When this edict was published, and while Ahasuerus and Haman sat down to indulge in the pleasures of the table, all the city of Shushan was perplexed, confounded, and troubled—wondering what motives, what state policy, what strange conspiracy, had led to this sanguinary enactment against a people long dwelling among them—a nation who had furnished counsellors and ministers to their wisest monarchs.
When Mordecai saw what was done, he rent his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city and cried with a loud and bitter cry. He published—he could not conceal—his grief and terror; and his crafty foe perhaps exulted in his misery. The long struggle between the Amalekite and the Israelite seemed now to be concluded. The fall of the Jews seemed to be sealed. All the power of the Persian empire was arrayed against them. They were prisoners in her different provinces, appointed to execution! All human power and authority and presumption of success was on the side of Haman, and against his intended victims.
Mordecai had no hope on earth. His trust was alone in the God of his fathers—the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob—the God often defied by Amalek. In his distress he presented himself, clothed in sackcloth, at the gate of the royal palace; but no one arrayed in the garb of sorrow might enter the haunts devoted to luxurious pleasure. Yet the sight of his distress and the tones of his deep grief arrested the attention of the attendants of the queen, and her chamberlain reported the circumstances to her.
No tokens of sympathy, no expression of condolence, however grateful, could assuage the grief of Mordecai in this hour of terror and alarm; and even though commanded by the queen, he declined to lay aside the tokens of wo, while he diligently sought to convey to the secluded Esther an account of all the machinations of Haman, and the assurance of the imminent danger to which her nation was exposed, and in which she was involved. He not only sent her a copy of the edict which condemned the Jews, but he charged her to supplicate the king on their behalf.
The young queen must have felt like one awakened from a sleep to find herself upon the brink of a precipice. Her situation was full of danger. The flush of royal favour was past. She was neglected and forgotten. Her splendid palace was indeed but a prison, and her lordly consort might prove her executioner. For a long time she had not seen the king or received the least token of royal favour or remembrance, and a new favourite might have succeeded her in the court of the capricious voluptuary. Yet she was sternly charged by Mordecai to rouse herself, meet the peril, and, if possible, save her people, while he taught her to recognise the designs of a wise Providence in her elevation.
"Then Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king's house, more than all the Jews. For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father's house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?"
In the appeals of Mordecai to Esther, we may recognise the principles upon which he had trained her. The sense of duty, the obligations of religion, the call to self-sacrifice and exertion, had all been instilled while Esther was in private life, and they bear their fruit on the throne. Yet there must have been a conflict in the heart of Esther, before she could adopt the decision which might accelerate the doom of her people, while, if her appeal failed, her own fate was scaled with their's.
Surrounded by all the splendour of the court, with all the pleasures that pomp and power can command, with troops of menials treading marble halls, with the more genial luxuries of fair flowers and pure fountains and soft music—Esther felt the insufficiency of all that earth can yield in the hour of sorrow and trial. We may almost fancy that we see her, with lofty brow and pale cheek, her dark soft eye fixed in thought, and the compressed lip telling of the firm resolve. She has decided! She will venture the loss of royal favour, and life itself, to secure the safety of her people. "I will go in to the king, and if I perish—I perish." Words more simple, yet sublime in their high meaning, have seldom been recorded. Strong purpose and high resolve call for but few words.
Yet Esther relied upon a power higher than that of Ahasuerus. She may have recalled the history of her nation; she may have remembered all the interpositions of Divine mercy in past extremities; and doubtless she relied upon those promises for the future which induced in Mordecai a confident hope of deliverance. She remembered that Jehovah—the God of Israel—hears the prayers of the humble and the contrite. She appointed a solemn fast of three days, in which the Jews of Shushan should humble themselves and remember her before the God of their fathers.