Haman, the villain, has built a gallows to execute Mordecai. But when the king discovers Haman's plot against the Jews, Haman is executed - on his own gallows. The thing he prepared for someone else becomes his own end.
It's poetic justice, and the book delights in the irony. But I think about what it means that Haman built the gallows first. He was already constructing the instrument of destruction. He was already committed to the killing before it happened. That level of premeditation, that commitment to evil, that's what the book is showing.
My therapist pointed out that a lot of the harm we experience comes from premeditated malice - people deciding in advance to hurt us or betray us. And the system of justice that Esther depicts seems to say: that matters. You don't get to be that deliberate in your evil and escape accountability. Haman made his choice. He built his gallows. He sealed his own fate. That's not God punishing him arbitrarily. That's consequence following from choice.
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