All the king's servants, that were in the king's gate, bowed, and reverenced Haman. Large mansions in the East are entered by a spacious vestibule or gateway, along the sides of which visitors sit, and are received by the master of the house; because none, except the nearest relatives or special friends, are admitted further. There the officers of the ancient king of Persia waited until they were called, and did obeisance to the all-powerful minister of the day.
But Mordecai bowed not, nor did him reverence. [The Septuagint has: ou prosekunei autoo, did not prostrate before him (cf. Josephus, 'Antiquites,' b. 11:, ch. 6:, sec. 5)]. The obsequious homage of prostration, not entirely foreign to the manners of the East, had not been claimed by former viziers; but this minion required that all subordinate officers of the court should bow before him with their faces to the earth. But to Mordecai it seemed that such an attitude of profound reverence was due only to God. Haman's being an Amalekite, one of a doomed and accursed race, was, doubtless, another element in the refusal; and on learning that the recusant was a Jew, whose non-conformity was grounded on religious scruples, the magnitude of the affront appeared so much the greater, as the example of Mordecai would be imitated by all his compatriots. Had the homage been a simple token of civil respect, Mordecai would not have refused it; but the Persian kings demanded a sort of adoration, which, it is well known, even the Greeks reckoned it degradation to express; and as Xerxes, in the height of his favouritism, had commanded the same honours to be given to the minister as to himself, this was the ground of Mordecai's refusal.