The megillah breaks up neatly into the four sections. 1- seeds of salvation being planted, 2- disaster plan takes effect, 3- the scales tip as Mordechai and Esther subtly fight back, and 4- actual salvation.
Section 1: In Perek 1 and 2 the seeds of salvation are planted, in the words of חז”ל, רפואה קודם למכה. Vashti is killed and Esther becomes queen, she remains faithful to Mordechai even while in the palace, and Mordechai’s deed of saving the king is recorded in the Royal Chronicles. All the terrible things to follow are already able to be stopped. All the bad that follows was never truly able to harm us.
Section 2: Perek 3 is when the genocidal plan of המן takes effect and gets rolled out. The lotto is drawn, the king agrees to annihilate the Jews and the runners with the irrevocable law are sent out. The damage is seemingly irreversible.
Section 3: Perek 4, 5, and 6 the scales start to tip as Esther and Mordechai devise a plan to overthrow Haman, and by the end of Perek 6 Haman doesn’t know it yet but he is doomed. Everything he has set up is about to turn against him.
Section 4: Perek 7, 8, and 9 the salvation unfolds. Haman is killed, Mordechai finds a way to bypass the unstoppable train that is Persian law, and the Jews gain intimidation and they are able to destroy their enemies in a one-day war where they kill over 75,000 people across the known world.
What follows is a theory that runs through the megillah that I think has a true base but is a work in progress and any feedback, contradictions, questions, refutes, or answers are all welcome and anticipated!
I don’t think we can deny that the Megillah wants us to be reminded of the Yosef story, there are simply too many references, both in theme and in language to ignore. Here are a few of them:
1- אחשורוש throws a party לכל שריו ועבדיו after three years of kingship, פרעה throws himself a birthday party after three days (ויהי ביום השלישי יום הולדת את פרעה) and he also invites לכל עבדיו and he raises up two of his officers – and the Torah uses the word שריו.
2- the נערי המלך are the ones who give אחשורוש the idea to gather women to hold a pageant for who would be the next queen even though no one requested their advice, and Yosef who is called a נער tells פרעה to gather grain even though פרעה didn’t ask for his advice.
3- these are the only two places in the entire תנ”ך that it says ויפקד פקידים, by Yosef it saysיעשה פרעה ויפקד פקידים and here in the megillah it says ויפקד המלך פקידים
4- Esther and Yosef are both נושא חן בעיני כל רואיו, they both find favor in the eyes of all who meet them
5- neither could say where they were from. Esther was commanded not to say, and Yosef tried to say that he came from a royal family but רש”י says at the end of פרשת ויחי that until his brothers came down to Mitzrayim no one believed him.
6- both Esther and Yosef become royalty unexpectedly and quickly
7- both get told what to bring/wear the first time they meet the king, and they are both rushed to the king.
There are dozens of references to Yosef but what is missing from the Yosef references is any connections to the sale. I think that as we began our exile and as the age of the אנשי כנסת הגדולה wound down and the close of prophecy was around the corner the Jews needed to face the two types of challenges and trials that they had faced so many years ago when they were about to become a nation.
These two challenges are the sale of Yosef and the confrontation with Eisav. The first Pasuk that we all read aloud during the megillah laining gives the answer to why no mention of the sale of Yosef is made. איש יהודי היה בשושן הבירה ושמו מרדכי … איש ימיני. Mordechai was a man who is identified as both a man of Yehuda and a man of Binyamin. The brothers mistake was that they had divided the children of Rachel and the children of Leah, and it all got fixed when Yehuda confronts Yosef and stands up for Binyamin, ready to give his life. Mordechai continues that legacy and does whatever he needs to stand up for his people even if it means giving up his life. Therefore, the issue of the sale is not brought up, Mordechai is protecting his people from that. All the megillah deals with is the reliving of Yosef in Mitzrayim, a precursor for the Jews being all alone, hidden from their Father in heaven.
In section 2 of the megillah we meet Haman and his plans to kill the Jews. These chapters are filled with references to Eisav and עמלק. The megillah says about המן, ויבז בעיניו לשלח יד במרדכי לבדו, the only other time that word is used in the entire תנ”ך is when it says ויבז עשו את הבכורה. And we all know that Haman was the descendant of Amalek, the part of Eisav that never made peace with Yaakov.
