Bigthan

Bigthan (also written Bigthana; meaning: in the press or giving meat) was a royal eunuch who kept the door in the court of King Ahasuerus of Persia. Together with a colleague named Teresh, he conspired to assassinate the king—a plot that Mordecai, sitting at the king's gate, happened to discover and report to Queen Esther, who passed the information to the king with appropriate credit to Mordecai.

An investigation confirmed the truth of the report, the conspirators were hanged on the gallows, and the incident was recorded in the royal chronicles in Mordecai's name. This seemingly minor episode becomes pivotal to the book of Esther's providential plot: on the night Haman came to request Mordecai's execution, the king could not sleep and had the chronicles read to him, and the account of Mordecai's unrewarded service was read at that moment. The king's subsequent honoring of Mordecai humiliated Haman at the very point he had come to secure Mordecai's death, turning the tide of the entire narrative toward the Jewish community's deliverance.