Haman was enraged. But it was not enough for him to find a way to kill off Mordecai. He wanted to exterminate all of Mordecai’s people! Haman spoke to the king, painting a dark portrait of the Jews. Without naming them, he implied that they were inconsequential, a people “scattered and separated among the peoples.” Even worse, he said that they did not obey the king’s laws; hence, they were dangerous rebels. He proposed to donate to the king’s treasury an immense sum of money to cover the expense of slaughtering all the Jews in the empire.c Ahasuerus gave Haman the king’s own signet ring to seal any order that he had in mind.​—Esther 3:5-10.