• After these things… How much time had elapsed here?
• Haman the Agagite: is there significance to his name?
• Xerxes apparently trusted Haman implicitly so much that he elevated him above the other officials and we don’t see the multitude of counselors any more. Was that wise?
• The king’s command: bow and pay homage (ESV) or reverence (KJV).  Was Mordecai justified in disobeying the king’s command?
  • Strongly encourage you to study how the words bow and reverence are used in the OT.
  • Definition of Homage (Dictionary.com):

respect or reverence paid or rendered: In his speech he paid homage to Washington and Jefferson.
the formal public acknowledgment by which a feudal tenant or vassal declared himself to be the man or vassal of his lord, owing him fealty and service.

• In the little that I have studied, I think use of this word in Hebrew roughly correlates with the idea of paying homage in the English, as defined above. If so, Mordecai was basically making a statement that he was unwilling to reverence or be loyal to Haman, who was his superior.   It was not that he was being commanded to worship Haman, but to respect him. If so, his behavior would be in direct contradiction with passages such as 1 Peter 2:13-17 and Jeremiah 29:7.
• Deffinbaugh points out the concern of later Jewish commentators with this apparent contradiction in Mordecai’s attitude:

(5) Later Jewish additions to our text betray the fact that Mordecai was being stubborn and rebellious. The Alexandrian Jews, uneasy with Mordecai’s attitudes and actions as conveyed in the Hebrew text, sought to improve his image with this insertion:

“About 100 B.C., Alexandrian Jews, possibly in an effort to vindicate the spirituality of Mordecai . . . put this prayer into his mouth: ‘You know all things; you know, Lord, that it was not because of insolence or arrogance or vanity that I did this, that I did not bow down before arrogant Haman; for I would have been quite willing to have kissed the soles of his feet for Israel’s sake. But I did it in order that I might not put the glory of a man above the glory of God.’“40

If it were not so obvious that Mordecai was a proud, self-willed Jew, later Jews would see no need to tamper with the original text.

• I would also like to consider the possibility that Mordecai was justified in refusing to bow.  Mostly, I would like to ask if there are any applications to us today. Do we have circumstances where we should not be bowing or offering loyalty?
• Was Haman playing wild and free with the truth in his request to the king?
• 10,000 talents of silver?! Not a significant point, but was Haman just making up this unbelievable number (75lb x 10,000 = 750,000lb of silver) knowing that the king would say to keep it?
• What was Xerxes thinking in just passing off his signet ring like this? Do we as fathers make decisions like this sometimes?
• “And the king and Haman sat down to drink, but the city of Susa was thrown into confusion.” (Esther 3:15b)  What was the significance of Xerxes and Hamans’ sitting down to drink? What was going on in the city of Susa?
• Where was God in all of this?