Esther 6

We've been reading through the book of Esther at the dinner table, and just this evening came to chapter 6. It begins with the king (Xerxes) unable to sleep. He commands some underlings to read to him from the record of his reign, where they come across the story of how Mordecai exposed a plot to assassinate the king. Xerxes asks what reward Mordecai (who, you'll remember, is a Jew and Esther's cousin and guardian) had recieved for his deed. "Nothing has been done for him," comes the reply.

Enter Haman. Haman had been furious at Mordecai's failure to bow before him or show him the great honour he so richly thought he deserved. He had just commissioned the construction of a high gallows and was visiting the king in order to ask for Mordecai's execution. But first, Xerxes has a question: "What should be done for the man the king delights to honor?" Haman, being an arragont prick, immediately thinks the king must be talking about him and so describes an elaborate ceremony: the man should be given some of the king's finest robes, be led about on a royal horse by a prince and acclaimed as someone who has the king's special favour.

Xerxes agrees, and drops the bomb on Haman: "Go at once...Get the robe and the horse and do just as you have suggested for Mordecai the Jew, who sits at the king's gate. Do not neglect anything you have recommended."

Haman, intending to put Mordecai to a (preferably slow and) gruesome death, ends up dressing him up in finery and leading him about the city on one of the king's horses.

A lover of black comedy, such as myself, cannot help but grin at the immense irony. I never knew God had such a wicked sense of humour...