Esther 6:1 On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles… The place of this verse fully vindicated by its contents. When its position is observed in the original it is found to be very nearly the bisection of the book. Certainly it is the critical point, the hinge on which the deep moral and religious interest of the history turns. There is a sense in which it might seem that up to this point the reader has but groped his way. He has asked for a little more distinctly religious light and speech. He craves to see a Divine presence, and to hear the accents of a Diviner voice than have been hitherto vouchsafed. Perhaps these are still withheld in their fullest manifestation, but it can no longer be felt that any vital element of evidence is absent. The night in question was the night between the two banquets of Esther, the night before the almost certainly foregone conclusion of permission to hang Mordecai on the new-made gallows of Haman. Everybody was not in the secret. Neither Esther, nor Mordecai, nor the king himself knew of the project. Yet from a merely human point of view it was all but certain. How the night passed for Esther and for Mordecai we know not. Both had to acknowledge distinguishing mercies which the preceding day bad brought. But they both knew that one crisis happily passed did but usher in another, and if this should not issue as favourably, vain were the promise of the day before. Likely enough, then, the solemn hours of that night were counted by them with wakeful anxiousness. For what issues of life or death hung upon the next day. Haman's night invites not a solitary sympathy. This much we may surmise about it, that it was disturbed by the noise of those who "made the gallows" (Esther 5:14; Esther 6:4; Esther 7:9), and that its length was not prolonged over-far into the morning. But the storm-centre travels toward the night of Ahasuerus, and there very soon it threateningly hangs. Ahasuerus was not a good man; he was not a good king. How otherwise could he have permitted an insufferably vain, self-seeking minion like Haman to be such a we]come and close companion? How could he have committed to such a subject an authority so dangerously approaching his own? Yet, as we have before seen (Esther 1:4), there was a certain large lavish way about Ahasuerus - the outside of a certain kindliness, impulsiveness, unthinking trustingness within, which proved a heart not callous. These qualities did indeed harmonise well with what we read elsewhere of Xerxes, and how his feelings so overcame him when, from his throne of marble, he reviewed his innumerable troops crossing the Hellespont, and reflected upon human mortality. Ahasuerus was thoughtless and rash - the very things that cannot be defended in either king or man - but he was not yet abandoned of every higher presence; he was not yet "let alone." As the word of God here detains us to make special remark on the sleepless night of this king, and exhibits it as the very crisis of the providential history under relation, let us note - I. SOME OF THE SIGNIFICANT FACTS GATHERING ROUND IT AS THE EXPERIENCE OF THE KING. 1. We observe, and with some surprise, that there seems not the slightest disposition on the part of the king, or of any one else, to attribute it to a physical cause, nor to minister to it any physical antidote. Neither the soporific of a drug or of drinking, nor the soothing of music, nor any diversion are offered to it. Nor is it possible to suppose - as will hereafter appear - that "the book of records of the chronicles" was sent for under the expectation that it would serve simply to amuse, or to dissipate thought and kill time. 2. However harassing it may have been, it seems to have been endured till morning. The brief description which follows the statement, that "the king's sleep fled that night," argues that what ensued happened all in close connection, and so as to end with an hour that found men gathered in their usual way in the gate, and Haman arrived (doubtless not late) in the court. This would give time for thought's growth into determination. 3. Whether the sleeplessness of the night was occasioned by any moral thoughtfulness or not, it was in this direction that the mind of Ahasuerus ran. Sleepless hours are often enough weary hours, yet perhaps more than we think they open opportunity and offer choice to us. They ripen the thought of iniquity, as they were at this very time doing for Haman; or they are precipitating thought of good quality and beneficent result, as they were now doing for Ahasuerus. Either, then, the sleeplessness of Ahasuerus was occasioned by a moral movement of things within, or it turned to that use. In either alternative there was a moral strangeness and significance about it. The dark and imperfect religiousness, which was all that can be claimed for it in and of itself, does in some senses add to its interest. 4. The thoughts of that sleepless night did not die away. Generally, how soon they do pass away, like the dreams of deep sleep. They are "like the morning cloud and the early dew; as the chaff that is driven of the whirlwind out of the floor, and as the smoke out of the chimney." Nature's darkness, human stillness, even the body's attitude of repose, all favour highly-stimulated forms of thought. The sleepless night is often memory's field-day. Regrets and new resolutions meet together; repentance and remorse alternate; the thoughts of happier days and the projects of more innocent ones crowd the mental rendezvous - but with dawn they have trooped away. But now not so with the. thoughts of the sleepless night of the King Ahasuerus. They last, and they lead on to action. Purpose and determination do not die away. They live, and to good purpose. In his own way, and for once true to his light, though a light that burned lurid and low, he will hearken to his "law and testimony," if haply they have anything to say to him. II. SOME OF THE SIGNIFICANT SUGGESTIONS ARISING OUT OF IT IN EVIDENCE OF AN EVER-WAKEFUL PROVIDENCE. 1. The evidence of the simple facts of this night is in favour of the interference of some external cause. It is not straining facts to take this view of them, it would be restraining their legitimate force not to do so. There is no known cause for the restlessness, but it is decided. The two things that might have been expected to constitute a cause evidently exert no influence. The proximate effect, for all that, nevertheless looks in that direction. 2. The kind of use to which the sleeplessness is turned argues not only external interference, but the external interference of One above. This man, a most extremely unpromising subject on whom to work, is wrought upon practically to religious purpose. Thought, and reading, and listening, and question, and action follow one another in quick, orderly, Divine kind of succession. 3. The means employed are like those of Divine operation, very simple, awhile mistakable for most natural events. 4. The beneficent nature of the results of that night - opportune, to the exact moment of time - and the exceeding greatness of them evidence together a merciful wakeful Providence. That Providence is ever wakeful when men are most deep asleep, but is not then least wakeful when sometimes it bids us wake and keeps us sleepless. - B. Parallel Verses KJV: On that night could not the king sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king. |
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