Chapter Seven

1–6. The second feast at Esther’s: statement of her petition. 7–10. Condemnation and execution of Haman.

Esther 7:4. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed and to perish. If we had been sold merely as slaves and servants, I would have held my peace, although the enemy would not have compensated the damage to the king. “Although the enemy would not have compensated the damage to the king”—another translation of the thought of the original: “but our enemy would not have compensated the damage to the king,” that is, the damage which would follow from the destruction of so many subjects. And it is this, and chiefly the fact that her people is sold not into slavery, but for complete destruction, that compels Esther not to “keep silence,” but to speak in defense of the innocent, with whom she herself is condemned to perish, she for whose petition the king had just promised not to spare even half his kingdom.

Esther 7:5. And King Artaxerxes answered and said to Queen Esther: Who is it and where is the one who has dared in his heart to do so? Esther’s clear, it would seem, hint could hardly leave the possibility of such surprised blessed ignorance in which the king inquires further for details of Esther’s report. Does he not remember (perhaps drunkenly uttered) the bloody decree, or did not wish to suspect its connection with Esther, but in any case, at the first mention of Esther’s “enemy” involved in this, he considers it necessary to inquire: “Who is it and where is the one who has dared” to do so?

Esther 7:6. And Esther said: The enemy and adversary is this evil Haman! And Haman was stricken with terror before the king and queen. Esther 7:7. And the king rose up in his anger from the feast and went into the garden of the palace; Haman meanwhile remained to beg for his life from Queen Esther, for he saw that evil was determined against him by the king. Esther’s sharp and bold pointing out of Haman seems to the king not at all too unexpected, striking, or revealing, and easily produces the desired reversal in his opinion and attitude toward his recent favorite. This again seems to confirm the conjecture that the king’s disillusionment in Haman began somewhat earlier, prepared by other means and made it easier for Esther to accomplish such a delicate and risky task.

Esther 7:8. When the king returned from the palace garden into the banquet hall, Haman was falling upon the couch on which Esther was lying. And the king said: Does he even dare to assault the queen in my house! The word came out of the king’s mouth,—and they covered Haman’s face. In the moment of the king’s return to the hall from the garden, where he had gone to calm himself from his angry agitation, Haman overflowed the cup of the king’s wrath. In begging the queen for his life, he showed careless insufficient respect for her, a proximity too close to her couch (“Haman was falling upon the couch”), and this, being noticed by the king, finally ruined him and decided his fate. “Does he even dare to assault the queen in my house!”—an undoubted ironic hyperbole, inspired by the king’s intense angry mood and of course having no accurate correspondence to reality: neither Haman, nor Esther, nor all the surroundings and what was happening could in any way be such as to make anything like this possible. “They covered Haman’s face”—as a sign that, having fallen into disfavor, he could no longer see with his eyes the face of the king.

Esther 7:9. And Harbona, one of the eunuchs before the king, said: Behold the stake which Haman prepared for Mordecai, who had spoken good on behalf of the king, stands at the house of Haman, fifty cubits high. And the king said: Hang him on it. “For Mordecai, who had spoken good on behalf of the king”—that is, who had done service to the king by a known warning of the plot.

Esther 7:10. And they hanged Haman on the stake which he had prepared for Mordecai. And the king’s wrath was appeased. The swift resolution of Haman’s fate could hardly be allowed and considered natural without supposing, as mentioned above, that the king’s disillusionment in Haman had already begun earlier.