It’s funny how the Scriptures can “talk to you” sometimes. Through events which occurred thousands of years earlier, and situations which you’d never find yourself in, there still arises a connection to an incident that gives cause to pause and reflect. I’m working my way through a reading plan . . . but the Holy Spirit is seeking to work the reading of Scriptures through me . . . that it might benefit me through “teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2Tim. 3:16). And as I sit back and think after this morning’s set of readings I can’t help but think that Haman would have done well to have read Proverbs.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.   
                                                                                     (Proverbs 18:16  ESV)

I read that short verse of wisdom after reading chapters five and six in Esther . . . and it jumped off the page of the warning Haman leaves for those with “ears to hear.”

Esther has a number of storylines that converge through a mysterious set of “circumstances”. There is a king who has, in my opinion, an over the top response to a wife trying to assert a bit of independence. There’s a set of cousins, the older assuming a father role as he brings up his younger female relative — they are Israelites who, rather than choosing to return to Jerusalem to rebuild, stay in the land of exile . . . and there’s an up-and-comer in the king’s courts who’s rising quickly through the ranks . . . gaining power and prestige at a kingdom level. And, though God is not mentioned once in this book, His fingerprints are all over it . . .

And while I have little in common with the setting, the situations, and the players in this drama, there are lessons to be learned from each of them. This morning, it’s the up-and-comer that teaches me a thing or two about the destructiveness of pride.

Apparently Haman’s name literally means “magnificent.” Kind of fits with the guy in this story . . . he was magnificent. Must have been very capable . . . I imagine that he might very well have been quite charismatic . . . a combination of all the right stuff . . . recognized by the king and rewarded with advancement to the top of the food chain of royal officials. Not only blessed with ability and position, you get the sense that he was also a man of means as he offers to finance a small war out of his own pocket. Had it all . . . except one thing . . . an old Jew (as in fatherly cousin above) refused to show him respect. While others bowed before him, this old man kept his seat at the gate . . . and became a festering thorn in Haman’s prideful side.

And Haman recounted to [his family and friends] the splendor of his riches, the number of his sons, all the promotions with which the king had honored him, and how he had advanced him above the officials and the servants of the king . . . “Yet all this is worth nothing to me, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king’s gate.”   (Esther 5:11, 13 ESV)

Really? It all means nothing because one man won’t bow the knee? How consumed is this guy with himself? Pretty!

And in his insatiable need to serve self he ends up, in effect, opposing God. In seeking to feed his own appetite for magnificence, even to the point of exterminating an entire people within the kingdom, he ends up destroying himself. He will build his own gallows unwittingly . . . he will set himself against the king’s in-laws . . . and even find himself assaulting the king’s wife. Talk about a fall . . . talk about pride going before destruction.

And while I can’t really relate to the extreme circumstances, I am warned about the insidious allure of pride. I’m reminded that promoting self can have a blinding effect. I’m cautioned about lifting myself up and the associated danger of finding myself in opposition to my King.

Oh, that by God’s grace, through the redeeming blood of His Son, and the renewing power of the Spirit, I might keep myself from such destructive arrogance.

For His glory . . .