Mordechai sees the letters of annihilation that went out and he dons sackcloth and ashes outside the king’s palace with the hope that Esther will find out. Esther hears that Mordechai is out there and she sends him an interesting message מה זה ועל מה זה, literally translates as what is this and on what is this? The גמרא in megillah says that these words are referencing the לוחות, since it says מזה ומזה הם כתובים. Esther was asking what part of the עשרת הדברות did the Jews transgress to deserve this. I think that the two types of challenges we spoke about are represented by the two sides of the לוחות, the second five דברות are בין אדם לחבירו which corresponds with the מכירת יוסף challenge, and the first five are בין אדם למקום which correspond with our competition with Eisav, which deals with which of the twins will get the ברכות to serve Hashem in this world.
Esther’s question was which side of the לוחות was transgressed, since the way to fix the issue depends on which side of the לוחות they had a problem with. Mordechai codes the answer into his response, the megillah says he told her את כל אשר קרהו, that word קרהו sounds a lot like what the Torah says עמלק did to us. אשר קרך בדרך, that word קרה, which means chance was Mordechai’s way of saying “we are up against עמלק”, the nation is internally strong, this is an external problem. In fact, the מדרש רבה says that Mordechai’s message to Esther was that the grandson of קרהו has come for us, using that as a nickname for עמלק.
And the final connection with Amalek is when Esther expresses concern to go before אחשורוש uncalled. Mordechai gives her a very unexpected speech, you would imagine that he would explain how crucial of a role she is playing in this salvation. But instead he tells Esther, you think we need you? The nation doesn’t need you, אם החרש תחרישי בעת הזאת רוח והצלה יעמוד ליהודים ממקום אחר, if you are quiet now, a salvation will come to the nation from another place. That word רוח only appears twice in the entire תנ”ך, the other time is when Yaakov sends presents to Eisav. He tells the messengers ורוח תשימו בין עדר לעדר, place a distance between the gifts so that he will be appeased. Those gifts were Yaakov’s way of appeasing Eisav and setting the record straight for the rest of the history to resolve the issue between him and Eisav.
(Parenthetically I think that the fact that the word רוח has the same letters as רוח which means wind is significant. Wind is made up of gases, and we know from chemistry that it can’t be boxed in. even if you put it in a box, it does not conform in either volume or shape to the container, you can’t put borders on a gas. Jews are like רוח, and that was part of Yaakov’s message to Eisav. I can spread out to fill the entire world if I need to, I can take on the role of filling this physical world).
Esther rose to the challenge, but not a small price. She commands Mordechai to cancel Pesach that year. No matza, no מרור, no wine. Just fasting and crying to Hashem. Almost like telling Hashem גאולת מצרים doesn’t mean anything to us if we are going to get annihilated now.
Esther’s plan following the 3 day fast is nothing short of a brilliant psychological play at אחשורוש’s mind. Esther understood that anticipation of an event is far more intriguing than the actual event. While we anticipate something, it does not yet have true form, it still exists only in potential, and that malleable state drives our imaginations wild. Mix in a little jealousy and you can drive a man crazy. She leads אחשורוש on a trail to this grandiose meeting where she will reveal something to him. He doesn’t yet know it, but it will be the secret that he has been after for close to a decade, he will soon learn his wife’s nationality.
But Esther does something else as well, she perfectly balances the use of anticipation for tomorrow and the immediate action of today. This is done since she knows that she is up against Amalek, and whenever we fight עמלק we use מחר, but to truly defeat עמלק you need to also harness the power of today. Allow me to explain:
It is famously said that Yaakov and Eisav were supposed to be a duo that occupied two different roles in the world and together they would bring Hashem into the world and bring the world to completion. Eisav was meant to elevate the physical and imbue Godliness into the physical world, and Yaakov was meant to occupy the physical world but only for the purpose of reaching the next world, the spiritual realm. Then, when Yaakov stole the ברכות from his brother Eisav, he assumed the responsibility to carry out both roles since Eisav would not comply with the plan (this is why he married both Rachel and Leah, even though people thought that Leah was meant to be with Eisav). This continues to be our mission to this day, to be dedicated to the study of Torah in the tent but also to be able to operate and exist in the field and bring Hashem into that space as well.
The מדרש says that whenever we fight עמלק the concept of מחר comes up. In פרשת בשלח Moshe tells Yehoshua מחר אנכי נצב על ראש הגבעה, in פרשת כי תצא we are told to write it down into a book as a remembrance, to preserve it until tomorrow. When Dovid battles עמלק it says ויכם דוד … למחרתם. And here in מגילת אסתר, when Esther is trying to bring down המן she uses the word מחר again to invite him to the party.
