Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Trevor & Julie Peterson" <06peterson AT cua.edu>]

I'm trying to figure out how much the text of Ester characterizes Persia in
general as anti-Semitic.  (I'm not terribly concerned at this point with the
question of whether Persia was anti-Semitic in the factual, historical
sense--just the literary construct that is the backdrop for the story.)

3:4-6 seems somewhat ambiguous on this point.  For whatever it's worth, here
it is in my currently preferred transliteration scheme (admittedly far from
ideal, but what isn't?):

vayhi k'omram elav yom vayom vlo shama alehem vayyaggidu lhaman lirot
haya'amdu divre mordoxay ki-higgid lahem asher-hu yhudi vayyar haman ki-en
mordoxay korea umishtaxave lo vayyimmale haman xema vayyivez b'enav lishlox
yad bmordoxay lvaddo ki-higgidu lo et-am mordoxay vayvaqqesh haman lhashmid
et-kol-hayyhudim asher bxol-malxut axashverosh am mordoxay

Now, depending on how one understands the function of KI in v.4, I can see
it going one of two ways.  I've translated the whole passage with both
options, so I can suggest something about the resulting effects:

And it came about, when they spoke to him daily and he would not listen to
them, that they reported to Haman (to see whether Mordoxay's words would
stand) that he had told them that he was a Jew.  And Haman saw that Mordoxay
did not bow down and pay homage to him, and Haman was filled with rage.  But
he disdained to lay hands on Mordoxay alone, since they had told him
Mordoxay's people.  So Haman sought to exterminate all the Jews who were in
all the kingdom of Axashverosh--Mordoxay's people.

or

And it came about, when they spoke to him daily and he would not listen to
them, that they reported to Haman, to see whether Mordoxay's words would
stand, because he had told them that he was a Jew.  And Haman saw that
Mordoxay did not bow down and pay homage to him, and Haman was filled with
rage.  But he disdained to lay hands on Mordoxay alone, since they had told
him Mordoxay's people.  So Haman sought to exterminate all the Jews who were
in all the kingdom of Axashverosh--Mordoxay's people.

Right now, I'm leaning toward the first option, understanding the KI to
introduce what they reported to Haman as indirect discourse.  For one thing,
I think "higgid" is normally transitive.  (So far I've been too lazy to do
more than check a lexicon on that, so I'm trying not to put too much weight
on this point.)  If the KI clause did not serve as the object, we'd have to
say that it's intransitive (for which I'm allowing by using "report") or
that the object is unstated.  More substantially, at least for me right now,
the first reading seems to bend the passage in a direction that better
explains the final "am mordoxay" in v. 6.

What I mean is that the second reading gives Mordoxay's identity as a Jew as
the cause for their ratting him out (or at least the reason that they
wondered how Haman would react to his words--words that remain hidden to us,
BTW, in this second reading).  It suggests, then, some significance attached
to Mordoxay's Jewishness by these others who report him--a significance that
they assumed would also be a factor in Haman's judgment.  It also seems to
suggest that Mordoxay resisted telling them about his nationality throughout
the days of questioning, and that it was when he finally revealed his
identity that they immediately found something worth reporting.  The first
reading, on the other hand, ties in the significance of Mordoxay's
Jewishness with the words they want to test--it is his reason for not
bowing, and they want to see whether that will be enough for Haman.  It
remains ambiguous about when Mordoxay told them this bit of
information--perhaps he'd been saying it all along, and they finally gave up
trying to convince him to bow; perhaps it was a late revelation.  And
generally speaking, I don't think the book is clear about whether Mordoxay
ever felt a need to keep his own identity secret--just Ester's.

But the reason that I think these different shapes are significant is that
the close of v. 6 seems to attach special significance to the notion that
Jews are Mordoxay's people (not the other way around).  By adding it at the
very end, it seems that the narrator backtracks to justify what he has just
said--not that Haman had anything particular against Jews, except for what
has just gone on in the narrative.  He hates Mordoxay for not bowing, and
since Mordoxay's reason for not bowing is his nationality, everyone of that
nationality must pay.

As I say, I think this reading makes the most sense, and I don't think there
is anything wrong or forced about it grammatically either.  If there is
anything to the transitivity of "higgid," it may even be preferable on such
grounds.  But I'm curious what others think.  Are there other contextual
clues that I'm missing, or perhaps something about the language that has
escaped me?

Thanks,

Trevor Peterson
CUA/Semitics

Omnam ki attem-am, v'immakhem tamut xokhma.  --Iyov