Bad Guidance - Bad Comfort - Esther 6-10

 Esther 6:12-14 (ESV)

Then Mordecai returned to the king's gate. But Haman hurried to his house, mourning and with his head covered. And Haman told his wife Zeresh and all his friends everything that had happened to him. Then his wise men and his wife Zeresh said to him, “If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of the Jewish people, you will not overcome him but will surely fall before him.”

While they were yet talking with him, the king's eunuchs arrived and hurried to bring Haman to the feast that Esther had prepared.

The story of Haman and Mordecai is a classic story that any movie script would love to follow.   Haman is so angry at Mordecai he is willing to go to any links to have him destroyed.   Not only Mordecai but all the Jews in the 127 regions of the kingdom of the Medes.  Along with his wife and friends, Haman devised a plan to have the Jews wiped out in a single day and to have Mordecai hanged on the gallows he built in his own back yard.  Why?  Because one day when Haman was coming out of the king’s palace Mordecai did not show him the respect he thought he deserved.  Why?  Because Mordecai feared the Lord and not mankind.  He was not about to worship Haman.   

All this lead to the above scene.  When Haman’s plot is finally discovered by the king, with Esther’s help, Haman runs back to his friends and family to find consolation and advice.   But, the very people he thought would console him, instead, were straight up honest with him.  Instead of being told, “It will all be okay, honey,” his wife (Zeresh) tells him, in essence, “It is all over for you baby!”  Zeresh means gold.  But, Haman must have thought at that time she was more like tin. Note the original advice Zeresh gave Haman during a time he was on top of the world:

Esther 5:14 (ESV)

Then his wife Zeresh and all his friends said to him, “Let a gallows fifty cubits high be made, and in the morning tell the king to have Mordecai hanged upon it. Then go joyfully with the king to the feast.” This idea pleased Haman, and he had the gallows made.

His wife and his friends got him into this mess.   But, they had no Godly advice for him to recover.   They only had gloom and doom to offer.  During Job’s hardship (for completely different reasons), his wife was equally depression with her counsel: 

Job 2:9

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.”

When we listen to people who give bad advice, don’t expect them to be there for you and guide you out of the dilemma they put you in.  They are as equally bad with comfort as they are with counsel.