Esther 9 Bible study: The opposite happened

The chapter opens on the day Haman's letters had named (Esther 3:13), in the month his lot had chosen (Esther 3:7): "Now in the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, on the thirteenth day of the month" (9:1). It was "the day that the enemies of the Jews hoped to conquer them", and the book stops to say, "but it turned out that the opposite happened, that the Jews conquered those who hated them" (9:1) (tap turned, conquer). In Hebrew, turned is haphakh, and Esther uses the verb only twice: here, and in Mordecai's letter about "the month which was turned to them from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a holiday" (9:22). Conquer and conquered are one verb, said of both sides in the same verse (9:1). And 9:1's "when the king’s commandment and his decree came near to be put in execution" has, in Hebrew, the same words for the king's commandment and his decree, with the same verb for came, as the book used when the first decree reached the provinces, "wherever the king’s commandment and his decree came, there was great mourning among the Jews" (Esther 4:3), and when the second did, "wherever the king’s commandment and his decree came, the Jews had gladness, joy, a feast and a holiday" (Esther 8:17).

Esther 9:22→leads toJohn 16:20

Mordecai's letters told the Jews to keep the days "as the days in which the Jews had rest from their enemies, and the month which was turned to them from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a holiday" (9:22). Jesus told his disciples, "You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy" (John 16:20), and "I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you" (John 16:22). Jesus doesn't cite Esther, and no link between the Hebrew and Greek words is claimed, nor between the WEB's turned in the two verses, so setting the two side by side is a reading, resting on a shared subject: sorrow turned to joy. Some read 9:22 beside Jesus' words as two sayings on the same subject: a month turned "from sorrow to gladness" (9:22), and the disciples' sorrow that "will be turned into joy" (John 16:20). Others read each in its own setting: in Esther the month was turned for the Jews in the days they "had rest from their enemies" (9:22), and the verse doesn't say who turned it; Jesus speaks of the disciples' sorrow in "A little while, and you won’t see me" and of seeing them again (John 16:19-22). Neither reading makes Esther, Mordecai or Purim a picture of Jesus.

הָפַךְhaphakhsay ha-FAKH

Brown-Driver-Briggs: "turn, overturn", with senses including "turn = change, transform", and for the form used in this chapter, "be turned, changed". Strong's: "to turn about or over". On the day the enemies hoped to conquer the Jews, "it turned out that the opposite happened" (9:1), and Mordecai's letter speaks of "the month which was turned to them from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning into a holiday" (9:22). It comes 94 times in the Hebrew Bible, and in Esther only in these two verses. Exodus uses it of a change of heart: "the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was changed toward the people" (Exodus 14:5).