The Brittle Glory of a Fool Text: Esther 5:9-14
Introduction: The Anatomy of Envy
We come now to a passage that lays bare the anatomy of a fool's heart. The book of Esther, as we have noted, is a book where God is famously invisible and yet entirely present. His name is not mentioned, but His fingerprints are all over the crime scene. And the central crime, the central conflict, is a battle of worldviews, a collision of two posterities that goes all the way back to Saul and Agag. In one corner, you have Mordecai, the Jew, the representative of God's covenant people. And in the other, you have Haman the Agagite, the spiritual and biological descendant of the Amalekites, that ancient enemy of God whom Saul was commanded to utterly destroy.
What Saul failed to do with the sword, Haman is now attempting to finish through political machination. But the spirit that drives Haman is not just ancient history; it is the spirit of our age. It is the spirit of pride, of envy, of a man so puffed up with his own importance that the slightest pinprick of disrespect can send him into a homicidal rage. Haman is a case study in what the book of Proverbs warns us about on every other page. He is the fool whose eyes are on the ends of the earth, who has everything a man could want, but whose entire world collapses into misery over one man's refusal to bow the knee.
We live in a culture that cultivates this very spirit. It is a culture of grievance, a culture that teaches men to define themselves by their resentments. We are told to look inward, to nurse our slights, to tally up our microaggressions, and to declare that all our happiness is being held hostage by someone else's failure to affirm us. Haman would be right at home in modern America. He would have a podcast. He would be celebrated for his victimhood. But Scripture diagnoses his condition not as a tragic case of being slighted, but as the pathetic and deadly outworking of pride. And as we will see, pride is a very brittle foundation upon which to build your world.
In this passage, Haman has just come from the queen's private banquet, an exclusive affair with just him and the king. He is at the pinnacle of his power and prestige. But as we are about to see, the highest branch is the one that sways the most in the wind, and it is the closest to the lightning.
The Text
Then Haman went out that day glad and merry of heart; but when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate and that he did not stand up or tremble before him, Haman was filled with wrath against Mordecai. But Haman controlled himself, went to his house, and sent for and brought his friends and his wife Zeresh. Then Haman recounted to them the glory of his riches and the number of his sons and every instance where the king had magnified him and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king. Haman also said, “Even Esther the queen let no one but me come with the king to the feast which she had prepared; and tomorrow also I am called to come to her with the king. Yet all of this is worth nothing to me every time I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.” Then Zeresh his wife and all his friends said to him, “Have a gallows fifty cubits high made and in the morning say to the king that Mordecai should be hanged on it; then go gladly with the king to the feast.” And the word was good to Haman, so he had the gallows made.
(Esther 5:9-14 LSB)
The Poisoned Feast (v. 9-10)
We begin with Haman's emotional whiplash:
"Then Haman went out that day glad and merry of heart; but when Haman saw Mordecai in the king’s gate and that he did not stand up or tremble before him, Haman was filled with wrath against Mordecai. But Haman controlled himself, went to his house..." (Esther 5:9-10a)
Haman leaves the banquet on top of the world. He is "glad and merry of heart." He is puffed up like a parade float. He is the sole guest, along with the king, at the queen's table. He has a return invitation for the next day. In the economy of the Persian court, this is the ultimate status symbol. He is, in his own mind, the center of the universe. His ego is a helium balloon, soaring into the stratosphere.
But then comes the pin. "But when Haman saw Mordecai..." That little word "but" is the hinge upon which Haman's entire emotional state turns. He sees Mordecai, and Mordecai does what Mordecai does. He sits. He does not stand. He does not tremble. He refuses to give the pagan reverence that Haman's edict demanded. And what happens? The glad and merry heart instantly curdles. It is "filled with wrath."
This is a profound spiritual diagnostic. When your joy is so fragile that one man's posture can utterly destroy it, your joy is not rooted in reality. It is rooted in the sandy soil of human approval. Haman's happiness was entirely dependent on everyone else in the world agreeing with his own inflated self-assessment. The moment he encountered one man who refused to play along, his entire world of self-congratulation came crashing down. This is the essence of envy. Envy is not simply wanting what someone else has. It is being miserable over what someone else has, or in this case, what someone else is. Mordecai possessed an integrity that Haman could not stomach. Mordecai's quiet refusal was a silent sermon on Haman's illegitimacy.
Notice that Haman "controlled himself." This is not the self-control that is the fruit of the Spirit. This is the simmering, pot-on-the-stove kind of control. He bottles the rage. He doesn't explode publicly, because that would be unseemly for a man of his station. Instead, he takes his fury home, where he can vent it in a more controlled environment. This is what wicked men do. They present a respectable face to the world while their homes become the pressure-release valve for their bitterness.
The Bragging Session of a Hollow Man (v. 10-12)
Once home, Haman needs an audience to prop up his wounded ego.
"...and sent for and brought his friends and his wife Zeresh. Then Haman recounted to them the glory of his riches and the number of his sons and every instance where the king had magnified him and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king. Haman also said, 'Even Esther the queen let no one but me come with the king to the feast which she had prepared; and tomorrow also I am called to come to her with the king.'" (Esther 5:10b-12 LSB)
This is one of the most pathetic scenes in all of Scripture. Haman gathers his sycophants, his echo chamber, and he begins to recite his resume of blessedness. Look at the list. He boasts of the "glory of his riches," the "number of his sons" (a sign of great blessing in the ancient world), and all his promotions. He is essentially saying, "Remind me how great I am. Tell me again that I am a very special boy."
