Purim: the Real Ending

We've just passed the holiday of Purim, a fun Jewish holiday. If you don't know the story, here's a quick summary from Jewfaq:

The story of Purim is told in the Biblical book of Esther. The heroes of the story are Esther, a beautiful young Jewish woman living in Persia, and her cousin Mordecai, who raised her as if she were his daughter. Esther was taken to the house of Ahasuerus, King of Persia, to become part of his harem. King Ahasuerus loved Esther more than his other women and made Esther queen, but the king did not know that Esther was a Jew, because Mordecai told her not to reveal her identity.

The villain of the story is Haman, an arrogant, egotistical advisor to the king. Haman hated Mordecai because Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman, so Haman plotted to destroy the Jewish people. In a speech that is all too familiar to Jews, Haman told the king, "There is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your realm. Their laws are different from those of every other people's, and they do not observe the king's laws; therefore it is not befitting the king to tolerate them." Esther 3:8. The king gave the fate of the Jewish people to Haman, to do as he pleased to them. Haman planned to exterminate all of the Jews. [emphasis added]

Mordecai persuaded Esther to speak to the king on behalf of the Jewish people. This was a dangerous thing for Esther to do, because anyone who came into the king's presence without being summoned could be put to death, and she had not been summoned. Esther fasted for three days to prepare herself, then went into the king. He welcomed her. Later, she told him of Haman's plot against her people. The Jewish people were saved, and Haman was hanged on the gallows that had been prepared for Mordecai.

In this, as in most versions, the ending comes quickly. The King learned the truth, the Jews are saved and Haman is killed instead. Simple. But, the Megillah tells it differently.

See, in the Megillah, we learn that the King cannot so simply rescind a decree. So instead of simply saying 'I changed my mind, don't kill all the Jews," he made a new decree: that the Jews could protect themselves.

In Chapter 8, verse 11 we learn "that the king had given to the Jews who are in every city, [the right] to assemble and to protect themselves, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish the entire host of every people and province that oppress them." [emphasis added]

In essence, he gave them the right to the first 2 amendments of the American Bill of Rights: the right to assemble (and free exercise of religion) and the right to bear arms.

The Jews saved themselves by protecting themselves. All they needed from the government was non-interference, non-persecution and permission for self-defense.