Soon after his cousin and ward Esther became the new queen of Persia, Mordecai was at the gates of Xerxes’ palace when he overheard two disgruntled officers conspiring to kill their king. He relayed what he had heard to Esther, who passed it on to her new husband. The plot was quickly uncovered and the guilty officers were executed via impalement. Esther made sure to mention that it was her cousin who had saved the king. But that good deed went unmentioned when Mordecai was the only man not to bow to Haman, an elevated noble to whom all at the palace gates were commanded to pay homage. The Bible doesn’t explicitly say why Mordecai refused to bow. There are two popular interpretations of the incident (discussed at The Torah ): that Mordecai considered the homage to be idolatrous and against his faith, or that it was an allegoric depiction of the antagonism between the Israelites and the Amalekites. In either event, Haman decided to wipe out all the Jews in Persia for Mordecai’s insolence. He convinced the king to give the order and erected a pole to impale Mordecai. But Xerxes remembered Mordecai’s previous service and asked Haman how such a man should be honored. Haman, who initially thought he would receive the honor, was ordered to bestow it on his enemy. Meanwhile, Mordecai again alerted Esther, who revealed her heritage to the king and begged him to rescind the order. An enraged Xerxes had Haman impaled.