What Does Esther 9:5 Mean?
Thus the Jews struck all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and with slaughter, and with perishing, and they did to those who hated them as they willed.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Thus the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, and slaughter, and destruction, and did what they would unto those that hated them.THE KEY
The verse’s “destruction” is אֲבַדָּן (ʾăḇaddān, “perishing”), from אבד (ʾābad, “to perish or be lost”), the same root used for Haman’s planned destruction of the Jews, now the target has turned.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you without euphemism: the Jews strike their enemies with the sword, killing, and destruction, and act against those who hate them. It holds the reversal and its violence in the same frame, leaving the cost visible rather than abstract.
THE ROOT
אֲבַדָּן
ʾăḇaddān
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾābad, to perish, to be lost.
The English word “destruction” can sound like a settled outcome; this root keeps the image grounded in perishing and being lost. Esther 9:24 uses the same root for the destruction planned against the Jews, so the word-family makes the passage’s reversal visible: the intended loss changes targets.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāḇad: to perish, be lost
אָבַד
This verb gives “destruction” its underlying motion: something or someone passes into loss.
ʾōḇēḏ: perishing, lost
אֹבֵד
This participle makes the outcome personal and ongoing, bringing the lives at stake into focus.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can depict the reversal of hostile power through explicit force and destruction.
Now in the twelfth month, the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of it, when the word of the king and his decree reached to be done, on the day the enemies of the Jews looked to rule over them, but it was overturned, and the Jews ruled over those who hated them.I pursue my enemies and overtake them, and I do not turn back until they run out.But when the king heard of it, he burned with anger, and he sent out his armies, and made those murderers perish, and burned their city.THE THREAD
Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the one who presses all the Jews, had planned against the Jews to make them perish, and had cast Pur, the lot, to crush them and to make them perish.The Hebrew לְאַבְּדָם (ləʾabbədām, “to destroy them”) in Esther 9:24 shares the root אבד (ʾābad, “to perish or be lost”) with “destruction” here. The same word-family names Haman’s intended outcome for the Jews and, in this verse, the destruction of their enemies.
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