Esther 6:14

Why, on this very same night, should sleep escape the king? Why should the idea come to him of having the book of his annals read to him to soothe his sleeplessness? Why did the reader land on the passage about Mordecai? … Why should Haman come, at this precise instant, to ask his master to execute Mordecai? Why should the king phrase his question to Haman in such a way that it made his favourite fall into the trap? Why is Haman himself forced to become the herald of the man he hates with all the strength of his soul?

We know that the unseen hand of God was surely guiding it all. He was preserving His own people in a wonderful way, and making the wicked eat the fruit of his own doings. This is how God works behind the scenes of this world's activities. The scheme was cleverly arranged to kill every Jew in the whole empire on the same day. What looks like a mere accident ruins it — the king could not sleep. But by that accident God performs His will.

Where is their sympathy for the man who comes before them "mourning and with his head covered"? Only the evening before they had told him to "go joyfully with the king to the feast." Now they do not have a single comforting word for this downcast, wicked man. … Not one of them even tries to suggest a way of escaping his misfortune. Every resource fails him. He has no support from outside, and he no longer has even the inner support of his own pride. Willing or not, he must meet his appointed lot. At that very moment "the king's eunuchs arrived and hurried to bring Haman to the feast that Esther had prepared." Oh, how that saying of his — "Tomorrow also I am invited by her together with the king" — now turns against him. The sun of his glory is darkened. This banquet is a storm cloud, carrying the lightning that is about to strike his guilty head.

Meanwhile, at the last moment, the wicked man still receives a solemn warning. Such a warning often comes before the blow of doom falls on his guilty head. And this one comes from the last place he would expect it. His own humiliation and misery had prepared him to hear the worst. What a contrast with the righteous man who went back in peace and lowliness to his post of duty!

So it is. The pride of the wicked blinds them to their own destruction, and it blinds them into hating the righteous they despise. He whose eyes are over all is slow to act. He lets men show what they are, and in the end He carries out His purpose openly, to His own glory. … So he fell into the pit he had made himself. That pit waits for those who ignore and defy Him who never forgets His own, however faulty. It waits for those who hate them and would harm them. But notice how everything seems bright and flourishing for the enemy, while God's people seem to face danger they cannot escape. It stays that way until the hour is about to strike.

When Haman's wife and friends heard what happened, they told him that his case was hopeless. In the conflict between the Jew and the offspring of Amalek, victory is on the side of the Jew (Ex. 17:16; Num. 24:20; Deut. 25:17-19). And then the king's officers knocked at the door to hurry Haman to Esther's banquet.