He is trying to use the sheer weight of his accomplishments to crush the nagging reality of Mordecai's defiance. He is piling up all his worldly glories on one side of the scale, hoping it will outweigh the pebble of one man's disrespect on the other. He even throws in the queen's invitation, twice, as the capstone of his greatness. "No one but me," he says. This is the language of ultimate pride. He is a man who has everything, and so he needs everyone to know it.
But this is what proud men do. When their identity is threatened, they don't turn to God; they turn to their resume. They recount their successes. They surround themselves with people who will tell them what they want to hear. Haman's friends and wife are not there for wise counsel; they are there to function as a hall of mirrors, reflecting his own glory back at him. This is a man who is profoundly insecure. His boasting is not a sign of his strength, but of his deep, spiritual emptiness.
The Poison Pill (v. 13)
After listing all his glories, Haman reveals the worm in the apple, the fly in the ointment.
"Yet all of this is worth nothing to me every time I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate." (Genesis 5:13 LSB)
Here it is. The mask comes off. After the long litany of his blessings, he confesses that it is all meaningless. "All of this is worth nothing to me." The Hebrew is stark. It is all dung. The glory of his riches, his many sons, his promotions, his exclusive dinner invitation, all of it turns to ash in his mouth because of one stubborn Jew.
This is the tyranny of an unforgiving and envious heart. It grants one person the power to nullify every other blessing in your life. Haman has made Mordecai the lord of his emotional world. Mordecai, sitting silently in the gate, has more control over Haman's internal state than Haman does. This is a form of self-imposed slavery. The man who hates is in bondage to the man he hates.
And let us not miss the descriptor: "Mordecai the Jew." This is not just a personal beef. This is a covenantal, historical hatred. Haman's problem is not just with a man named Mordecai; his problem is with what Mordecai represents. He represents the people of God, the covenant that God made with Abraham, the promise that God would bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them. Haman, the Agagite, is picking a fight not just with a man, but with the God of that man. And that is a fight you cannot win.
The Counsel of Fools (v. 14)
Haman's friends and his wife Zeresh, being the sycophants they are, do not offer him godly counsel. They don't tell him to get over it. They don't tell him to be thankful for his blessings. No, they pour gasoline on the fire of his rage.
"Then Zeresh his wife and all his friends said to him, 'Have a gallows fifty cubits high made and in the morning say to the king that Mordecai should be hanged on it; then go gladly with the king to the feast.' And the word was good to Haman, so he had the gallows made." (Esther 5:14 LSB)
Their solution is not repentance; it is escalation. Their advice is simple: you have a Mordecai problem? Eliminate him. And do it in the most spectacular, public, and humiliating way possible. A gallows fifty cubits high is about seventy-five feet tall. This is not for a quiet, discreet execution. This is for making a statement. This is a monument to Haman's ego, designed to be seen from all over Susa. It is the ultimate act of prideful vengeance.
And notice the logic: get rid of Mordecai, then you can "go gladly with the king to the feast." They are telling him that his joy is contingent on the destruction of his enemy. They are counseling him to build his happiness on another man's grave. This is the wisdom of the world. It is the wisdom of the serpent. It is earthly, sensual, and demonic.
And the text tells us, "the word was good to Haman." Of course it was. It was exactly what his wicked heart wanted to hear. He doesn't have to deal with the sin in his own heart; he can just get rid of the person who exposes it. So he immediately acts on it. "He had the gallows made." The pride of Haman now has a physical structure. His hatred is being hammered together with wood and nails. He is literally building the instrument of his own destruction. This is the great irony that providence loves to employ. The trap the wicked set for the righteous is the very trap they will be caught in. The pit they dig is the one they will fall into. The gallows Haman builds for Mordecai has his own name on it, and he is the only one who cannot see it.
Conclusion: The Gallows and the Cross
This story is a stark illustration of a spiritual law: pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Haman is a man who has everything the world can offer, but because he is governed by pride and envy, he has nothing. His inner world is a barren wasteland of resentment.
The gallows stands as a monument to this folly. It is the logical conclusion of a life lived for the self. When your own glory is your highest good, you will eventually demand the death of anyone who refuses to bow to it. This is the spirit of Cain, who killed Abel because his brother's righteous sacrifice was a rebuke to his own. It is the spirit of the Pharisees, who demanded the death of Jesus because His holiness exposed their hypocrisy.
Haman's seventy-five-foot gallows was the pinnacle of human pride, a structure designed to exalt himself by destroying his enemy. But God, in His beautiful and terrifying providence, had another wooden structure in mind. Not a gallows that rises up from the earth in pride, but a cross, planted in the earth in humility.
On that cross hung the ultimate Mordecai, the Lord Jesus Christ, who refused to bow the knee to the Hamans of this world, to the principalities and powers, to the spirit of the age. And they hated Him for it. They thought that by hanging Him on a tree, they could eliminate the problem. They thought they could get rid of the one man whose very existence was a judgment on their sin, and then go gladly to their feast.
But God took the instrument of their wicked pride and turned it into the instrument of our salvation. The cross, which was meant to be the ultimate symbol of shame, became the ultimate symbol of glory. Jesus absorbed the curse that Haman deserved. He took the wrath that we deserved. God turned the world's greatest act of injustice into the world's greatest act of redemption.
The lesson for us is this: you must deal with the Haman in your own heart. You must crucify the pride, the envy, the resentment, the bitterness that whispers to you that your happiness depends on someone else's humiliation. You must look at all your worldly accomplishments and confess with Haman, "all this is worth nothing to me", not because someone has slighted you, but because it is all rubbish compared to the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. You must see that the only gallows that matters is the cross where your sin was hanged, and the only promotion that counts is being raised with Christ to newness of life.