ART Thou Altering Tanach?

(7) “My wish,” replied Esther, “my request— (8) if Your Majesty will do me the favor, if it please Your Majesty to grant my wish and accede to my request—let Your Majesty and Haman come to the feast which I will prepare for them; and tomorrow I will do Your Majesty’s bidding.”... (10) Nevertheless, Haman controlled himself and went home. He sent for his friends and his wife Zeresh, (11) and Haman told them about his great wealth and his many sons, and all about how the king had promoted him and advanced him above the officials and the king’s courtiers. (12) “What is more,” said Haman, “Queen Esther gave a feast, and besides the king she did not have anyone but me. And tomorrow too I am invited by her along with the king...

(1) So the king and Haman came to feast with Queen Esther. (2) On the second day, the king again asked Esther at the wine feast, “What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half the kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.” (3) Queen Esther replied: “If Your Majesty will do me the favor, and if it pleases Your Majesty, let my life be granted me as my wish, and my people as my request. (4) For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated. Had we only been sold as bondmen and bondwomen, I would have kept silent; for the adversary is not worthy of the king’s trouble.” (5) Thereupon King Ahasuerus demanded of Queen Esther, “Who is he and where is he who dared to do this?” (6) “The adversary and enemy,” replied Esther, “is this evil Haman!” And Haman cringed in terror before the king and the queen. (7) The king, in his fury, left the wine feast for the palace garden, while Haman remained to plead with Queen Esther for his life; for he saw that the king had resolved to destroy him. (8) When the king returned from the palace garden to the banquet room, Haman was lying prostrate on the couch on which Esther reclined. “Does he mean,” cried the king, “to ravish the queen in my own palace?” No sooner did these words leave the king’s lips than Haman’s face was covered...

“Let the king and Haman come to a banquet” (Esther 5:4). Our Rabbis taught: What did Esther see that she invited Haman? R. Elazar said: She set a trap for him, as it says. “Let their table before them become a snare” (Psalms 69:23)...R. Joshua b. Korha said: [She said], I will encourage him so that he may be killed, both he and I. Rabban Gamaliel said: [She said; Ashvesosh] is a flip flopping king. R. Gamaliel said: We still require the Modai, as it has been taught: R. Eliezer of Modiin says, She made the king jealous of him and she made the princes jealous of him...

(Esther 7:4). She said to him: This adversary cares not for the damage of the king. He was angry with Vashti and killed her, and he is angry with me and wants to kill me. “Then King Ahashverosh said, and he said to Esther the queen.” Why “said” and again “said”? R. Abbahu said: He first spoke to her through an intermediary. When she told him that she came from the house of Saul, he immediately,”said to Esther the queen.” “And Esther said, An adversary and an enemy, this wicked Haman.” R. Eleazar said: This informs us that she was pointing to Ahashverosh and an angel came and pushed her hand so as to point to Haman. “And the king rose in his anger…and the king returned from the palace garden.” (Esther 7:7) His returning is compared to his arising. Just as the arising was in anger, so too the returning was in anger. For he went and found ministering angels in the form of men who were uprooting trees from the garden. He said to them: What are you doing? What are you doing? Haman has ordered us. He came into the house, and there “Haman was falling upon the couch.” “Falling”? It should say, “had fallen”? R. Elazar said: This teaches us that an angel came and made him fall on it. Ahashverosh then said: Trouble inside, trouble outside! “And the king said, Will he also try to overcome the queen with me in the house?” (Esther 7:8)...

(4) He cohabited with Hagar and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem.

(5) And Sarai said to Abram, “The wrong done me is your fault! I myself put my maid in your bosom; now that she sees that she is pregnant, I am lowered in her esteem. The LORD decide between you and me!” (6) Abram said to Sarai, “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right.” Then Sarai treated her harshly, and she ran away from her. (7) An angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the road to Shur, (8) and said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” And she said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.” (9) And the angel of the LORD said to her, “Go back to your mistress, and submit to her harsh treatment.” (10) And the angel of the LORD said to her, “I will greatly increase your offspring, And they shall be too many to count.” (11) The angel of the LORD said to her further, “Behold, you are with child And shall bear a son; You shall call him Ishmael, For the LORD has paid heed to your suffering. (12) He shall be a wild ass of a man; His hand against everyone, And everyone’s hand against him; He shall dwell alongside of all his kinsmen.” (13) And she called the LORD who spoke to her, “You Are El-roi,” by which she meant, “Have I not gone on seeing after He saw me!” (14) Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it is between Kadesh and Bered.— (15) Hagar bore a son to Abram, and Abram gave the son that Hagar bore him the name Ishmael. (16) Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

(11) ויאמר ... הנך הרה, the angel used these words as an introduction, seeing he was well aware that Hagar knew that she was pregnant as the Torah had reported in verse 4, as well as Hagar's reaction.

(5)...Rashi says that the words suggest that in her jealousy Sarai looked at Hagar's swollen belly with the evil eye, something which would have resulted in Hagar losing her fetus. (This is why the angel told her that she was pregnant, a fact that Hagar had been well aware of; however the idea was that Hagar would give birth to a son, etc., i.e. that she need not fear to abort her fetus on account of Sarai having given her the "evil eye.")

Abram said to Sarai, “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right.”- He said: What do I care?! I don't care whether it's good for her or bad for her.

(23) As the sun rose upon the earth and Lot entered Zoar, (24) the LORD rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah sulfurous fire from the LORD out of heaven. (25) He annihilated those cities and the entire Plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities and the vegetation of the ground. (26) Lot’s wife looked back, and she thereupon turned into a pillar of salt. (27) Next morning, Abraham hurried to the place where he had stood before the LORD, (28) and, looking down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the Plain, he saw the smoke of the land rising like the smoke of a kiln. (29) Thus it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the Plain and annihilated the cities where Lot dwelt, God was mindful of Abraham and removed Lot from the midst of the upheaval.

(24) מאת ה' מן השמים, what is meant is that the origin of this lethal rain was very high up in the sky.

(25) 'ויהפוך את הערים וגו AND HE OVERTHREW [THOSE CITIES] etc. — The four cities were situated on one rock and He turned them upside down, as it is said, (Job 28:9) “He putteth forth His hand upon the flinty rock [and overturneth the mountains by the roots]” (Genesis Rabbah 51).

(22) all its soil devastated by sulfur and salt, beyond sowing and producing, no grass growing in it, just like the upheaval of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which the LORD overthrew in His fierce anger—

(26) ותהי נציב מלח AND SHE BECAME A PILLAR OF SALT — By salt had she sinned and by salt was she punished. He (Lot) said to her once: “Give a little salt to these strangers” and she answered him, “Do you mean to introduce this bad custom, also, into our city?” (Genesis Rabbah 51).

(26) נציב מלח, a ruin resembling a castle of salt which had largely disintegrated.