Hammedatha: The Name Behind Haman

A Man Known Only by His Son

Hammedatha belongs to the era of the exile, placed at around 606 BC to 536 BC on Ussher's chronology (1650). His name appears five times in the Bible, all of them in the book of Esther, and never once does he speak, travel, decide or die on the page. He is present in Scripture the way a surname is present: attached to someone else. Every mention of him is the phrase "the son of Hammedatha," and the son is Haman.

That is an unusual kind of biblical existence, and it is worth sitting with rather than hurrying past. Some people in Scripture are known by what they did. Hammedatha is known by whom he fathered, and the book that names him five times names him only in order to identify the man who tried to destroy the Jews.

The Five Mentions

The first comes at the moment of promotion. "After these things King Ahasuerus promoted Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, and advanced him, and set his seat above all the princes who were with him" (Esther 3:1). The father's name is the anchor for the son's identity as the son rises above the other princes at court.

The second comes at the moment of authorization. "The king took his ring from his hand, and gave it to Haman the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the Jews' enemy" (Esther 3:10). Here the patronymic carries a title with it. The son of Hammedatha has become, in the text's own words, the enemy of the Jews, and the king's ring is in his hand.

The third comes in a plea. "She said, 'If it pleases the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right to the king, and I am pleasing in his eyes, let it be written to reverse the letters devised by Haman, the son of Hammedatha the Agagite, which he wrote to destroy the Jews who are in all the king's provinces'" (Esther 8:5). The verse does not name the speaker, but it names the letters and their author, and again it names the father.

The fourth comes in the counting of the dead: "the ten sons of Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Jews' enemy, but they didn't lay their hand on the plunder" (Esther 9:10). Hammedatha stands here as a grandfather to ten men who fall. He is named in a body count that is not his own.

The fifth comes in the summary that explains why a festival exists. "Because Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted against the Jews to destroy them, and had cast 'Pur', that is the lot, to consume them, and to destroy them" (Esther 9:24). The plot, the lot, the intent to consume and destroy: all of it belongs to the son, and the son is identified by the father.

What He Is Charged With, and What He Is Not

Honesty about the text cuts both ways here. Scripture records no sin of Hammedatha. It records no righteousness of him either. Not one action is attributed to him, not one word from his mouth. The plotting in Esther 9:24 is Haman's. The letters written to destroy the Jews in Esther 8:5 are Haman's. The title "the Jews' enemy" in Esther 3:10 and Esther 9:10 is fastened to Haman, not to his father.

What the text does do is bind the two names together in every single mention. Five times the man who sought the destruction of a people is introduced as the son of Hammedatha. Whatever Hammedatha was in himself, the Bible remembers him inside his son's crime. A name can be carried places its owner never chose to go.

What We Do Not Know

We do not know who his parents were; Scripture does not name them. No tribe or people is given for him. There is no scene told about this man at all: every appearance is a passing note, a patronymic inside someone else's sentence. We are not told where he lived, how long, what he believed, or whether he was alive when his son was promoted in Esther 3:1. The book of Esther is his only book, and it gives him no story of his own.

No New Testament passage is listed for him. So no line runs forward from Hammedatha in the New Testament that the text will support, and it would be dishonest to draw one on his behalf. He is an Old Testament name, held in five verses, and there the record stops.

A Name in the Record

The five verses that hold Hammedatha are worth reading slowly, because they are a reminder that Scripture keeps names it does not explain. He is in the book because the book needed to say precisely whose son Haman was. That is all the text gives us, and it is enough to record that he existed, in the era of the exile, and that his name is still read wherever Esther 3, Esther 8 and Esther 9 are read aloud.