Study Megillah folio 16A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
ששמשי מוחק וגבריאל כותב. אמר רבי אסי, דרש רבי שילא איש כפר תמרתא: ומה כתב שלמטה שלזכותן של ישראל — אינו נמחק, כתב שלמעלה — לא כל שכן.
that Shimshai, the king’s scribe who hated the Jews (see Ezra 4:17), was erasing the description of Mordecai’s saving the king, and the angel Gavriel was writing it again. Therefore, it was indeed being written in the present. R' Asi said: R' Sheila, a man of the village of Timarta, taught: If something written down below in this world that is for the benefit of the Jewish people cannot be erased, is it not all the more so the case that something written up above in Heaven cannot be erased?
״לא נעשה עמו דבר״. אמר רבא: לא מפני שאוהבין את מרדכי, אלא מפני ששונאים את המן.
The verse states that Ahasuerus was told with regard to Mordecai: “Nothing has been done for him” (Esther 6:3). Rava said: It is not because they love Mordecai that the king’s servants said this, but rather because they hate Haman.
״הכין לו״. תנא: לו הכין.
The verse states: “Now Haman had come into the outer court of the king’s house, to speak to the king about hanging Mordecai on the gallows that he had prepared for him” (Esther 6:4). A Sage taught in a baraita: This should be understood to mean: On the gallows that he had prepared for himself.
״ועשה כן למרדכי״. אמר ליה: מנו מרדכי? אמר ליה: ״היהודי״. אמר ליה: טובא מרדכי איכא ביהודאי. אמר ליה: ״היושב בשער המלך״.
The verse relates that Ahasuerus ordered Haman to fulfill his idea of the proper way to honor one who the king desires to glorify by parading him around on the king’s horse while wearing the royal garments: “And do so to Mordecai the Jew who sits at the king’s gate, let nothing fail of all that you have spoken” (Esther 6:10). The Talmud explains that when Ahasuerus said to Haman: “And do so to Mordecai,” Haman said to him in an attempt to evade the order: Who is Mordecai? Ahasuerus said to him: “The Jew.” Haman then said to him: There are several men named Mordecai among the Jews. Ahasuerus then said to him: I refer to the one “who sits at the king’s gate.”