“So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the wrath of the king was abated.” — Esther 7:10 (ESV)
Haman died on his own gallows.
He had built them himself, fifty cubits high, intended as a very public and very permanent statement about the fate of the man who had refused to bow to him. He had been so pleased with the plan that he went to the palace early the next morning to get the king’s permission, arriving just in time to be conscripted into publicly honouring Mordecai instead. And then, when Esther’s revelation came and the king went into the garden to collect himself, Haman threw himself on Esther’s couch to plead for his life. The king returned to find Haman apparently assaulting the queen in the king’s own house. That sealed it. One of the servants noted that the gallows Haman had built for Mordecai were still standing, fifty cubits high. The king gave one word: hang him on it.
The instrument of the enemy’s plan became the instrument of the enemy’s end. This is a pattern that runs deeper than Esther. It runs through the entire biblical narrative. The Egyptians drowned in the same sea they had used to kill Hebrew babies. David killed Goliath with Goliath’s own sword. Jesus was crucified on a cross that became the instrument of the resurrection that reversed death itself. God has a consistent pattern of taking the weapons raised against His people and turning them back on the ones who raised them.
This does not mean that every situation in which we are being threatened will resolve in this precise way. Esther is a story of one specific and extraordinary providence, not a general promise about every specific threat. What it does reveal is the character of the God who is at work in all of our stories. He is not neutral. He is not disinterested. He is a God who has a consistent pattern of letting the enemy’s own strategies become the mechanisms of their undoing.
The gallows were fifty cubits high. That is approximately twenty-three metres. Haman built them that high because he wanted everyone in Susa to see what happened to the man who refused to bow to him. He wanted it to be a public statement. It became one. Just not the statement he had intended.
Today, do not be alarmed by the size of what is being raised against you. Sometimes the height of the gallows only tells you how visible the reversal is going to be.
Prayer
Father, I trust your pattern. The weapon raised against me may become the instrument of its own destruction. I release it. I am not responsible for the reversal. You are. In Jesus’ name, amen.
