And the king said, “Hang him on that.” So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the wrath of the king abated.
— Esther 7:10
It’s an old rule of writing: If you introduce a gun in the first act, it must be fired in the last.
Esther 7:10 is my favorite verse in what some call a “God-less” book of Scripture. Haman is, as they say, hoisted on his own petard. What he meant for evil, God meant for good, and this is of course reminiscent of the promise of the protoevangelion, which is of course fulfilled at the cross, where the “defeat” of Christ by Satan and sin is his victory over Satan and sin. There too — in the big backfire of the enemy’s plot — the wrath of the King is abated.
So in Esther 7:10 the villain is slain by his own weapon, and the gospel of the cross is there in the shadows.
