ובצלאל בן אורי בן חור למטה יהודה עשה “and Betzalel son of Uri, son of Chur, of the tribe of Yehudah had made, etc.;” (Shmos 38:22)
The meaning of the word עשה, “had made”: in this instance is that he had issued instructions for the items mentioned to be made by the appropriate people. The only item Betzalel constructed personally was the Holy Ark (37,1). This is why G’d’s Holy Name was used exclusively with Betzalel. Our sages (Jerusalem Talmud Peah 1,1) say that Betzalel understood perfectly what was to be made and how, without G’d having had to spell this out to him, as he had divined exactly what G’d had told Moses while the latter was on the mountain.
A comment by another Midrash claims that both Betzalel and Oholiov were craftsmen familiar with all aspects of the work that needed to be performed. Both were known as גור אריה, the former because he was a member of the tribe of Yehudah (Bereshis 49,9), the latter seeing Moses had referred to the tribe of Dan by the same term in Devarim 33,22. The Temple has been compared to a lion (אריה) the shape of the sanctuary being long and narrow whereas its shape near the entrance (with the אולם) was broad in front. This is supported by Scripture in Isaiah 29,1 where the word Ariel is understood to be derived from Aryeh (compare Rashi on that verse). Just as the construction of the Tabernacle, the Temple, and the altar was symbolized by the lion, the punishment of the Jewish people when the Temples were destroyed were also linked to the image of the lion as we know from Jeremiah 4,7: “the lion has come up from his thicket, the destroyer of nations has set out.” Eventually, when the messianic period will be ushered in, our prophets again foretold that at that time Israel would be compared to the rising of the lion when they said (Micha 5,7),” The remnant of Yaakov shall be among the nations in the midst of many people like a lion among beast of the wild.”
“and the silver of those of the community who were recorded amounted to 100 talents, etc.” (Shmos 38:25)
The silver of the half-shekel contributions of the 600,000 males over the age of 20 amounted to 300,000 whole shekels (100 talents). Seeing that actually there were 603,550 males being counted, the total amount was precisely that mentioned in our verse, i.e. 100 talents and 1775 shekel (a talent having 3,000 shekel). According to the accounting listed in the Torah here, any silver “donated” rather than handed over as the mandatory amount by males over the age of twenty was not mentioned here.
Rashi, in his commentary, computes the numbers as follows: “a talent equals 60 manah. Seeing that the shekels being counted were described as “holy shekels” i.e. double the weight of the ordinary shekel, a talent would be equivalent to 120 manah. The manah is equivalent to 25 selaim. This gives you an amount of 3.000 shekel per talent. Rashi continues, arriving at the same result we already mentioned.
Having established all this we can now address the amount of silver Haman offered to pay King Achaverosh in exchange for permission to destroy the Jews in his kingdom. Seeing that he offered 10.000 talents of silver, this was equivalent to 50 shekel for every Jew assuming that there had been 600.000 Jews at the time. The number 50 shekel is the maximum amount per adult male between the age of 20 and 60 prescribed by the Torah (Leviticus 27,3) that someone “donating” his own equivalent to G’d has to give to the Temple treasury.
Another way of understanding why Haman picked on this amount of silver may be that when the Israelites sold their brother Joseph and received 20 pieces of silver in exchange, i.e. an amount of 5 shekel, or half a shekel each, and their guilt had not yet been atoned, he concluded that in exchange for the amount he offered he could legally make all the Jews his slaves (again by assuming that there were a total of 600.000 Jews). He felt certain that he would succeed seeing that the brothers had never been punished by G’d for selling Joseph into slavery. He presumably reasoned similar to what we have been told in Midrash Tehillim 10 that because the brothers sat down to eat their meal (Bereshis 37,28) after throwing Joseph into the pit but before selling him, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred, G’d was so angry that He said: “seeing you have sold your brother as a result of feasting, your descendants will be sold as a result of their having feasted (participating in the banquet given by King Ahasverus).” This is why the Book of Esther makes such a point of telling us that the King and Haman sat down to a feast after having concluded the deal in which Haman acquired authority to do to the Jews whatever he wanted.
