Esther 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

At the second banquet, the king again offers Esther whatever she asks. She asks for her own life and the lives of her people, explaining that they have been sold to be destroyed, and names Haman as the man behind it. The king leaves the room in anger, returns to find Haman pleading with Esther on her couch, and takes it as an assault; on Harbonah's word about the gallows Haman built for Mordecai, the king orders Haman hanged on it.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • The king and Haman came to drink with Esther the queen.
2. 7:2
   • The king spoke to Esther on the second day at the wine banquet.
   • The king asked Esther the queen what her petition was.
   • The king said her petition would be given to her.
   • The king asked what her request was.
   • The king said her request would be performed, up to half the kingdom.
3. 7:3
   • Esther the queen answered.
   • Esther said that if she had found favor in the king's sight, and if it pleased the king, her life should be given to her as her petition.
   • Esther asked for her people as her request.
4. 7:4
   • Esther said that she and her people had been sold to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish.
   • Esther said that if they had been sold merely as male and female slaves, she would have kept silent.
   • Esther said that the affliction is not worth the king's injury.
5. 7:5
   • The king Ahasuerus spoke and said to Esther the queen.
   • The king asked who he was and where he was, the one who filled his heart to do such a thing.
6. 7:6
   • Esther said the adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman.
   • Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
7. 7:7
   • The king rose from the wine banquet in his wrath.
   • The king went to the palace garden.
   • Haman stood up to beg Esther the queen for his life.
   • Haman saw that evil was determined against him by the king.
8. 7:8
   • The king returned from the palace garden to the house of the wine banquet.
   • Haman was falling on the couch where Esther was.
   • The king said, asking whether Haman would also force the queen with him in the house.
   • The word went out of the king's mouth.
   • They covered Haman's face.
9. 7:9
   • Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, spoke before the king.
   • Harbonah said the wooden pole that Haman had made for Mordecai was standing at Haman's house.
   • Harbonah said the pole was fifty cubits high.
   • Harbonah said that Mordecai had spoken good for the king.
   • The king said to hang him on it.
10. 7:10
    • They hanged Haman on the wooden pole that he had prepared for Mordecai.
    • The king's wrath subsided.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

This is the second of two banquets Esther has hosted for the king and Haman; at the first she asked only that they come again the next day. The King James "banquet" means a formal drinking party, not a modern buffet, the Hebrew word is built on the verb "to drink."

7:2

"Even to the half of the kingdom" was a stock royal flourish, a way of saying "name anything," not a literal offer of territory. Persian kings did not divide their empire, and the phrase appears elsewhere in the book as a set formula.

7:3

Esther speaks to her husband in the elaborate third person of the Persian court, "if it please the king" rather than "if it pleases you." The indirectness is protocol, not distance. "Found favour in thy sight" is the standard formula for asking a superior's goodwill.

7:4

"We are sold" points back to Haman's offer to pay ten thousand talents of silver into the royal treasury in exchange for permission to destroy the Jews. The three verbs (destroyed, slain, perish) repeat the exact wording of the decree Haman had drafted. The last clause of this verse is one of the most obscure sentences in the Hebrew Bible; "the enemy could not countervail the king's damage" means roughly "the enemy's payment could not compensate for the loss the king would suffer," but the Hebrew can also be read as "such distress would not be worth troubling the king about." Translators genuinely disagree.

7:5

Ahasuerus is the Hebrew form of the Persian royal name known in Greek as Xerxes; the modern translation uses Xerxes for the same king. "Durst presume in his heart" is older English for "dared to set his mind on."

7:6

"Adversary" and "enemy" here are two different Hebrew words piled up for force. In Hebrew the sentence delays the name to the very end, so Haman hears the accusation land on himself last.

7:7

Haman's danger is that under Persian law a royal decree, once sealed, could not be revoked, so the king cannot simply undo the order, and someone must answer for it.

7:8

Diners at a Persian banquet reclined on couches rather than sitting at tables, so Esther was lying down and Haman, begging at her feet, would have been physically on the same couch. The King James "bed" means a dining couch. To approach a royal woman closely was itself a capital offense, which is why the king reads the posture as assault. Covering a condemned man's face was a recognized gesture in the ancient Near East marking someone already as good as dead, from this moment Haman is not permitted to speak in his own defense.

7:9

"Chamberlains" translates a word meaning eunuchs (castrated male officials who staffed the royal household and had access to the women's quarters, a normal and often powerful position in Persian administration. The "gallows" is literally just "the wood" or "the tree": a pole or stake, and the Persian practice was impaling or hanging a body on it for public display rather than execution by rope. Fifty cubits is about seventy-five feet) a cubit was roughly eighteen inches, the length of a forearm, so the point is visibility from across the city, whether or not the figure is exact. "Who had spoken good for the king" refers to Mordecai's earlier exposure of a plot to assassinate Ahasuerus.

7:10

Haman is dead, but the decree he wrote is still law. An order sealed with the Persian king's ring could not be cancelled, even by the king himself, which is the problem the next chapter has to work around.