Esther 7
1 So the king and Haman went to eat the second banquet/feast that Queen Esther had prepared.
And the king comes in, and Haman, to drink with Esther the queen,
2 As they were drinking wine, the king asked again, “Esther, what do you want me to do [for you? Tell me, and] I will do it for you. Even if [you ask me for] half of my kingdom, I will give it to you.”
and the king says to Esther also on the second day, during the banquet of wine, “What [is] your petition, Esther, O queen? And it is given to you; and what [is] your request? To the half of the kingdom—and it is done.”
3 Esther replied, “O king, if you are pleased with me, and if you are willing to do [what I ask], save me, and save my people. That is what I want you to do for me.
And Esther the queen answers and says, “If I have found grace in your eyes, O king, and if to the king [it be] good, let my life be given to me at my petition, and my people at my request;
4 [It is as though] I and my people [are cattle that] have been sold to be slaughtered. [It is as though] we have been sold to people who want to completely destroy us. If we had only been sold to people to become their male and female slaves, I would not say anything, because that would have been a matter too small to bother you, the king.”
for we have been sold, I and my people, to cut off, to slay, and to destroy; and if for menservants and for maidservants we had been sold I had kept silent—but the adversity is not equal to the loss of the king.”
5 Then King Xerxes asked her, “Who would want to do such a [terrible] thing? Where is he?”
And King Ahasuerus says, indeed, he says to Esther the queen, “Who [is] he—this one? And where [is] this one whose heart has filled him to do so?”
6 Esther replied, “[The man who is] our enemy is this evil man Haman!” Then Haman was terrified as he stood in front of the king and queen.
And Esther says, “The man—adversary and enemy—[is] this wicked Haman”; and Haman has been afraid at the presence of the king and of the queen.
7 The king became extremely angry. He immediately left his wine and got up and went outside into the palace garden [to decide what to do]. But Haman stayed, in order to plead with Queen Esther that she would spare his life.
And the king has risen, in his fury, from the banquet of wine, to the garden of the house, and Haman has remained to seek for his life from Esther the queen, for he has seen that evil has been determined against him by the king.
8 He threw himself down on the couch where Esther was reclining. But at that moment the king returned from the garden to the room where they had been eating. [He saw Haman, and assumed he was preparing to rape Esther]. He exclaimed, “Are you going to rape the queen while she is here with me in my own palace?” As soon as the king said that, some officials covered Haman’s head, [as they did to people who were about to be hanged].
And the king has turned back out of the garden of the house to the house of the banquet of wine, and Haman is falling on the couch on which Esther [is], and the king says, “Also to subdue the queen with me in the house?” The word has gone out from the mouth of the king, and the face of Haman they have covered.
9 Then Harbona, one of the king’s personal officials, said, “[Outside, ] near Haman’s house, there is a (gallows/set of poles for hanging someone). It is 75 feet high. Haman made it for Mordecai, the man who spared your life!” The king said, “Hang him on it!”
And Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, says before the king, “Also behold, the tree that Haman made for Mordecai, who spoke good for the king, is standing in the house of Haman, in height fifty cubits”; and the king says, “Hang him on it.”
10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for hanging Mordecai! And then (the king’s anger cooled off/the king was no longer so angry).
And they hang Haman on the tree that he had prepared for Mordecai, and the fury of the king has lain down.
