Conflicts always have backstory

After these events, King Xerxes honored Haman son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, elevating him and giving him a seat of honor higher than that of all the other nobles.
- Esther 3:1

Yesterday, we met the quintessential villain. Haman will demonstrate throughout the story that he is selfish, proud, arrogant and cruel. But there’s more to the story than that.

The author of Esther hints at it in today’s passage but goes on to make it abundantly clear, there’s a bigger story at work behind Haman’s evil. We learn that Haman is an Agagite. Scholars think that Agagites were the descendants of King Agag, the infamous king of the Amalekites that we encounter in 1 Samuel.

For generations and generations, the Amalekites and the Hebrews fought each other. In Exodus 17, the Amalekites attack the Hebrews in the desert, as they’re fleeing Egypt, before they’ve even made it to the Promised Land. All through the biblical books of Numbers and Judges the Amalekites show up: pestering and prodding and killing the Israelites at every turn. Israel’s first king, Saul, fights the Amalekites and almost wipes them out entirely but decides he cares more about his reputation than protecting his people, and so lets some of them go. Right before the collapse of the Southern Kingdom, in 1 Chronicles 4, we see the Amalekites still locked in combat with the Hebrews. There is a ton of backstory here.

When Haman stepped onto the stage, he carried lots of history with him. Conflicts always have history. They always have backstory. And sometimes it has nothing to do with you.

Think through one area of conflict in your life or in the world around you. What’s the history there? How can knowing that history better prepare you to enter into that conflict in a way that honors God?

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