Light, Gladness, Joy, and Honor

Mordecai emerges from the king’s presence wearing royal garments and a great crown, and Susa rejoices. For the Jews there is “light, and gladness, and joy, and honour.” The emotional reversal answers the sackcloth, ashes, fasting, and lament of chapter 4.

The narrator also says that many people of the land “became Jews,” or identified themselves with the Jews, because fear of the Jews fell upon them. The exact social and religious sense of the verb is debated, but the verse at minimum portrays a dramatic shift in public identification: the condemned minority is now a people others fear to oppose and may seek to join.