Post date: Mar 01, 2020 6:25:44 AM
“U’vaShushan habirah hargu hayehudim v’abeid chameish me’os ish”
And in Shushan the capitol the Jews killed and annihilated five hundred men
(9:6)
Right before listing the ten sons of Haman that were killed, our Pasuk mentions the manner in which the Jews defended themselves against their enemies. The Pasuk oddly says that the Jews “killed and annihilated.” Once we’re told that the Jews killed, what more is added by also saying that they annihilated?
According to the Rinas Yitzchok, the Jews killed only those from Amalek. Not only do we have a mitzvah to kill Amalek, we also have a mitzvah to wipe out their memory. The Gra and the Ta’amo Di’kra explain “v’abeid” (literally translated as “and lost”) to mean that the Jews made the bodies of their enemies as if they were lost. Meaning, they hid the bodies so as not to arouse more fury from the remaining non-Jews in the area.
Note, that this was not the case regarding Haman and his ten sons. The eleven of them were purposely hanged from a gallows to demonstrate that Achashverosh had given full permission to the Jews to fight back.
[Zvi Fleisher @ shemayisrael.com]
Why the difference in treatment between Haman and his ten sons versus the others that the Jews killed? I suspect that there was less of an emotional connection to Haman and his ten sons than they had to their fellow commoners. Seeing Haman and his sons hanging demonstrated the king’s backing of the edict, but didn’t elicit much in the way of emotion from the people. However, the prospect of seeing the bodies of their peers would likely have been too much for them to handle, and could have elicited a violent response from a much larger group. Yes, Hashem could have protected Klal Yisroel from any size onslaught. But we always look to minimize the magnitude of a miracle when a miracle of less
[L’fee aniyas da’ati]