Esther 3–4

The plot turns deadly — Haman’s wounded pride buys a decree to exterminate a whole people — and against it Mordecai sets the question that has steeled the faithful ever since: who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Haman, an Agagite of the old Amalekite enmity, is enraged that Mordecai will not bow, and resolves to destroy not Mordecai only but all the Jews. He casts Pur, that is, the lot, to fix the day, and buys from the king an irrevocable decree of genocide. The old serpent-seed enmity rises again — Amalek against Israel, the seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman, now armed with the unalterable law of Persia.

The two men’s pedigrees, side by side, hold the whole book. Haman is the Agagite — of the house of the Amalekite king Samuel hewed in pieces at Gilgal. Mordecai is the son of Kish, a Benjamite — of the house of Saul, the king who spared Agag and lost the kingdom for it. The son of the man who spared Amalek stands in the gate against the son of the Amalek he spared, five hundred years later, with a nation’s life on it. And the lot Haman casts falls almost a year out, which is the mercy hidden in the malice: Pur gave them eleven months to get a queen to the throne. The dice of the serpent’s seed are thrown by a hand that is not named in this book and not absent from it either.

Mordecai mourns in sackcloth and ashes and sends word to Esther that she must plead with the king. She hesitates — to approach unsummoned is death — and Mordecai’s answer is one of the great speeches of providence. Think not… that thou shalt escape… if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place… and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this? For such a time as this — the deliverance will come; the only question is whether Esther will be the one through whom it comes, or whether she will forfeit her place in it by silence.

Esther’s resolve is total, and it is the language of one laying down her life for her people. I will go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish. If I perish, I perish — she will stand in the gap between her condemned people and the throne, risking death to plead for those who cannot plead for themselves; the mediator’s posture exactly, the one who goes in unbidden to intercede for the many.

She asks first for a fast — three days, the whole people with her — before she dares the throne. The intercession is prepared by fasting and sought through death — Esther does not presume on her favor but humbles herself and her people first, then goes to risk her life. The hidden hand has placed her; now she must spend the place it gave her, willing to be lost that her people might be saved.

The serpent-seed enmity rises with an unalterable decree — but the hidden one was placed for such a time as this, and goes in to intercede, saying, if I perish, I perish.

Amos 8

Amos sees a basket of summer fruit and hears in its name the verdict: the end is come — and the worst famine he announces is not of bread but of the word of Yahweh. The vision is a pun in Hebrew, and it is worth pressing what the pun is for: the basket of summer fruit (qayitz) sounds the end (qetz) — Yahweh shows him an ordinary basket of ripe figs, asks Amos, what seest thou?, and hangs the death of a kingdom on the sound of the answer. The judgment arrives as a play on words spoken by a fruit-picker — a man who had carried that basket a thousand times says its name and hears the end of his nation in it. Nothing about the vision is strange, and that is what makes it terrible — the end is come upon my people Israel; I will not again pass by them any more. The ripe fruit is the ripe nation, ready for the harvest of judgment — what looks like the season’s abundance is in fact the sign that the time is fully come.

The crime that has ripened the judgment is the grinding of the poor. They swallow up the needy, impatient for the sabbath and new moon to end so they can sell again, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit; they buy the poor for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes. False balances and the poor sold for silver — the same sin that ran through the whole book; religion punctually observed and justice systematically robbed, the holy day resented as an interruption of profit.

So the feasts are turned to funerals. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation… as the mourning of an only son. The feast becomes a funeral — the celebrations of a corrupt worship are turned to the grief of a parent burying an only child; the songs that drowned the cry of the poor become a dirge.

And the deepest judgment is the silence of heaven. I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Yahweh… they shall run to and fro to seek the word of Yahweh, and shall not find it. A famine of the word is the worst famine — the people who would not hear the word when it was sent will one day hunger for it and find only silence; to lose access to the word is a starvation no harvest can relieve. The word they despised is withdrawn, and its absence is the famine.

The ripe fruit signals the end, the false balances bring it on — and the worst famine is not of bread but of the word, withdrawn at last from those who would not hear it.

Philemon 1

This shortest of Paul’s letters is a masterpiece of intercession — the apostle pleading for a runaway slave by taking the man’s debt onto his own account. Onesimus, a slave who had run from his master Philemon, has met Paul in prison and been converted; Paul sends him back, no longer a slave only but a brother beloved. Paul could command, but chooses to entreat: for love’s sake I rather beseech thee. He pleads where he could command — the intercessor stoops to ask, putting the weight of love rather than authority behind the appeal.

The heart of the letter is the offer to absorb the debt. If he hath wronged thee, or oweth thee ought, put that on mine account… I will repay it. Put that on mine account — I will repay — Paul takes the runaway’s wrong onto himself, the mediator standing between the offended master and the guilty servant, offering to make good what the servant owes. The estranged are reconciled not by ignoring the debt but by a third party taking it on himself out of love.

The picture is a small, living parable of the greater mediation. The guilty one who fled is received back as myself, says Paul — receive him as myself — the debtor welcomed on the strength of the intercessor’s standing, his wrong charged to one willing to pay it. Received as the mediator himself — Onesimus comes home not on his own merit but clothed in Paul’s plea; the master is asked to see the runaway in the intercessor’s place.

And the transformation is in the name. Onesimus means profitable — Paul plays on it: once unprofitable (achrēstos), now profitable (euchrēstos) to both. And there is a shadow inside the pun: achrēstos is a hair’s breadth from a-Christos, without Christ, and a first-century ear would not have missed it. The useless man was the Christless man, and the same syllable that names his worthlessness names what he lacked. Paul does not have to argue it. He puts it in a joke about a slave’s name and sends it home with the slave. The unprofitable made profitable — the runaway slave, useless and worse, is remade by grace into a brother beloved, useful to master and apostle alike. The whole letter is the gospel in miniature: the fugitive reconciled, the debt absorbed by the mediator, the worthless made worthy through another’s love.

The mediator pleads where he could command and takes the runaway’s debt onto his own account — put that on mine account, I will repay — and the unprofitable fugitive comes home a brother beloved.