Commentary for Megillah 32:27

He should stumble is the version we teach (follow). And we do not teach the version - "His seed."

How many necks did Binyamin have: We do not follow [teach] this version. For this is the way of Scripture, to write, "necks," in the plural form, [as in] (Genesis 27:17), "upon the flat of his necks." [So here too] - "he cried upon his necks."

He sent him wine: Since the elderly find it pleasing, this is the best thing of all for him.

Taala: A fox.

In its hour: If you see that it is a successful time for it.

A fox: You called Yosef [that] before his brothers? What is his inferiority to his brothers?

"Light" - this is Torah: As Haman decreed against them, that they not occupy themselves with Torah [study].

This is the Festivals: They observed festivals about them.

This is circumcision: And he made decrees against all of these [things].

Your utterance: This is circumcision, that was given with saying, and not with speech: "And God said to Avraham, 'You shall keep My covenant'" (Genesis 17:9). And we have found that David was gladdened by it, as it is stated (in Psalms 6), "For the choirmaster, upon the sheminit (an eight-stringed lyre, but here taken as a reference to circumcision which happens on the eighth day)" - when he was in the bathhouse and he saw himself without Torah and without commandments; when (he gazed) at the circumcision, he was gladdened.

The ten sons of Haman, and the ten: The mention of their names, and the word adjacent after them (eseret, the ten). Meaning, their breath failed (the moment of their death was all) together.

Must say them in one breath: It appears that this is only from the outset (lekhatchilah). But after the fact (bediavad, if one did not say them in one breath), he has fulfilled [his obligation].

Zekifa: Forche in [old French]. On one side [of it], one below the other.

A half brick (ariach): That is the writing.

A whole brick (leveinah): That is the blank that is double the writing; and an ariach is half a leveinah.

So that they should never rise: That they should not have a place to extend their steps below [them].

This teaches that an angel came, etc.: For he began to speak with an angry expression, but in the end of it, he said, "What is your request."

With the document: Such that a written scroll be before them at the time of the reading.

It should have said, "She said": As it is implied that this is what it said: But when she came before the king, she said to him [that] besides the document that was with him to make and to send to all of the provinces, she also said to him, "Reverse [Haman's] evil plot." [However] since it is written, "When she came, he said," it implies that we should say what she said.

We teach (follow) this version - Rav Nachman said, "Let it be said by mouth, that which is written in the documents": And we do not teach the version - she said to him. And this is its explanation: The order of the verses is thus: "And the Jews assumed as an obligation that which they had begun to practice [...]" (Esther 9:23). "For Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, etc." (24). "But when she came before the king, he said, 'With the document, etc.'" (25). So [it was] Mordechai [who] wrote to them that they should observe Purim, because Haman sought to destroy them, and that Esther came before the king to supplicate to him. All of this should be said, year after year.

As the Torah itself: Like [for] a Torah scroll itself, the scoring is a law of Moshe from [Mount] Sinai.

The matters of the fasts and their cry. And the decree of Esther: The verses are adjacent like this.

Parted from him: Since he neglected [the study of] Torah and entered governance.

Initially in the days of Cyrus, when Zerubavel went up (with him) from exile, Mordekhai was with him, and they were listed in the book of Ezra. There were twenty-four years between [the first] listing and the listing of the later Cyrus. And because Modekhai was made into a minister in between, he went down in his importance for the Sages.

That all the time that Baruch son of Neriah lived, Ezra didn't leave him and Move to Israel (Make Aliyah) - That you have to wonder, why didn't Ezra make Aliyah with Zerubavel from the days of Coresh through the seventh year of Darius the Last, after the Beit Hamikdash was constructed as it is written in Ezra, "And he came to Yerushalaim in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king, etc." (Ezra 7), and in the Midrash, that he was learning Torah from the mouth of Baruch son of Neriah in Bavel, and Baruch did not move to Israel (Make Aliyah) and he died there during those years, and that which we say above, "Baruch prophesized in the year two of Darius in Bavel, he would prophesize and send books to Jerusalem:"