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Someone asked me this, and I had trouble answering.
Once Achashverosh had cancelled Homon’s decree, what danger from their enemies were the Yidden still in, that they felt compelled to kill 75,000? For that matter, why were Homon’s ten sons killed?
Well, for starters, because achashverosh didn’t cancel haman’s decree…
Achashverosh didn’t cancel the decree, he allowed the Jews to arm and defend themselves (and sent troops to help out?).
The reason why they killed 75000 Jews was because in the non walled cities, they did not pick up on the signals the king was sending that he want the decree nullified. In the walled cities they did so when they got the second letter that the Jews can fight back, it was understood that the King does not want the Jews Killed and “vish Lo omad Bifnayhem”. Thats going on just the walled cities.
In the unwalled cities, the people got a letter that said “kill the jews” (letter 1) – which was not opened until the 13th of adar. They then got a second letter, Esters letter that the “Jews should kill”. So there was a war from the Die hard anti-semites and the Jews won because they were backed by the army.
Sorry poppa I checked the Pesukim and effectively Achashverosh did cancel Homon’s decree:
lol wut?
Keep reading, and let us know when you get to the part where the king says he cannot cancel it because you can’t cancel decrees from the king.
Leyzer – poppa right on this one- aderaba- the King clearly said he cant “return the decrees” – nullifying it was out of the question, she didnt even ask. You need to read the Gaon and Malbums explanation on what they did and all these Qs and more fall away.
Possuk 8: (Achashverosh responded:) ‘And you write about the Jews as is good in your eyes’
What happened to the rest of the possuk?
. . . for an edict which is written in the King’s name and sealed with the royal signet may not be revoked.
There are two critical points:
1. We killed our mortal enemies and need not apologize. We did so under the color of the law as decreed by the King.
2. In Shushan we asked for an additional day so that we can finish off those we didn’t have time to finish on the first day. This fact disproves that we only killed those who were going to kill us first due to the King’s original decree against the Jews.
FIA,
It only disproves it with respect to those 300.
It would seem that many came to kill the Jews, the Jews killed almost all of them. 300 escaped. Esther asked for permission to hunt them down and Achashverosh gave it.
FIA: The jews in the unwalled cities fought – what happened in a nutshell is that originally haman wrote 2 letters, 1 saying “be prepared for military action” and another secret one given just to the leaders to open on the 13th to “kill the jews”. Had he just written letters for everyone to kill the jews in 11 months, it would never had happened. Then M & E wrote their own 2 letters “clarifying” that when it said “be prepared for military action” it meant “haehudim” – jews be prepared – they had to do it this way cause a King cant Nullify a decree as explained above.
The second letter, “clarified” to mean “kill” who should kill – the jews should kill – instead of the Jews being killed, they should kill others. Of course a stretch (in some languages more then others) – yes – but this was just a “lawyers trick” to get around the decree without Nullifying it. So when the people got Esters Letter – worse case the jews were prepared (from the open letter) and they then had 2 letters on the 13th of Adar, 1) “kill the jews” and 2) “jews should kill” – so even if they didnt fall for the lawyers trick – the jews were ready and had an advantage of being ready and also were far better off from before cause at least they were on equal footing.
In the walled cities, the gov leaders were getting signals from the capital that the King is with the jews (because M got promoted, H was killed, etc) so they mainly focused on Esters letter – so “veish Loy umad Lifnayhem” – in the lawless unwalled cities, the man on the street only focused on the first – so they fought and the Jews fought back..That is why walled cities and unwalled celebrate differant days “they way they rested” – the walled cities didnt even fight, unwalled did – the unwalled had more of a traditional military win, walled was more hashem behind the scenes. This is also why the unwalled cities celebrated the first year, the walled only the second because they did not see a great miracle happen like the unwalled
There is alot more to say…but this is in a nutshell
shaul hamelech was supposed to kill out amelek but left agag alive. so in mordechai and esthers time they also had 2 finish out amelek, no?
ThePurpleOne – yes that too but the simple reading of the M also has to make sense.
and why isnt my answer simple?
