A man named Haman rose to prominence in the court of Ahasuerus. The king appointed him prime minister, making Haman his principal adviser and the second in command in the empire. The king even decreed that all who saw this official must bow down to him. (Esther 3:1-4) For Mordecai, that law posed a problem. He believed in obeying the king but not at the cost of disrespecting God. You see, Haman was “an Agagite.” That evidently means that he was a descendant of Agag, the Amalekite king who was executed by God’s prophet Samuel. (1 Samuel 15:33) So wicked were the Amalekites that they had made themselves enemies of Jehovah and Israel. As a people, the Amalekites stood condemned by God.b (Deuteronomy 25:19) How could a faithful Jew bow down to a royal Amalekite? Mordecai could not. He stood his ground. To this day, men and women of faith have risked their lives to adhere to this principle: “We must obey God as ruler rather than men.”​—Acts 5:29.

Haman was enraged. But it was not enough for him to find a way to kill off Mordecai. He wanted to exterminate all of Mordecai’s people! Haman spoke to the king, painting a dark portrait of the Jews. Without naming them, he implied that they were inconsequential, a people “scattered and separated among the peoples.” Even worse, he said that they did not obey the king’s laws; hence, they were dangerous rebels. He proposed to donate to the king’s treasury an immense sum of money to cover the expense of slaughtering all the Jews in the empire.c Ahasuerus gave Haman the king’s own signet ring to seal any order that he had in mind.​—Esther 3:5-10.