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Haman = Memoochan?
Chazal say the Memoochan was actually Haman. I don't know how they knew this, but it occurred to me that you can trace a peculiar way of thinking that is common to both Memoochan's reaction to Vashti's misbehaviour and Haman's response to Mordechai's.
In Vashti's case, Memoochan pipes in to explain to Achashverosh that it's not enough to punish Vashti alone because after all, she is a woman, and when other women hear about what she did, they will follow her lead and start being insolent to their husbands. So in order to protect the male ego from this mortal danger, he suggests that a royal decree be enacted to put all women in their rightful place, across the entire Persian Empire!
Then with Mordechai, when he refuses to bow to Haman as per the decree, Haman feels it beneath him to simply punish Mordechai, narrates the Megilla, because he was told that Mordechai was Jewish, and he already wanted to get rid of the Jews. So he attributes Mordechai's stubbornness and insubordination to his Jewishness and thereby succeeds in painting the picture of this network of disloyal citizens who must be oppressed and wiped out.
Haman and Memoochan see the actions of one individual as confirmation of their preconceptions about whole groups of people. Vashti's insubordination is not something to be taken in isolation, but as representative of women throughout the land, who are assumed to be just waiting for someone to lead them in revolt.
Likewise, Mordechai's disloyalty just goes to show how evil and dangerous those Jews really are.
So perhaps Chazal, in identifying these two people with each other, saw the underlying character of a truly hateful and hating person, whose fears of 'others' translate into unchecked hatred and desire to do them harm.
What exactly is rabbah?
ונשמע פתגם המלך אשר יעשה בכל מלכותו כי רבה היא (end of 2nd chapt.)
What do those last three words - ki rabba he mean? The Targum translates it as referring to the decree, i.e. the decree will be heard throughout the empire because it is such an important decree. Such a reading gives the narrative a lovely touch of irony given the actual stupidity of the decree. The other problem with it is that it mixes up the genders, since the word used here for decree is masculine, while the pronoun is feminine.
Ibn Ezra's translation deals with the gender issue, saying that 'rabba he' refers back to the 'malchus' - the empire, but his reading requires us to read the word 'ki' - usually 'because' - to mean despite so the verse reads "the king's decree shall be heard throughout the empire, despite how large it it", and it is meant as an imperative rather than as a speculation.
I'm just wondering whether there's a third possibility, that perhaps it is referring to Vashti herself, i.e., the news of the decree will spread because of how great important Vashti is, and will therefore be highly effective in putting down any rebellious thoughts among the empire's female population. This avoids both the textual problems above, and also fits in more comfortably with the whole narrative at this point.
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