There are contradictions. In one place it says “vish lo omad”, no body stood up to the Jews….but then it says they killed 75,000 “enemies”…. – and when it was over they celebrated. If they won a war we can celebrate, not if they killed hapless ppl who are not fighting you.
we also need to understand why it says everyone celebrates “the way they rested” (9:22). I understand shushan itself cause them and only them rested on the 15th, but a walled city other then shushan “fought” on the 13th, so they rested on the 14th, why would they celebrate on the 15th? Its not the “way they rested”
Even had it not say the words “like they rested”, its still not logical for a walled city to celebrate on the wrong day just because in shushan they rested that day. What does the fact that Shushan has a wall around it have to do with it? Find another common random attribute to shushan (maybe all cities that have plumbing like shushan celebrate the 15th as a zaycher to shushan)
Also, why didnt they take the spoils like M said? (according to what was said above, M had to keep the letter the same or similar to H, to make it look like its a clarification of Hamans letter, so he had to say they should take the spoils like it said in Hamans letter. He had never intended for the jews to take it and thats why they didnt)
Why not 75,001? or 75,427?
yageir – what do you mean? maybe it was an approximate – whats your point?
Maybe ???? ?????? ??? means something else? Guess not, hate to say it but I never liked the megillah and purim to be honest.
yageir: – what dont you like about it? I love it
Not sure exactly, maybe the fact there is no hashem in all of it? But ma’ariv is waiting and need to sleep early today so ill keep it with that.
So yageir thinks kisvei kodesh are not honest. That ought to mean that he is not part of any debate around here.
midwesterner: ***Like***
midwesterner –
So yageir thinks kisvei kodesh are not honest.
That’s not what he said, and I think you know it. What he said was that he has to be honest and admit that Purim is not his favourite Yom Tov and the lack of H’ mentioned explicitly in the Megilla unnerves him –
hate to say it but I never liked the megillah and purim to be honest…maybe the fact there is no hashem in all of it?
There’s no reason to go throwing out personal attacks…
yageir
There is Hashem in everything! Theres a very good reason why Hashems name is not mentioned in the megillah its kind of the whole point of the story!
JMH,
It’s hard to defend a comment which says that the writer doesn’t like the Megillah and Purim.
DY – I know, and, as he himself says he hates the fact that he doesn’t like it. But there is still no reason to accuse him of denying the validity of one of the sifrei tanach and essentially calling him a kofer.
just my hapence,
That’s exactly what I meant. I must say though that I’m not a “kofer” but I’m a geir in learning, so excuse me if I caused any trouble amongst you by saying this.
Once I had trouble with other things but through asking I learned more and understood it better. Sorry again.
Joseph,
they did not ask to the extra day in shushan to “finish the job” there was no way they were going to finish the job,nor did they “finish the job”
R’ Y. Eiybushitz says that esther asked for the extra day to show the yidden that this was not teva. and that this was all due to HKBH. Teva would just turn Haman’s day into Esther’s day, the extra day shows HKBH calling the shots
R’ Brevda says that the extra day was done to disprove those who might say this was all in the mazalos, and that Haman got it wrong. The extra day shows that it wasn’t that Haman misread the stars, rather Hashem had a different plan
The pashut pshat reason that Hashem is not mentioned in Esther is that the Megillah was originally an official document of the Persian government and the Persian government wasn’t about to endorse the Jewish religion.
That is why the references to Hashem are veiled (“revach v’hatzoloh yamod layehudim m’mokom acher), Achashverosh is portrayed as not realizing that Haman was trying to kill the Jews, and the Megillah ends with a statement about how wonderful Achashverosh was.
BTW the Torah and Tanach often round off large numbers (and even not so large). Dibra Torah k’loshon b’nei adam.
Yageir – I wasn’t ch’v calling you a kofer, in fact I was trying to tell the others that you weren’t one…
And guys, see where you’re unfounded attacks got you – last I checked lo sonu es hager was a lav d’oraysa…
We should not use our “moral ruler” for events of early times
we dont ask about the decimation of the tribe of Binyamin or the separation of Levey from the rest of the am the mitzva of destroying amalek or the 7 nations.
there are different times and sensibilities
What we do today is not what was done in the past and visa versa
Shmoolik: That’s a lot closer to Apikorsus than anything else said in this thread. The Mitzvos are binding and relevant forever. So either our “moral sensibilities” nowadays are misguided or we don’t properly understand these Mitzvos/stories. Only one of those two possibilities can be correct. Saying “today things are different” is not a Jewish response.
what I am saying is that what we consider “moral” as a result of the culture we live in is not how we should judge events in the past.
we must accept what the torah tells us to do and even if we do not understand it all.
we should not apologize for things that in “western eyes” appears not “moral” i.e. killing 75000 anti semites in one day
Previous post should read “your” not “you’re”. Predictive whatsits on phones are not really conducive to grammatically correct posts.
shmoolik 1
“we should not apologize for things that in “western eyes” appears not “moral” i.e. killing 75000 anti semites in one day”
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