinner drinks the king returns to the reason for their meeting. Esther wants something. “Come on, woman, spit it out.” He’s feeling curious, and generous.
But this is an elimination game. Someone is not making it to the next round.
Queen Esther answers according to the king’s terms, with a wish and a request. What neither her husband nor Haman know is that her very life is in danger, because neither of them know where she’s from. She is part of the “certain people” that Haman conveniently never named when he got Ahasuerus’ to sign off on the genocide (Esther 3:8). Esther identifies with her people.
We have been sold. This description would work figuratively, but in this case it is fact. Haman bought the extermination rights with 10k talents of silver. Esther uses the same vocabulary as in the decree (Esther 3:13), a lethal trifecta: to be destroyed, to be killed, to be annihilated. She and her people would be wiped out.
By comparison, if they’d have been sold as slaves, she claims she wouldn’t have even bothered with it. That would have certainly been an affliction. The last phrase of verse 4 has been translated and interpreted different ways, but she seems to say that the money spent to make slaves is one thing, but money spent to kill a slew of the king’s subjects is another.
The king has not put it together yet. He assumes something else had happened that he didn’t know about.
“Then King Ahasuerus [said and said to] Queen Esther,” though only one “said” made it into the ESV; it heightens the action. Then what he said sounds aggressive. In Hebrew it would sound like Mi hu zeh ve-ei-zeh hu. One commentator observed that the cadence might remind us of a machine gun. “Who is he, this one, and where is this one?” He wants immediate answer. Who has dared to do this? Or, “whose heart has filled him” with arrogance like this? How dare you!
Esther points across the table: it’s that guy, a foe and enemy!
Not so surprising, and quite understated, Haman is terrified.
The king is MAD. He left the table and stormed out of the room and went into the palace garden. He needs a minute. Is he angry only at Haman, or is he angry with Haman for tricking him? Ahasuerus is not faultless. The decree is in his name and stamped with his signet ring and has gone out to all his empire (Esther 3:12). He’s not supposed to change his own law, but he didn’t realize that he was signing his own wife’s death warrant.
Haman also got that at least a couple things were really wrong. He was smart enough to realize that only one person could persuade the king to go easy on him, as in, spare his life. But staying in the room as he did, alone with the king’s wife, was against all the Persian protocol. Just by remaining he put himself into more trouble.
However long Haman and Esther were alone, Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was. They were likely reclined, Haman was likely showing respect by bowing down at her feet, but she was likely giving him no sympathy. It is ironic that he couldn’t get Mordecai, the Jew, to fall before him in respect, and now he’s bowed before Esther, a Jew, and a woman. He had no other choice. But it really was a bad look.
The king came back into the room at the precise time to have a clear reason for judging Haman. Haman wasn’t assaulting the queen, but it appeared that way, and Ahasuerus was irate. “He would assault my wife in my house?!”
Pause: should Esther have interceded for Haman? No. She is the Queen of Persia, and defends her people with royal privilege. Haman’s genocidal intentions need more than empathy, his wickedness warrants execution.
This is great story-telling here: As the word left the mouth of the king, they covered Haman’s face. Were “face covering bags” part of a guard’s every day carry?
The impression is that these eunuchs were not the effeminate type, and they are not on Team Haman. One of them named Harbona gives no counsel to the king but he does provide some pertinent information. “There is an instrument of death just waiting to be used, and it’s over at Haman’s house.” “And, oh yeah, Haman built it for Mordecai, the one who saved your life.” That it was gargantuan. At fifty cubits high this thing meant it was for show. The only thing more absurd than this 75 foot tall gallows was Haman’s pride.
As usual, Ahasuerus listens to whomever the last person to talk to him was, and thinks that it sounds like an excellent end to Haman’s day. Hang him on that. The tides of wrath come in verse 7 and leave verse 10: Then the wrath of the king abated.
It just so happened, again and again in chapter 6, and then just like that in chapter 7, Haman is gone. I still love this definition from Augustus Strong, “Providence is God’s attention concentrated everywhere.” Justice is served, and it is poetic.
Haman’s pride dug the pit (Psalm 7:14–16). He hung himself. Was there ever a possibility that a seven-story gallows, visible across town, wouldn’t come back to bite Haman? God resists the proud; proud foes fall hard because the arrogant are an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 16:5). You can know that this is how the story of proud characters always ends.
Pride goes before destruction,
and a haughty spirit before a fall.
(Proverbs 16:18 ESV)
It’s proverbial and archetypal. Shakespeare has Hamlet explain his plan to outwit the enemies, “For ’tis the sport to have the engineer Hoist with his own petard” (Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 4 Lines 208-209). A petard was a small bomb, dangerous and unreliable. The engineer/bomb-maker could be easily hoisted, that is blown into the air, as his destructive plan backfired.
As for Esther, there’s one foe down and the decree to go, which we’ll see in chapters 8-9.
As for you, do not give way before the wicked.
Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain
is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.
(Proverbs 25:26 ESV)
We do not make the rules. Because God is God, if you seek to lift yourself up, God will bring you down. But this does not mean there is no way to be exalted. Humble yourself so that God will lift you up. He’s better at it. He’s working at it. He gives grace all the way to glory.
Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you. (1 Peter 5:5b–7 ESV)