I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.
Today, I am reading and commenting on Esther 8-10.
This passage gives us an insight into how crowds work, in particular violent crowds. Due to the peculiarities of Persian Law, the decree which Haman had put out encouraging people to gather into mobs and kill Jews to acquire their wealth, with government sanction, could not be repealed. However, the King granted Mordecai the right and ability to put out an edict to counter it. The second edict gave the Jews the right to gather to kill those who moved against them and to take their property, also with government sanction. For many years when I read this I did not understand how Mordecai’s edict made any difference. However, if we look at these edicts in light of Nazi Germany and other pogroms throughout history we can discover some interesting things. The Nazis never enjoyed majority support in Germany and neither did most of the other pogroms in history. In most of these cases a motivated minority managed to obtain government support for their violence, as Haman initially did here. The majority will not interfere and an additional minority, who otherwise had no hostility to the victims will often get caught up in the moment and join the mob in attacking its victims. However, if the prospective victims organize and defend themselves, and the government expresses support of that defense, no one except for the hard core fanatics will join in the assault and an additional minority will help the victims defend themselves.
