You shall make holy garments for your brother, Aharon, for honor and for glory. (Shemos 28:2)

In Megillas Esther (1:6), it mentions colored curtains that Achashverosh hung during his 180 day party. The first letter of this verse (a Ches) is larger than the other letters. The Ma’om Lo’ez explains the reason for the large Ches. Each letter has a numeric value (gematria) and the numeric value of Ches is eight. As stated in this week’s parsha, the Cohen Gadol wore eight garments when he serve in the Bais HaMikdash. Achashverosh was able to get these garments and wore them during his 180 day long party. The Ma’om Lo’ez points out that the Ches is large to teach us that although he wore these garments, he suffered a terrible punishment – his wife, Vashti died.

Let’s think about this for a minute. Achashverosh was an extremely powerful king. He ruled over 127 countries! On each of the 180 days, he displayed different treasures to show off his wealth. Also, these were not just small parties – each day’s party was extremely expensive and showed that Achashverosh had a lot of money. The royal guests were jealous of his wealth. He was on top of the world. But then one night he became drunk and requested his queen to appear in front of him and his guests while only wearing the crown on her head. Vashti refused. Since Achashverosh was still drunk, he didn’t know what to do. He spoke with his advisors and they told him to kill Vashti, which he did immediately.

Imagine how Achashverosh felt the next morning. He had just spent hundreds of millions of dollars for numerous months to show that how great he was and to be the envy of everyone only to turn himself into a fool in everyone’s eyes. Everyone laughed at him that he became drunk and killed his wife.

This teaches us an important lesson. Sometimes it looks like the “bad guys” have it all good. They are living a great life and get to party every night. If we could only fast forward into the future, though (sometime a few days, sometimes a few months, sometimes many years), we see that they get what they deserve. Achashverosh seemed to have everything going for him, even though he was arrogantly parading around in the garments of the Cohen Gadol. Well, he eventually had his downfall and was shown to be a fool.

The opposite is also true. Mordechai was extremely righteous, but it looked like he was never rewarded for what he did. Mordechai uncovered a plot to kill the king which saved the Achashverosh’s life. What was his reward? Well, immediately it was nothing. The king did absolutely nothing for Mordechai. It was only years later that Mordechai was given a reward for saving the king’s life and he rode on the king’s horse throughout all of Shushan.

Rewards and punishments do not always come immediately. Why do the bad have it all good and the good have it all bad? The answer is the exact opposite is true. The good will have it good and the bad will have it bad.

Purim is an “upside down” time. Things are backwards. Purim is the time for us to realize that even when something looks bad, it is actually good and when something looks good, it is actually bad. It looked like Achashverosh was doing well, even though he was doing evil. He was made into a fool, though. It looked like Mordechai never got rewarded for the good he did, but he got a great reward at the perfect time.

Good Shabbos!
Freilichin Purim!
-yes
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