3. In causing enemies to do things for others which are contrary to all
but the chronicle of Mordecai's service in the discovery of a treason against the king's life; he doth not carelessly pass it over, but inquires what recompence had been bestowed on Mordecai for so considerable a service, and this just before Mordecai should have been destroyed. Had Ahasuerus slept, Mordecai and all his countrymen had been sacrificed, notwithstanding all his loyalty.
Could this be a cast of blind chance, which had such a concatenation of evidences in it for a superior power?
3. In causing enemies to do things for others which are contrary to all rules of policy. It is wonderful that the Jews, a people known to be of a stubborn nature, and tenacious of their laws, wherein they differed from all the nations, should in the worst of their captivities be so often befriended by their conquerors, not only to rebuild their city, and re-edify their temple, but at the charge of their conquerors too.
The very enemies that had captived the Jews, though they knew them to be a people apt to rebel: that the people whose temple they had helped to build would keep up a distinct worship and difference in religion, which is usually attended with the greatest animosities; and when they knew it to be so strong in situation as to be a fort as well as a place of worship; that for this their enemies should furnish them with materials, when they were not in a condition to procure any for themselves, and give them money out of the public exchequer, and timber out of the king's forest, as we read, Ezra 1:1, 2,
4, 7; 4:12, 15, 19; 6:4, 5, 8, 9, 11; Neh. 2:8. And all this they looked upon as the hand of God: Ezra, 6:22, 'The Lord hath turned the heart of the king of Assyria unto them, to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God.' And the heathen Artaxerxes takes notice of it. Cicero tells us, that in his time gold was carried out of Italy for the ornament of the temple. They had their rites in religion preserved entire under the Roman government, though more different from the Roman customs than any nation subdued by them. Dion and Seneca, and others, observe, that wherever they were transplanted they prospered and gave laws to the victors. And this was so generally acknowledged, that Haman's cabinet counsel (who were surely none of the meanest statesmen) gave him no hopes of