Esther 5:11

And Haman told them of the glory of his riches,.... Of the multitude of them; which he did partly in a way of ostentation, and partly, if he could, to make his mind easy under the mortification he

Haman told them of the glory of his riches; partly to gratify his own vain-glorious humour; and partly to aggravate Mordecai’ s impudence in denying him civil respect, and to alleviate his own vexation caused by it.

Esther 5:11 And Haman told them of the glory of his riches, and the multitude of his children, and all [the things] wherein the king had promoted him, and how he had advanced him above the princes and servants of the king.Ver. 11. And Haman told them of the glory of his riches] Favourites, observing their mollissima fandi tempora, get many times much wealth under princes; as did Sejanus under Tiberius; Seneca under Nero; that rich and wretched Cardinal, Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, and chancellor of England, in the reign of Henry VI; Cardinal Wolsey, under Henry VIII. That Haman had feathered his nest well appears by his large offer to the king of ten thousand talents of silver, &c. Now riches render a man glorious in the world’ s eye; hence they go coupled together, Proverbs 3:16; Proverbs 8:18. Hence that of Laban’ s grumbling sons, Genesis 31:1, "Jacob hath taken away all that was our father’ s" (nay, not all, but as avarice made Sejanus think all which he acquired not, to be lost, Quicquid non acquiritur damnum est (Sen.), so did these lowlies): "and of that which was our father’ s hath he gotten all this glory." But what were all this glory of his riches if, for want of children Haman should leave it to those, Quos vel nescit vel nolit, as Austin hath it, to strangers or enemies? He tells them, therefore, Of the multitude of his children] His sons and his successors like to be. I say, likely to be, not sure to be, for Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo. God gave Leda, Luctuosam faecunditatem, as Jerome saith of her, a sorrowful fruitfulness, because she lived to bury her many children. There were twenty-two children and children’ s children of the house of Portugal, between Philip II of Spain and that crown; and yet he outlived them all, as histories show, and his successors held that kingdom till within these few years. It is but a vain thing, therefore, for a man to boast of the multitude of children, since he may either lose them, or live to wish, as Augustus the emperor did, Oh that I had either lived a bachelor or died childless! Utinam aut caelebs vixissem, aut orbus perissem. And all the things wherein the king had promoted him] Wherein, but wherefore he showeth not. Dignity should wait upon desert; but many times we see it otherwise, and it was of old complained of, Psalms 12:8. He telleth what the king had done for him, but not a tittle what God. God was not in all his thoughts. He might justly have been twitted, as once that pope was pithily, when he had engraven upon the gates of his newly built college: Utrecht (where he was born) planted me; Lovain (where he was bred) watered me; but Caesar (who had promoted him to the popedom) gave increase: a merry passenger wrote below, Hic Deus nihil fecit, Here God did nothing.

(11) Told them . . .—As all this was of necessity sufficiently well known to his hearers, this was simply a piece of vain-glorious boasting, the pride that “goeth before destruction.” The multitude of his children.—He had ten sons (Esther 9:10).

Verse 11. The multitude of his children] The Asiatic sovereigns delight in the number of their children; and this is one cause why they take so many wives and concubines.

11. recounted unto them] A.V. less accurately, told them of. and the multitude of his children] lit. and the multitude of his sons. Of these there were ten (Esther 9:7 ff.). Clearly his wife and intimates would be familiar with the size of his family. The point of his remark, however, lies in the circumstance that among the Persians, as also with the Jews (see Psalms 127:4 f.), to have many sons was considered to redound to a man’s credit (Herod. i. 136). A characteristic comment in the Targum tells us that Haman had, besides these, 208 other sons. This it deduces from the combined numerical values of the three letters of the (one) Hebrew word rendered ‘and the multitude.[73]’ [73] εψα. ε = 6, ψ = 200, α = 2.

The multitude of his children - Herodotus tells us that, next to prowess in arms, it was regarded as the greatest proof of manly excellence in Persia to be the father of many sons.” Haman had ten sons (see the margin reference).

11. The glory of his riches — That is, the extent and abundance of his riches. The multitude of his children — His ten sons are mentioned in Esther 9:10, and he had, probably, several grandsons.