Ver. 1. Now in the twelfth month, &c.] That lucky time, as Haman had deemed it, but was deluded by the devil (the author of all such arts and lots of divination, to foretell future arbitrary events) qui etsi semel videatur verax, millies est mendax, et semper fallax; who, if he sometimes hit upon the truth, yet usually cozeneth those that trust to him (Bucholcer). Thus he served Balaam the sorcerer, slain by the sword of Israel; Croesus, taken prisoner by Cyrus; Ahab, slain at Ramoth-Gilead; Julian the apostate, going against the Persians; Walter, earl of Athol, who murdered his master, James I., king of Scots, in hope to attain the crown. Crowned indeed he was, but not, as his witches and sorcerers had ambiguously insinuated, with the crown of that realm, but with a crown of red hot iron clapped upon his bead, being one of the tortures wherewith he ended at once his wicked days and desires (Hector. Boeth.). The pope, to honour and encourage the leaguers in France, sent them consecrated pictures and medals, promising them thereby good success against the Huguenots, but God confuted and defeated them all; as he did likewise Tyrone in Ireland, to whom, among other trinkets, the pope had sent a plume of Phoenix feathers (Carlt. Rem.), a mere collusion. When the king’s commandment and decree drew near, &c.] Both that for the Jews, and the other against them. This latter was not reversed, though the former was published. The king, it seemeth, greatly cared not for the lives of his subjects, since he would not so much as privately hint to them to be quiet, and to let the Jews alone. Such an intimation as this might have saved the lives of seventy-five thousand of them. But God had a holy hand in it, for the just punishment of those blood-thirsty Persians, confident in the good success of their sorceries; having made hell their refuge, but it failed them. In the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped, &c.] But their hope ran aground, as they say; their lucky day deceived them. Wicked men’s hope, when they most need it, will be as the giving up of the ghost, and that is but cold comfort, Job 11:20, and as the spider’s web, Job 18:18,19, who gets to the top of the window, as high as she can, and then when she falls she fails to the bottom, for nothing stays her. From such high hopes fell our English Papists, first, when Queen Mary died. You hope and hope (said Dale the promoter to Julian Lining, whom he had apprehended), but your hope shall end in a rope; for though the queen fail, she that you hope for shall never come at it; for there is my Lord Cardinal’s grace and many more between her and it. Secondly, at Queen Elizabeth’s death, that long looked for day, as they called it, triumphing before the victory, and selling the hide before they had taken the beast. This they had done before in 1588, when, in assurance of victory, they had styled their forces the Invincible Armada; and also afterwards, at the gunpowder plot, when they had presumptuously disposed of the chief offices, holds, and revenues of the land; like as before the Pharsalian field was fought, the Pompeians were in such miserable security, that some of them contended for the priesthood, which was Caesar’s office; others disposed of the consulships and offices in Rome so at the battle of Agincourt in France, where our Henry V won the day, the French were so confident of a victory, that they sent to King Henry to know what ransom he would give. A presumptuous confidence goes commonly bleeding home, when a humble fear returns in triumph. Though it was turned to the contrary] By a sweet and gracious providence of God, whose glory it is to help at a pinch, to alter the scene suddenly, to begin where we have given over, and to cause a strange turn of things, according to that of the psalmist: God shall send from heaven and save me (when it might seem to some that salvation itself could not save me), he shall send forth his mercy and his truth, Psalms 57:4, and then what should hinder the Church’s happiness. That the Jews had rule over them that hated them] They domineered over their enemies as so many Sultans, וטל שׁ י So true is that of the preacher, “Man knoweth not his time; but as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them,” Ecclesiastes 9:12. Security is the certain usher of destruction, and God delighteth, by turning the scale, to retaliate, as he did upon the Egyptians at the Red Sea, the Philistines at Mizpeh, these Hamanists, and our gunpowder Papists. See Psalms 7:16.
Ver. 2. The Jews gathered themselves together] They were laeti in Domino, sed non securi, cheerful in God, but not free from care, as Bernard hath it. They had prayed, but yet provided for the thirteenth of Adar, which by many was meant still to be a bloody day, notwithstanding the known favour of the king, and the patronage of Mordecai. The Hamanists would join together to perform that sentence, whereof the author repented and had rued it. (That old enmity, Genesis 3:15, will never out of the serpent’s seed.) The Jews therefore well and wisely get together, and unite their forces, that they may make a powerful resistance. They are noted by Tacitus to be a nation at great unity among themselves, and to hate all others. One of the main scandals they do to this day take from Christians is their dissension, that mother of dissolution, as Nazianzen calleth it. The Turks pray to God to keep us still at variance, and say that their fingers shall sooner be all of one length than we be of one mind (Camer. Med. Histor. Cent. 2, c. 23). What a shame is this! If nothing else will, yet our common misery, and the hatred of our enemies, should unite us, as it did these exiles; and it was foretold by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 50:4, that Judah and Israel, that could not agree at other times, yet when they should be both in a weeping condition they should better agree. So did Basil and Eusebius against the Arians; Ridley and Hooper against the Papists, &c. And it is high time for us now to set aside our private emulations and exceptions; as the creatures in the ark laid by their antipathies within, because of the common danger of an inundation without. To lay hand on such as sought their hurt] To repel force with force, to kill and spoil those that sought to do so to them. This nature promoted them to (as was forenoted), and they had also the king’s warrant for it, and they kept themselves within compass thereof, by not meddling with any but only those that molested them. See Esther 8:11. And no man could withstand them] Tantum potest bona causa bonis usa consiliis et mediis, saith an interpreter here. A good cause, a good conscience, and a good courage, what cannot these three do where they meet? How should any stand before those who are Deo armati, strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might? Ephesians 6:10. Pilate’s wife could warn him of meddling with such; and Haman’s wife could tell him, that a Jew might fall before a Persian and get up again and prevail. But if a Persian, or whosoever of the Gentiles, begin to fall before a Jew, he can neither stand nor rise, Esther 6:13. There is an invisible hand of omnipotency that striketh in for his own, and confounds their opposites. For the fear of them fell upon all the people] This was the work, not of some Pan Deus Arcadiae (as the heathens fancied); but of God, the sole giver of victory, who, when he pleaseth, affrighteth the Church s enemies, as he promiseth to do in many places. See Exodus 23:27 De 11:2,5 Jer 46:27,28, &c. And as accordingly he did it on the Egyptians, Midianites, Philistines, Syrians, &c. And the like he did for Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, against the great caliph; for the Hussites, against all the force of Germany; for the Angrognians, against the pope’s army that came against them. The soldiers told their captains they were so astonished they could not strike, and that the ministers, with their prayers, conjured and bewitched them (Acts and Men. 883). So at the siege of Mountabone, whensoever the people of God began to sing a psalm (as they usually did before their sallying forth) the enemies coming, acquainted with their practice, would so quake and tremble, crying, They come, they come, as though the wrath of God had been breaking out upon them (Spec. Bel. Sacr. 282). What was this handful of captives to the whole Persian empire, that they should now become no less formidable to them than not long after those few Grecians were to Xerxes? who, having covered the seas with his ships, and with a world of men passed over into Greece, was afterwards himself alone, in a small fishing boat, glad to get back into Asia, to save his own life (Herodotus).