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Catholic Commentary
Mordecai's Letter: Commemorating the Reversal of Haman's Plot
20Mordecai wrote these things in a book and sent them to the Jews, as many as were in the kingdom of Ahasuerus, both those who were near and those who were far away,21to establish these as joyful days and to keep the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar;22for on these days the Jews obtained rest from their enemies; and in that month, which was Adar, in which a change was made for them from mourning to joy, and from sorrow to a holiday, to spend the whole of it in good days of feasting and gladness, sending portions to their friends and to the poor.23And the Jews consented to this as Mordecai wrote to them,24showing how Haman the son of Hammedatha the Macedonian fought against them, how he made a decree and cast lots to destroy them utterly;25also how he went in to the king, telling him to hang Mordecai; but all the calamities he tried to bring upon the Jews came upon himself, and he was hanged, along with his children.
Esther 9:20–25 describes Mordecai's establishment of the Purim festival by writing to all Jews throughout the kingdom to commemorate their deliverance from Haman's plot through annual celebration on the 14th and 15th of Adar with feasting, gift-giving, and almsgiving. The passage emphasizes the reversal of the Jews' fate from mourning to joy and documents how Haman's own evil devices resulted in his execution and that of his sons.
Mordecai's letter doesn't just remember the Jewish people's escape—it plants a feast into the calendar that turns every future Purim into a living proclamation that human schemes against God's people collapse under their own weight.
Verse 25 — The Retributive Reversal and its Public Memory "All the calamities he tried to bring upon the Jews came upon himself" is the book's lex talionis moment. Haman and his sons were hanged on the very gallows Haman constructed for Mordecai. This poetic justice is not mere narrative satisfying — it reflects the deuteronomic principle that the wicked are ensnared by their own schemes (Ps 7:15–16). The public and perpetual memory of this reversal through Purim serves as a recurring liturgical proclamation: no human scheme against God's people, however elaborate, can succeed when God's hidden providence is at work.
Typological sense: Catholic tradition reads Esther's rescue of the Jews as a type of Our Lady's intercession and of the Church's deliverance from the powers of death. The reversal motif — the gallows becoming the instrument of the evildoer's own destruction — prefigures the Cross, where Satan's apparent triumph became the instrument of his own defeat (Col 2:15). Mordecai's letter, binding the community to perpetual grateful memory, anticipates the Church's Liturgy, which similarly binds the faithful to the perpetual memorial of Christ's Passover.
Catholic tradition brings several distinctive lenses to this passage. First, the theology of memoria — liturgical memory as salvific act. The Catechism teaches that "when the Church celebrates the sacraments, she commemorates God's wondrous works accomplished in the past" (CCC 1103). Mordecai's institution of Purim operates on exactly this principle: the feast does not merely recall but re-presents the saving reversal to each new generation. St. Augustine, in De Civitate Dei (XVII.36), reads the entire book of Esther as illustrating God's hidden yet certain providence guiding history toward its redemptive end.
Second, Catholic tradition has long recognized Esther as a type (figura) of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Queen who intercedes for her people before the King. St. Bernard of Clairvaux and later Pope Pius XII (Munificentissimus Deus, 1950) echo this typology. The reversal of sorrow to joy in verse 22 resonates with the Magnificat's proclamation that God "has cast down the mighty from their thrones and has lifted up the lowly" (Lk 1:52), a pattern the Church sees fulfilled definitively in Mary and in the Paschal Mystery.
Third, the mandatory care for the poor embedded in Purim's very institution (v. 22) reflects what Catholic Social Teaching identifies as the "preferential option for the poor" (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, §182). Celebration of God's deliverance is incomplete without material solidarity. Joy kept only for oneself is a diminished joy. Finally, Haman's defeat through his own machinations illustrates what the Catechism calls the permissive will of God, who "can bring good out of the worst disorders" (CCC 312), turning even the enemy's plots to the glorification of His name.
Contemporary Catholics live in a culture that privatizes both joy and suffering, and that tends to regard liturgical memory as mere nostalgia. These verses challenge both tendencies. The institution of Purim reminds us that the Church's liturgical calendar — the cycle of feasts, fasts, and memorials — is not decorative tradition but spiritual survival equipment. Participating in the liturgical year is how we collectively remember who we are and whose we are.
More concretely, verse 22's twin obligations — feasting and giving to the poor — confront a common temptation to spiritualize gratitude without enacting it materially. A Catholic who gives thanks for God's deliverance without extending that generosity to those in need has only half-observed the feast. Parishes, families, and individuals might examine whether their celebrations of God's goodness — at Christmas, Easter, anniversaries of personal conversions — include a deliberate act of solidarity with the poor. Finally, the passage's core conviction that human plots against God's people are ultimately self-defeating offers genuine consolation to Catholics who feel besieged by hostile cultural or institutional forces: the "gallows built for Mordecai" has a long history of receiving its own builder.
Commentary
Verse 20 — "Mordecai wrote these things in a book" The verb "wrote" (Hebrew: wayyiktōb) carries legal and covenantal weight throughout the Old Testament. Mordecai's act of writing is not merely archival; it is constitutive. By committing the events to a sēfer (scroll/book), he anchors the memory of deliverance in permanent, transmissible form. The reach of the letter — "both those who were near and those who were far away" — stresses the universality of this observance for the dispersed Jewish community throughout Ahasuerus's 127-province empire. No Jew is exempted from this communal memory.
Verse 21 — "to establish these as joyful days" The word lěqayyēm ("to establish" or "to confirm") is a strong legal-liturgical term. Mordecai does not merely suggest a celebration; he institutes a binding observance. The fourteenth of Adar was observed by Jews in the unwalled towns and villages (those who fought and rested a day earlier; cf. 9:17–18), while the fifteenth was kept by the Jews of Susa and fortified cities. This dual-day structure built the liturgical diversity of Purim into its very foundation, honoring the distinct experiences of different Jewish communities.
Verse 22 — "a change was made for them from mourning to joy" This verse is the theological heart of the passage. The phrase "a change was made" (or "was turned," Hebrew: nehpak) is passive, pointing implicitly to a divine agent behind the transformation — the One who turns mourning into dancing (Ps 30:11). The three pairs of contrasts — rest from enemies / mourning to joy / sorrow to holiday — form a deliberate literary triad that magnifies the totality of the reversal. The commandment to send "portions to friends and to the poor" (a practice known as mishloah manot and matanot la'evyonim) gives Purim its communal, outward-looking character. Rejoicing is not merely private; it must overflow into solidarity, especially with the marginalized.
Verses 23–24 — The Consent of the Jews and the Summary of Haman's Evil The community's ratification ("the Jews consented") mirrors the covenantal model found throughout Israel's history: the people freely accept what God, through His instrument, has ordained. Verse 24 offers the book's own retrospective summary of Haman's malice. He is identified as a "Macedonian" (or Agagite in the Hebrew tradition — the Greek text reads "Macedonian," reflecting the Septuagint's interpretive expansions), linking him to the archetypal enemy of Israel. The pûr (the lot Haman cast) gives the feast its name. His attempt to mechanize destruction through divination is now enshrined as an object of annual mockery — the instrument of fate he trusted most became the symbol of his defeat.