Esther Pleads for Her People

1And so the king and Haman entered to drink with the queen. 2And the king said to her again on the second day, after he was warmed with wine, “What is your request, Esther, so that it may be given to you? And what do you want done? Even if you ask for half of my kingdom, you will obtain it.” 3She answered him, “If I have found favor in your eyes, O king, and if it pleases you, spare my soul, I ask you, and spare my people, I beg you. 4For I and my people have been handed over to be crushed, to be slain, and to perish. And if we were only being sold as servants and slaves, the evil might be tolerable, and I would have mourned in silence. But now our enemy is one whose cruelty overflows upon the king.” 5And king Artaxerxes answered and said, “Who is this, and of what power, that he would dare to do these things?” 6And Esther said, “This is our most wicked enemy and foe: Haman!” Hearing this, Haman was suddenly dumbfounded, unable to bear the faces of the king and the queen.

The Hanging of Haman

7But the king, being angry, rose up and, from the place of the feast, entered into the arboretum of the garden. Haman likewise rose up to entreat Esther the queen for his soul, for he understood that evil was prepared for him by the king. 8When the king returned from the arboretum of the garden and entered into the place of the feast, he found Haman collapsed on the couch on which Esther lay, and he said, “And now he wishes to oppress the queen, in my presence, in my house!” The word had not yet gone out of the king’s mouth, and immediately they covered his face. 9And Harbona, one of the eunuchs who stood in ministry to the king, said, “Behold the wood, which he had prepared for Mordecai, who spoke up on behalf of the king, stands in Haman’s house, having a height of fifty cubits.” The king said to him, “Hang him from it.” 10And so Haman was hanged on the gallows, which he had prepared for Mordecai, and the king’s anger was quieted.