“And let the ten sons of Haman be hanged on the gallows.” (Esther 9:13)
The Shulchan Aruch rules: “One should read the ten sons of Haman in one breath to show that they were all killed and hung together as one.” The Targum Sheini on Megillas Esther describes in vivid detail how Haman and his ten sons were hanged. The height of the gallows was fifty amos. It was anchored three amos into the ground. Haman was hanged at the top, with his oldest son, Parshandosa hung right beneath him, leaving a space of one amah between them. Each son was hung in succession with an amah of space between one son and the next. Each son took up a space of three amos, with the youngest son, Vyzasa at the bottom, hanging three amos off the ground.
The problem is this: When we count up the total amount of amos listed above, we end up with forty-nine amos. (3-anchor, 3-off the ground, 33-the height of eleven people, 10-ten spaces between Haman and his ten sons = 49) What happened to the missing amah?
R’ Chaim Kanievsky zt”l quotes Tosfos (Chagigah 11a) that a typical man is the size of four amos. The reason why the ten sons of Haman are listed as being only three amos high in the Targum is because they were killed the day before they were hanged, and based on pasukim in the Megillah they were not just killed, but decapitated. Therefore, when they were strung up on the gallows, it was without their heads! However, Haman did not get off so easily and did not lose his head in any sort of decapitation. In fact, he was killed through hanging, with a rope around his neck, on the gallows that he prepared for Mordechai, his mortal enemy and would-be victim of his evil ploy! And it is there that we find the missing amah. It is none other than Haman’s huge and inflated head. (R’ Shmuel Kameny)
