Parshandatha, Son of Haman: One Verse, One Name

A Name From the Time of Exile

Parshandatha (פַּרְשַׁנְדָּתָא) is a man who lived at the time of Exile and Return, in the era the dossier places at around 606 BC to 536 BC, a dating drawn from Ussher's chronology (1650). His name occurs exactly once in the Bible, in Esther 9:7. He is identified in Scripture's record as a son of Haman (Esther 3:1) and of Zeresh (Esther 5:10). Nine brothers are named alongside him: Dalphon and Aspatha in Esther 9:7, Poratha, Adalia and Aridatha in Esther 9:8, and Parmashta, Arisai, Aridai and Vaizatha in Esther 9:9. Beyond that, the record is silent.

The One Verse

There is no scene to follow here, no dialogue, no journey, no decision. What Scripture gives is a single line, and it is a line about his death:

"They killed Parshandatha, Dalphon, Aspatha," (Esther 9:7)

That is the whole of it. The verse does not close its thought where it ends; it runs on into the names of the brothers who follow. Parshandatha stands first in that run of ten names, and the only verb attached to him is the verb of his killing. He is not introduced before it. He is not mentioned after it. The single passage in which he appears is also the single verse, and the single verse is his end.

This is worth pausing over, because it is the kind of mention that experienced readers of the Bible learn to read carefully rather than to read past. Parshandatha does not belong to the class of men who are described. He belongs to the class of men who are counted. His name is unusual on the tongue and precise on the page, and it was preserved because the book of Esther records names rather than a total. Ten sons could have been summed in a number. Instead each was written down. Whatever else this tells us, it tells us that even those who appear only as casualties are not left anonymous.

A Son of His Father

The only relationship Scripture supplies for Parshandatha is descent. He is a son of Haman and Zeresh, and a brother to nine. The dossier gives no occupation, no office, no words spoken by him, no act performed by him. Whatever weight his name carries, it carries by association with the household into which he was born.

This is where honesty about the text matters. Scripture records no sin of Parshandatha, because Scripture records no deed of Parshandatha at all. It would be easy to lend him a share in his father's reputation, or to build a character study out of a family name. The verse does not permit it. Esther 9:7 reports that he was killed, and reports nothing about what he had done, said, wanted or believed. To say more than that is to write a man Scripture did not write. The failure, if we must name one here, is a failure of the record to give us anything to hold, and the discipline is to let that be so.

What the verse does show plainly is that Parshandatha's story ends in violence, and that his fate is bound to a household rather than to any choice we are told he made. Scripture does not soften this. It does not explain it. It sets his name down and moves on to the next.

What We Do Not Know

We do not know his age, his character, or his part in anything that happened before Esther 9:7. No children are named. No tribe or people is given for him. Everything Scripture records about him fits in one verse, in one passage, in one book. There is no scene told about him: every mention is a list, a genealogy or a passing note, and here it is a list. We are not told where he lived, what he owned, whether he had a wife, or what he thought of his father's house. Any answer offered to those questions comes from somewhere other than the Bible.

The dossier lists no New Testament reference to Parshandatha, and so this study draws no line from him forward. That silence is part of his record too, and it is better left as silence than filled with a connection the text does not make.

Reading a Single Line

Parshandatha is a reminder that the Bible's cast is larger than its characters. Some men enter the page only to be numbered among the dead, and their names were written down anyway. When we read Esther 9:7, we read a name that was not allowed to fall out of the account. That is not much. It is also not nothing.

For the reader who wants to handle Scripture with care, this one verse is good practice. It teaches us to say what the text says and to stop where the text stops. Esther 9:7 gives a name, a family and a death. Everything else that has ever been said about Parshandatha comes from outside the page.