“Then were the king’s scribes called, the thirteenth day of the first month, and there was written according to all that Haman had commanded, unto the king’s lieutenants, and to the governors that were over every province, and to the rulers of every people of every province, according to the writing thereof; and to every people after their language, in the name of King Ahasuerus, was it written, and sealed with the king’s ring.  And the letters were sent by posts into the king’s provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews—­both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month.”

Thus we see all the machinery of this powerful government put in motion to crush the Jews—­a people widely dispersed and weak from their recent captivity and overthrow.  As no crime was specified, so there was no offer of pardon or exemption on any terms; while to make it more distinctly understood, the terms which indicated their fate were singularly multiplied.  “To destroy, to kill, to cause to perish.”  And while the murder of a nation was thus made a legal execution, the mode was left to the option of the executioners; and every torment that malignity could devise might be inflicted, while all were stimulated by the promise of the plunder of their victims—­“and to take the spoil of them for a prey.”

What scenes of horror, of suffering, would have followed the execution of this barbarous edict!  The whole empire had probably been deluged in blood—­for man, like the inferior animals, seems maddened by the taste of blood—­and one cruelty is but the prelude and provocation of another; and in the time of strife, while all were made executioners of the law, private malice would confound others with the proscribed, and few could be safe in the hour of commotion.

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.