The reason for this goes all the way back to when Eisav sold the בכורה to Yaakov. They each knew their roles that they were supposed to occupy, and Yaakov saw that Eisav was not properly occupying his role, he wasn’t going to successfully be able to serve hashem using the physical world, so Yaakov pressured him to sell the firstborn so that Yaakov would be able to do the service. And Eisav disgraces the service and he sells the firstborn to Yaakov, which as we said above is one of the reasons that Yaakov married Leah in addition to Rachel. When Yaakov initiates this sale, he tells Eisav מכרה כיום את בכורתך לי, sell me as clearly as day your birthright. But he was also saying that I am now purchasing your power of היום, of fulfilling the present physical world with Godliness. And Eisav disgraces his מחר, he disgraces the service of Hashem for which the benefits only come in the next world. It is for this reason that whenever we battle Amalek, we use our כח of מחר, that same energy that Eisav disgraced which allowed Yaakov to purchase the birthright and take over both roles of bringing Hashem into the world.
Back to Esther. She not only uses the concept of מחר, she also mixes in the concept of today, and I think to truly beat עמלק we need to show not only that we have control over and appreciate the concept of tomorrow appropriately but also that we have assumed עשו’s role successfully, that we have harnessed also the power of today. That we can live in the here and now and act with immediacy when needed. This proves that we have successfully assumed עשו’s role and are poised to bring Hashem’s Glory into the physical world. Defeating of עמלק takes the perfect blend of living with the future in mind as well as using a sense of immediacy. Parenthetically I think that’s why חרבונה is זכור לטוב. He pops up only to say that המן made gallows and that it is ready to be used for an execution right now. I doubt אחשורוש would have let Haman live, but the good fortune we had from חרבונה is that we were able to take care of המן’s execution immediately.
This brings us to section 4, where the actual salvation happens. Because what most people don’t realize is that if the megillah ends when Haman dies, the Jews are still in trouble, because in Persia law reigned supreme and you couldn’t revoke a law. So, Mordechai needs to devise a plan that will use the law to circumvent the catastrophe. He sends out a counter law to the original law that the Jews can now defend themselves. This created a confusion with the people of the various provinces and they longer knew if the Jews were the friends of the king or not. We end up fighting with our enemies on the 13th of Adar across the world, and the 14th in שושן.
The megillah says that what we are celebrating on the 14th day of אדר is not the war or the fact that we were saved, we are celebrated the day that we were able to rest from our enemies. That sense of accomplishment and satisfaction at the completion of a project, that is what Purim commemorates. We have another day that commemorates that sense of accomplishment. We celebrate it every week, it is called Shabbos yom מנוחה. That same root of נח, to rest and just feel accomplished as you watch all the efforts of the week come together. Purim is a day of watching 10 years’ worth of headlines and political events come together in a beautiful way.
I think this aligns perfectly with the theme we set above, since Shabbos is a perfect blend of היום and מחר. We have 6 days of work where we live in the physical world, but we do so correctly following the exact letter of the law that we received from Hashem. We have the most minute details of our lives dictated by halacha, since the physical world is important, and it is our job to raise it up. How we go to the bathroom, how we cut our nails, which hairs we cut, what we eat, and in which orders all matter deeply to God. Then comes Shabbos, the “מחר” of our week. The day that we leave aside the aspects of היום for our existence in the realm of מחר. We show that we can use this world that we live in both for the function of Eisav and of Yaakov. We can bring Godliness into the physical and also rise above it.
One of the last Pesukim that we hear in the megillah is קימו וקבלו היהודים, and the גמרא famously says that this was when the Jewish nation voluntarily accepted the Torah, since our experience on הר סיני was in a way, forced by Hashem. This also ties nicely into the concepts of היום and מחר.
הר סיני was the ultimate מחר, it was a next world experience where Hashem Himself came down into our world to interact with us. And that is an awesome experience, one that the מהר”ל says by definition needed to be forced. You can’t decide if you want to experience Reality when it comes into your world. I think what the string of events of Purim did was to bring that sense of מחר into היום, into the world as we occupy it on a day to day basis. Hashem is not mentioned and there was no fireworks or hoopla at all. This is the ultimate version of “today” taking on a Godly role. And once we saw that we were able to take the Torah from the level of מחר into our lives in a whole new way.