Post

In Scripture a "post" is not a doorpost or a station but a runner — a courier dispatched by a king to carry letters and decrees across the realm. The biblical references to posts cluster around two royal communication systems: Hezekiah's call back to Yahweh in the divided kingdom, and the Persian dispatches under Ahasuerus that first ordered the destruction of the Jews and then their deliverance. A single line in Job and a single line in Jeremiah fill out the picture, the one drawing the post into a metaphor for the speed of life, the other turning the post into the fastest possible bearer of bad news.

A Bearer of a Message

Job uses the post as a measure of speed. Comparing his vanishing days to a courier who outruns the eye, Job says, "Now my days are swifter than a post: They flee away, they see no good" (Job 9:25). The figure presupposes the post as the fastest known traveler — quick enough to serve as the standard against which a hurrying life is measured.

Jeremiah turns the same figure to the news of conquest. In his oracle against Babylon, runner overtakes runner with word of the city's fall: "One post will run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king of Babylon that his city is taken on every quarter" (Jer 51:31). The relay is rapid because the news cannot wait; couriers and messengers cross paths converging on the throne.

The Posts of Hezekiah

Hezekiah uses the royal post not for war but for reformation. After cleansing the temple, he writes to all Israel and Judah summoning them to keep the Passover at Jerusalem: "So the posts went with the letters from the king and his princes throughout all Israel and Judah, and according to the commandment of the king, saying, You⁺ sons of Israel, turn again to Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, that he may return to the remnant that have escaped of you⁺ out of the hand of the kings of Assyria" (2 Chr 30:6).

The reception is mixed. The text records that "the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even to Zebulun: but they laughed them to scorn, and mocked them" (2 Chr 30:10). The system functions; the message reaches as far as Zebulun in the north. The mockery falls on the runners themselves as the visible bearers of the king's word.

The Posts of Ahasuerus

The book of Esther shows the Persian postal apparatus working twice in opposite directions, both times under maximum pressure of speed. When Haman secures the decree against the Jews, the text reads, "And letters were sent by posts into all the king's provinces, to destroy, to slay, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even on the thirteenth [day] of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey" (Est 3:13). The dispatch is immediate: "The posts went forth in a hurry by the king's commandment, and the decree was given out in Shushan the palace. And the king and Haman sat down to drink; but the city of Shushan was perplexed" (Est 3:15).

When the counter-decree is issued through Mordecai, the same system is mobilized in reverse, with explicit attention to the quality of horseflesh employed. Ahasuerus "wrote in the name of King Ahasuerus, and sealed it with the king's ring, and sent letters by posts on horseback, riding on swift steeds that were used in the king's service, bred of the stud" (Est 8:10). The execution is again urgent: "So the posts that rode on swift steeds that were used in the king's service went out, being hurried and pressed on by the king's commandment; and the decree was given out in Shushan the palace" (Est 8:14).

The Shape of the Office

The texts agree on a small set of features. The post is a royal instrument: the dispatcher is always a king, and the credential is always the king's word, sealed by the king's ring in Esther. The post is a bearer of writing — letters are entrusted to him for delivery into specified provinces or tribes. The post is fast — fast enough to outrun a man's days in Job, fast enough to relay the fall of a capital in Jeremiah, and fast enough in Esther to be marked twice over with horses "bred of the stud" and the imperial command to hurry. And the post is a messenger whose own person represents the throne: in Hezekiah's case the mockery against the message lands on the runners carrying it.