He went up to the entrance of the king's gate, for no one was allowed to enter the king's gate clothed in sackcloth.
Haman's decree has gone out, and Mordecai meets it with open grief — but the palace rules bar sackcloth from the gate. That small rule raises large questions: what sorrow means, where it may be shown, and what a man does when the one place of help is shut to him.
Why sackcloth was barred
The ban had a reason. It lay in what the cloth stood for, and in what the palace claimed to be.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinThe sackcloth was a coarse hair-cloth of a black colour. Then his bitter cry and wailing was heard in the middle of the city. The Persians also used sackcloth as a sign of mourning over the dead, so they counted it unclean. And since they looked on the king's palace as a clean and holy place, Mordecai could not enter the king's gate. He had to stand outside the wall.
Before the gate, not within
Mordecai's place is exact: at the gate, but not inside it. God's name never appears in this book, yet Kelly points to where the cry was heard.
William KellyMordecai tears his clothes and puts on sackcloth. He goes into the middle of the city and cries with a loud and bitter cry (Esther 4:1). God's name is not written here and does not appear, but God's ears heard all the same. Mordecai came to the king's gate, for no one was allowed to enter the gate clothed in sackcloth. He came before it, not within it, and Esther heard.
Sorrow the palace would not receive
The shut gate says something about the throne behind it. A king who will not have weeping near him leaves a mourner with nowhere to go.
H. L. RossierMordecai, with his garments torn, covered in sackcloth and ashes, goes out into the city, giving vent to his desolation with a "loud and bitter cry." He no longer even has access to the king's gate, for mourning and weeping are not tolerated in his presence… But how can we speak of resource, when there is none, and when any access to a righteously angered God is intercepted?
Rossier sees here a faint early picture of the great tribulation still to come. The head of the nations hands his people over to a merciless enemy, and they have no one left to run to.
Grief that also expects rescue
Mordecai's mourning was not despair. Bellett finds two things in him that seldom meet in one heart.
J. G. BellettHe will not put off his mourning. He refuses to be comforted while the decree stands against his people. Yet all along he counts, and counts firmly, on their deliverance one way or another. This is another of those combinations that are necessary to character, or moral glory.
Kelly agrees, and names the person Mordecai was counting on:
William KellyThe report of it soon reached the queen, as it was meant to do. Mordecai counted fully on relief and deliverance through her. Until it came, he refused even her plea to take off the sackcloth and ashes.
The silence about prayer
Everything here is visible: torn clothes, ashes, a cry in the street. What is missing is any word about prayer, and commentators differ on how to read that silence. Gaebelein takes prayer to be part of the grief; Grant treats the silence as deliberate.
Leslie M. GrantWhether he prayed to God we are not told. But he cried out bitterly in the middle of the city, and came to the outside of the king's gate. He was forbidden to come into the gate clothed in sackcloth… No doubt God leaves this unclear on purpose, because of Israel's unfaithfulness to Him.
A rehearsal of a later mourning
The torn clothes and ashes are also read as a picture of something still ahead.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinIn the weeping and wailing of Mordecai and the Jews, the torn clothes, the sackcloth and the ashes, we have a prophetic foreshadowing of the earnest turning to God of the Jewish remnant at the end of this age… Mordecai's faith and Esther's brave decision are just as typical of the trust and confidence of that godly part of the Jewish people. They will pass through the time of Jacob's trouble and be delivered out of it.
Summary
- Decree. A sealed royal order condemned a whole people. Mordecai answered with the plainest signs of grief: torn clothes, ashes, and a bitter cry in the street.
- Dress. Sackcloth was coarse black hair-cloth worn for the dead. The Persians counted it unclean, and the palace counted itself clean, so the cloth itself barred the man.
- Distance. He came before the gate, not within it. That was as close to the throne as sorrow could get — the very state of a people with no way in.
- Determination. He would not take the sackcloth off, yet he counted on rescue the whole time. Mourning and confidence held together is what the writers call moral glory.
- Deliverance. Commentators read the scene as a small picture of a coming tribulation. In it a remnant turns back to God in ashes, and God brings them out of it.