Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs attending the king, said, “A pole reaching to a height of seventy-five feet stands by Haman’s house. He had it set up for Mordecai, who spoke up to help the king.”

The king said, “Impale him on it!”

- Esther 7:9

There is a terrific literary justice and irony in today’s passage. Haman is killed on the device he had prepared for Mordecai. This seems like a fitting end for the vile Haman. And, for the ancient Jewish readers of this story, it elicited cheers.

But passages like this can be and are disturbing for us. We believe in rehabilitation of tough characters. We believe that with enough education, time and therapy most problems can be fixed. And this is a good instinct in us.

But there’s also an arc of judgment that shows up throughout the scriptures. There will be ultimate consequences for evil. Evil won’t be allowed to go on forever. It will be opposed and stopped. This is a tremendous comfort for people who are not in a position in power, for people subject to abuse and injustice. God will judge enemies and work justice in this hard world.

Throughout Scripture we’re called to hold onto both sides of God’s character: mercy and justice. Sometimes how that justice gets dispensed can be disturbing (more of that coming later in Esther), but some of that is because some of us struggle to see the goodness of God’s justice.

Is there room for justice in our understanding of how the world works and how we want God to relate to the world?