CHAPTER 7

¹And the king and Haman came to drink with Esther. ²And the king said to Esther again on the second day of the wine banquet, “What is your petition, Queen Esther, and it will be granted you? Up to half the kingdom and it will be done!” ³And Queen Esther answered and said, “If I have found favor in the eyes of the king, and if it please the king, let my life be granted me in my petition and my people’s in my request. ⁴For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be wiped out. And had we been sold to be male slaves and slavegirls, I would have remained silent, for the foe is not worth bothering the king.” ⁵And King Ahasuerus said, and he said to Queen Esther, “Who is it and where is he, whose heart has prompted him to do this?” ⁶And Esther said, “A man foe and enemy, this evil Haman.” And Haman was terrified before the king and the queen. ⁷And the king arose in his wrath from the wine banquet to the pavilion garden, and Haman stood to plead for his life to Queen Esther, for he saw that the evil was fixed against him by the king. ⁸And the king came back from the pavilion garden to the house of the wine banquet, and Haman was fallen on the couch where Esther was, and the king said, “Is it also to force the queen with me in the house?” The word had scarcely issued from the king’s mouth, and Haman’s face turned pale. ⁹And Harbona, one of the eunuchs, said before the king, “Look, there is actually a stake that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, who spoke good on behalf of the king, standing in Haman’s house, fifty cubits high.” And the king said, “Impale him on it.” ¹⁰And they impaled Haman on the stake that he had readied for Mordecai, and the king’s wrath subsided.