There is a theme-powerful in its cumulative repetition-running through the triumphant crescendo of the Megillah narrative. After the ignominious fall of Haman and his unsavory retinue of family and supporters we are told: "For the Jews there was light and joy and gladness and honor. ..And many of the people of the land became Jews for the fear of the Jews-Pachad HaYehudim had fallen upon them.. .And no man stood before them for fear of them had fallen upon all the nations .. . And those who did the king's work raised up the Jews for the fear of Mordechai had fallen upon them.. ." (Megillas Esther 8:16-9 :3) .
No doubt, they dreaded the ascending physical might of the Jew and his newly established and unrivaled influence in the Royal Court. Beyond that, however, and no less significantly, for the first time they had also gained a healthy respect-indeed profound awe-"for the One Whom the Jews and Mordechai feared." Pachad HaYehudim-the fear of the Jews-in Hebrew can mean both "fear of the Jews" and "the One Whom the Jews fear," referring to G-d Almighty. The word used here for "fear" is "pachad" There are other expressions for "fear" or "dread"-"eimah,” "morah," "yirah," "cheis." Pachad alone conveys "fear" per se as well as "the One Whom we fear."
Indeed, ביאור שמות הנפרדים, the noted work on Biblical synonyms by Solomon Aaron Wertheimer (pp. 184-5), points out the fascinating singularity of 'pachad' ' in contradistinction to the other words and expressions which mean "fear." Unlike its synonyms, 'pachad' is used only in relation to human beings never in regards to animals-because it, above and beyond the others , "speaks to Man's soul and mind."
In Bereishis (31:42,53) we read about how Yaakov, in the dead of night, attempting to escape the treacherous regime of his cunning and deceitful father-in-law, Lavan, flees for his life with his wives, with his children , and with the not inconsiderable wealth in herds and flocks he had amassed while superintending Lavan 's sheep and cattle. The angry father-in-law chases after his "errant" progeny and son-in-law, and when he finally overtakes them, he asks in painful cadence: "Why did you run away from me in stealth without telling me, without allowing me to say goodbye to my daughters and grandchildren-I would have sent you off with music and with song, with timbre and harp." Yaakov responds: "If it were not for the G-d of my father, the G-d of Avraham and Pachad Yitzchak the Fear of Yitzchak-you would have sent me away empty-handed ." When the two finally enter into a covenant with each other, Lavan evokes the G-d of Avraham and the god of Nachor , his idol-worshipping grandfather. Yaakov, however, again invokes Pachad Yitzchak-the Fear-the G-d of his father, Yitzchak.
The triumph of Mordechai and Esther in Persia did not merely generate "fear of Jews" but much more than that-the grudging reverence "for the One Whom the Jews feared." That is what Pachad HaYehudim conjures in its most intimidating and most complete sense.
It is this Pachad HaYehudim-"fear of the Jews" and "fear of the One Whom the Jews fear"-that has wondrously emerged again in our own time, especially after the Six Day War, with the revival of our national aspirations and yearning for the Land of our Fathers after nearly two thousand years of unrelieved golus.
But this fear is a very delicate commodity. For it is essentially an intangible mystique. When the Jews were about to enter the Promised Land after their forty-year trek through the Wilderness, Kalev and Yehoshua, in desperate rejoinder to the ten spies who brought back an evil and disheartening report from Canaan, pleaded with their brethren: "Pay no mind to the apparent strength of the enemy, neither fear you the people of the land for their shadow has been removed" (Bamidbar 14:9). Their mystique had been ripped away. What happened to our enemies millennia ago, threatens to be repeated, Heaven forfend, in our day-except then it was their shadow, their mystique, which evaporated.